Reach runners who are choosing their next race

People come to BestRaces to pick a race: they compare rankings, check courses on the map, build pacing plans, and sort out travel. That's a reader worth reaching — and there are a few ways to do it here.

1 · Featured race placement — for race directors

A featured listing puts your race in a visually distinct, clearly labeled card at the top of the ranking pages where your race already belongs — its category page, its state page, and its city page where one exists. One flat payment covers the season: you're featured until race day.

• Labeled, always. Every featured card says "paid placement" on its face.
• Only where you belong. A trail ultra can't buy its way onto the 5K page — placement follows the same rules as the rankings.
• Season pricing, not a subscription. Pay once, run through race day, done.

Purchases aren't open yet. We're onboarding a small founding group first — founding races get first pick of placement and founding pricing that outlives the launch. Raise your hand: [email protected], and claim your race in the meantime — claiming is free and always will be.

Featured partner races: free to start

While we build up featured listings, there's a way in that costs nothing up front. Give us a referral code or tracked link from your own registration platform (RunSignup, Race Roster and most others let you make one), and when someone searches the map or the search page near your race, it can appear in a "Featured partner" card above the results.

• You pay only for runners we send: 15% of the entry fee, at least $3 a registration, counted from your own platform's report.
• Billed quarterly, once the fee owed reaches $25.
• Claimed races only. Claiming is free and confirms we're dealing with the race's organizer.
• Only where it fits the search. Your card shows when the search finds races near yours, with the same distance, surface and date filters.
• Your rank doesn't change. The card shows no score, and your race keeps its normal place in the results and the rankings.
• Free until our featured spots fill. If that changes, partners hear from us at least 30 days ahead.

To join, claim your race, then write to [email protected] with the code or link you'd like us to use.

2 · Brand sponsorship — for everyone else

Shoes, nutrition, watches, recovery, travel: if runners buy it, there's a conversation to have. Display or native-card creative, run nationally or geo-targeted — your ad can appear only on races within a radius you choose, or in the states you serve. Sponsorship inventory (site sections and the newsletter) is arranged directly, not self-serve — [email protected].

3 · Featured charity placement — for charity teams

Every verified charity team is listed free, and that never changes. What a charity can buy is position: a labeled "Featured charity" card above the directory list, in front of runners actively looking for a team to run with. The editorial listing itself stays identical for every charity, paid or not, and charity programs never touch a race's score — [email protected].

What advertising can never buy here

The site's entire value is that the rankings are computed, published, and never sold. So, bluntly:

• No payment of any kind changes a race's rank, score, or verified badge — the database enforces this, not just policy.
• Featured cards sit above the rankings, never inside them, and never carry a rank number.
• If an ad ever has to choose between looking good and being labeled, it gets labeled.

That discipline is what makes placement here worth buying: readers trust the list your ad sits next to.

Advertising is one of two ways this site earns; the other is referral fees on some outbound links. Both are itemized on the disclosure page, in the same plain terms we'd want if we were the ones buying.