Analyzing Savage Race Participation Trends

We closely observe Spartan Race as the dominant force in the obstacle racing industry. With Rugged Maniac ceasing operations in February, Savage Race stands as the main competitor for the number two spot in the field. Despite Spartan hosting 45-50 events annually in the U.S., Savage Race continues to hold its position with a more modest schedule of 13-15 events per year.

From 2013-2016 Savage Race events attracted approximately 3,000 participants per event throughout the year. There were even “Home Course” events in Florida that saw weekends with up to 7,000 to 8,000 finishers.

In 2018, Savage held 15 events with a total of over 40,000 finishers, averaging about 2,671 per event. This number slightly declined in 2019, and then the pandemic impacted the 2020 season. Nevertheless, Savage Race managed to conduct six events in the fall of 2020, achieving an average of 1,485 finishers per event, which was notable given the circumstances.

We wanted to take a deep dive into the more recent Savage Race participation numbers, specifically around the first event in Dade City event, typically held in March, through the Pennsylvania event that normally happens around the end of August. Here is what we found:

We reached out to Sam Abbitt, founder of Savage Race. Here is what he told us concerning the recent dips in participation.

Thanks for writing to us and letting us know about the article coming out. Our numbers are down from our peak years, mainly due to the fact that we slashed our ad budgets by 80% starting in 2021, and haven’t brought them back up until very recently. Recently we came to the conclusion that our decision to cut advertising spend led to a larger than expected decrease in participation. This was a hard lesson, but it helped us understand how much we need to budget for advertising moving forward.

Over the last few weeks, we have been shaking things up in the marketing department and are currently pursuing exciting strategies that we expect to pay off by achieving record new highs for our company in the coming 12-18 months. With our new plans in place, things are looking good. We have an incredibly talented team, we are well capitalized, and we are increasing our advertising budgets to finish this year and looking ahead to 2025.

And most importantly, we are laser focused on producing the highest quality OCR events. Above all else, we prioritize safe and world class OCR events for our customers regardless if we have 1,500 runners or 10,000.

Savage Race has always been a well liked company with well produced events that has survived with modest operational costs, few permanent employees, and low overhead. With a newly increased advertising budget and updated strategies, Savage Race may return to pre-pandemic numbers.

*Note – Finisher numbers constitute athletes who finish a race on any given weekend. We are unable to confirm kids race attendance, spectators, total ticket sales or determine which athletes pay for races but do not race or who race multiple events. Counting race finisher numbers is our only way to compare apples to apples with other race companies.

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Matt B. Davis

is the host of the Obstacle Racing Media Podcast and the author of "Down and Dirty-The Essential Training Guide for Obstacle Races and Mud Runs". He is also the only (known) #wafflehouseelite obstacle racer.

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