Posted: January 22, 2005

Athletics: 2.4 Million Watch Honolulu Marathon In Japan

From David Monti

(c) 2004 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

A 55-minute taped broadcast of the 2004 Honolulu Marathon by the Tokyo Broadcasting System on Monday, 10-Jan reached 2,412,000 viewers, according to the Honolulu Marathon Committee, organizers of the tropical marathon held last December. That viewership represented a 162,000-household increase over the 2,250,000 households that watched the broadcast of the 2003 marathon in January 2004.

The Honolulu Marathon, with funding from primary sponsor Japan Airlines, is extremely popular with Japanese runners and is the largest Japanese marathon in the world, in terms of participants. The 2004 edition of the race had a total of 15,723 entrants from Japan, plus an additional 4,688 Japanese participated in the accompanying 10 km walk held on the same day.

The highest viewership of the TBS broadcast was in the Kanto area of Japan which includes the Tokyo metropolis and six other prefectures. TBS reported 1,173,000 Kanto households watched Monday, compared with 1,028,000 last year.

Driven mostly by Japanese visitors, the Honolulu Marathon has an economic impact on Hawaii of approximately $86 million, according to Jerry Agrusa, a professor at Hawaii Pacific University, who conducts detailed surveys of race entrants each year.