haku Releases 2025 Endurance Industry Report Revealing a Major Shift Toward Younger, Earlier, Mobile-First Participants

March 11, 2026

Miami FL (March 11, 2026) /ENDURANCE SPORTSWIRE/ — haku, the global leader in technology for endurance events, today released its 2025 Endurance Industry Report, revealing a major shift in participation and purchasing behavior across the endurance market. Based on 4 million registrations across 2024 and 2025, the report found that Gen Z participation rose 33% year over year, average registration revenue increased 36%, and participants registered 17 days earlier on average, giving event organizers stronger forecasting visibility and earlier access to higher-value registrants.

The report, The Demographic Trends Redefining Endurance: Younger Runners, Earlier Sign-ups, Longer Races, also found that while desktop remains the most frequent registration channel, mobile registrations increased 92% year over year, while desktop registrations declined 17%. Mobile registrations generated 29% higher average registration value than desktop, averaging $118 per registration compared with $91 on desktop.

“The typical participant driving growth in 2025 is younger, more decisive, more mobile-native, and increasingly willing to commit earlier and spend more,” said Jackie Levi, Chief Strategy Officer at haku. “That changes how organizers need to think about launch strategy, pricing, checkout, and long-term retention.”

The findings suggest that the endurance industry’s center of gravity continues to move younger. Millennials accounted for approximately 43% of participants across all events in 2025, while Gen Z represented roughly 21% to 25% of the field depending on race distance. Older generations made up a smaller, but still significant share of participation overall.

One of the report’s most notable findings is the changing age profile of marathon participation. Long considered a later-life milestone, the marathon skewed younger than the overall event baseline in haku’s 2025 data. Millennials made up approximately 46.6% of marathon participants, while Gen Z accounted for about 25.6%. Gen Z also posted the strongest year-over-year increase in marathon participation share, suggesting younger runners are committing to longer distances earlier in their endurance journey.

The report also identified a widening divide in distance preferences. In 2025, 5K share increased 15% and marathon share increased 6%, while 10K share declined 18% and half marathon share declined 12%. While half marathons and 10Ks remain popular, this result points to a market increasingly concentrated at both ends: lower-barrier entry events and marquee milestone distances.

The report also highlights the growing importance of the registration launch window. According to haku’s analysis, the first 60 days after registration launch accounted for 63% of total registration revenue while representing only 35% of total registrations. haku’s data found this to be true not only for marquee events that sell out quickly, but smaller and midsized events as well. The pattern suggests that early registrants are disproportionately valuable and reinforces the need for organizers to execute strong launch communications, transparent pricing, and frictionless early conversion experiences..

About haku

haku is the global leader in endurance management technology. Its all-in-one platform for endurance events goes far beyond registrations to manage every part of the event lifecycle, memberships, fundraising, e-commerce, marketing, and more. With haku event organizers, race directors, and their teams can cut out busy-work, deliver a better experience, and generate more profit. It brings everything together in one intuitive solution. With the industry’s only native CRM, innovative AI capabilities baked in, and a powerful suite of capabilities, haku unlocks the full potential of your data, driving revenue growth beyond registrations, increasing efficiency, and enabling smarter, data-driven decisions. Fully customizable, scalable and built for security, haku adapts to your workflow so you can focus on what matters most: running a successful event.