There’s a moment every runner knows. You’ve just registered for a marathon — slightly terrified, already wondering if your shoes are good enough. That window of motivation, right after you hit confirm, is exactly where Asics wants to be.
The Japanese sportswear brand has been buying up race registration platforms across Thailand, Spain, France, Australia, and the US. In February it acquired GetMeRegistered, one of the larger American platforms, adding it to a portfolio that already includes Race Roster (2019) and the Runkeeper app (2016). The goal is to connect these into one ecosystem — catching you at sign-up, tracking your training, and nudging you toward Asics gear for months before race day.
Chief Operating Officer Mitsuyuki Tominaga was refreshingly direct about it: “Not only do we want to sponsor major marathon events, we want to engage with them directly.”
The Numbers Are Hard to Argue With
The Sydney Marathon has become Asics’ proof of concept. Booth sales at the expo jumped fourfold in a single year after the company deepened its involvement. At Tokyo in March, expo revenue rose by double digits year-over-year. Monique Johnson, visiting from Houston for her first Tokyo Marathon, told Bloomberg she usually wears other brands — and walked out having spent $400 on Asics gear after trying a new model at the expo.
That’s the conversion Asics is engineering at scale. The company’s broader turnaround has been striking: operating profit climbed from a ¥4 billion loss in 2020 to ¥142 billion ($903 million) in 2025. It’s forecasting another 17% revenue increase this year to ¥950 billion.
Ivan Su, an analyst at Morningstar, called the strategy “a smart move” for a brand that can’t match Nike’s marketing budget. While Nike spends billions on athlete endorsements, Asics is buying structural access to runners at their most motivated — a relatively uncontested channel in a market where Nike, Adidas, Skechers, and New Balance already control roughly half of the $46.5 billion global running shoe industry.
What Runners Should Think About
When the company selling running shoes also owns the platform you register through, manages your training app, and staffs the expo — the line between race infrastructure and sales funnel starts to blur.
Your registration data — training pace, race calendar, shoe size — becomes a commercial asset. What Asics calls “personalized training plans and footwear recommendations” is also, plainly, months of targeted marketing. That’s not necessarily sinister, but it’s worth knowing.
Race directors face a quieter version of the same question. If your event runs on an Asics-owned platform, how does that shape decisions about expo space and competitor brand visibility down the line?
Running has always been a fairly grassroots sport — independent race directors, local clubs, specialty stores that actually watch you run before recommending a shoe. None of that disappears overnight, but the corporate infrastructure beneath it is shifting. Asics is also pushing up-market, targeting shoes priced above $90 as it chases premium growth — and competitors like Hoka are doing exactly the same.
The shoes are good. The apps are genuinely useful. Better-funded races tend to be better races. But when you sign up for your next event, it’s worth a quick look at who’s running the registration platform — it might be the same company already waiting for you at the finish line.
