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 exactly two 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.

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.