It’s the end of the 1st quarter of 2024 and we dived into some Spartan Racing event numbers. Specifically looking at the competitive waves. And… it’s looking bad.

We’ve seen 8 Spartan Venues come into play this 1st quarter.

• SoCal – January
• Arizona – February
• Jacksonville – February
• Dodger Stadium – February
• Houston – March
• Atlanta – March
• Las Vegas – March
• San Jose – March

A year-to-year analysis is difficult on several of these due to a number of issues including:

• Jacksonville – Ignoring as many elite athletes were in Saudi Arabia.
• Dodger Stadium – It’s a stadium. Who goes to these to race?!?!
• Houston – 2024 offerings of an additional Beast and extra Sprint was a little too different than what we saw in 2023.
• San Jose – It’s a new venue and nothing to compare.

So, we are left with 4 good ones here to review.
For the most part, we can offer a solid apples to apples comparison. As in a Beast to Beast comparison or Super to Super. The only one that doesn’t match exactly is SoCal. As they offered a Beast and Super competitive in 2024 and a Super and Sprint competitive in 2023. Given each year offered 2 competitive events, we included it.

It’s not good folks.
Every single one of these we reviewed is seeing a decline in competitive racing.
Take a look at this chart. These numbers will include Age Group & Elite athletes in 2023 and only Competitive in 2024 as they combined.

So, added up here it’s an overall 23% decline year to year.

What’s happening?

Spartan removed Age Group racing and combines it, calling it Competitive waves and the participation falls apart.
It’s concerning to see.

Details on the above chart are spelled out below.

• SoCal AG & Elite participation in 2023 was 401 for the Super and 339 on the Sprint. Dropping to 388 on the Beast and 385 on the Super in 2024.
  SoCal having the least decline.
• Arizona AG & Elite participation in 2023 was 312 for the Super and 226 for the Sprint. Falling to 251 on the Super and 159 for the Sprint in 2024. A 24% decline.
• Las Vegas AG & Elite participation in 2023 was 360 for the Super and 238 for the Sprint. Falling to 232 on the Super and 141 for the Sprint in 2024. A 38% decline.
• Atlanta AG & Elite participation in 2023 was 446 for the Beast and 367 for the Super. Falling to 287 for the Beast and 277 for the Super in 2024. A 31% decline.