USA Triathlon, TriFind Paint Different Portraits of U.S. Triathlon Market

The size of the triathlon market in the U.S. could be significantly larger than reported after a comprehensive review found there are hundreds of events that run independently of national federation-affiliated races.

Data released by the sport’s governing body, USA Triathlon (USAT), showed a mixed picture for 2025, with participation down around 3% year-over-year at 293,000, while the number of events was up by 20 events to 1,175.

However, researchers from triathlon race search engine TriFind have unearthed an additional 625 events unaffiliated with USA Triathlon, resulting in a further 53,000 multisport finishers across the country in 2025 that aren’t included in USAT’s analysis.

While many of the non-affiliated events cater to smaller fields, there are races such as Spudman in Idaho, Seafair in Seattle, and Houston Kids in Texas that boast more than 1,500 entrants each, with three of the six largest fields in the U.S. being at non-USAT-sanctioned events (see table below).

The benefits of a bigger triathlon market are myriad: Brands would have more confidence to advertise, sponsors would get more value for their investment, athletes would be given more choice (USAT claims there are 15-20 “desert states” where it is difficult to find local multisport events), and simply add more visibility to attract new faces to triathlon.

Thom Richmond, who runs TriFind and independent race series Cal Tri Events, amassed the whole of the U.S. market data with the help of data scientists Dave Campbell and Ben McClure, and was surprised by the results.

(Illustration: Courtesy TriFind)

“The information had been so disparate, once we started compiling the lists, the numbers were shocking to me,” Richmond says, adding that since finding an initial 300 non-USAT-sanctioned events by December, the number has more than doubled.

Market dynamics and USA Triathlon’s response

While analysts, including those from USAT, recognize that triathlon’s popularity in the U.S. has been on the wane since its peak in 2011, there has been a recent concerted effort to get behind the numbers to determine how to drive growth.

Richmond and his team’s work follows a USAT presentation at last month’s Endurance Exchange conference on the state of the industry, and this week’s release of USAT’s 2025 Impact Report, which USAT’s chief marketing and growth officer Krista Prescott says will help show “transparent data to benefit the entire sport.”

Prescott explains to Triathlete that since her arrival in 2023, the organization has overhauled its systems to provide better information, not just to better figure out the past, but to begin to predict future trends as well. “Just painting a rosy picture is not helpful for anyone,” Prescott says.

While the top line is that 2025 was a relatively flat year for triathlon, with a few potential green shoots, delving into the details reveals a treasure trove of shifting sands. “If all we do is look at the headline figures, we miss the critical dynamics taking place from age-group to age-group and ultimately target the wrong audiences,” Prescott explains.

USAT’s numbers reveal a downturn in participation in the 40-59 age group, which has dropped by 9,700, but an increase in the 20-29 age group of 5,000. A further concern is the lack of repeat racers, with just 2% of participants entering an average of three or more times a year. This is also reflected in the membership, with adult one-day USAT racing licenses (142k) greater than adult annual sales (117k).

Shorter-distance racing (sprint and Olympic) is driving the growth, and also attracts a higher percentage of female participants, and Prescott believes the appeal to younger age groups and rapid-fire racing offers an opportunity. “If we can drive loyalty, they can be lifelong triathletes,” she says. “But we’ve got to figure out how we provide the experiences they’re looking for.”

The cost and value of sanctioning triathlon races

While USAT’s Impact Report is insightful, would the data have more value if it were expanded to all events, not just the two-thirds in the U.S. that USAT sanctions? Richmond, whose non-profit Cal Tri puts on 18 events, has developed his own insurance program, and is holding his own TriFind race director summit on October 31 in California, believes so.

“Race directors are the lifeblood of this business,” he adds. “But effectively, USAT is only a storyteller of triathlons it insures, and I don’t think that is the most robust and optimistic position for an NGB [national governing body] to take. They want to grow the sport as long as they’re making insurance revenue, but look at the last 15 years – they haven’t grown the sport. The numbers have never gone up, so I don’t know if the strategy is working.”

Richmond claims that whether it’s a USAT-sanctioned event or not matters little to athletes when they sign up, citing his experience of running Cal Tri events. “We get maybe 10,000 registrations a year, and one or two inquiries asking if we are insured by the national governing body. It’s not even enough to put in our FAQs.”

Richmond also believes that USAT profits by charging $15 (sprint) or $25 (standard) for a day license. USAT classes one-day licenses as bronze membership, with silver membership being an annual product, and the next step up. You cannot take part in a sanctioned race without being a member.

He says insuring short-course events (or “fast course” as Richmond prefers to call them) costs him just $4.33 per finisher, a rise of 37 cents from last year, which is included in the entry fee, so Richmond questions what he views as an unfair mark-up – arguing that if triathletes really wanted to receive member benefits such as voting rights and the possibility of national age-group selection (as opposed to just race insurance) more would purchase annual membership.

Ryan Griessmeyer, president of Race Day Events (which hosts the Wisconsin Tri Series that welcomes 4,000 athletes each year), tends to agree. “We feel that USAT can sometimes hinder the event by making it feel intimidating and adds additional cost to those new to triathlon,” Griessmeyer says, with more than 15% of participants being new to triathlon.

“We provide an experience on race day that includes a professional announcer, high-energy music, on-site bike tech, and post-race camaraderie focusing on triathlon teams and youth groups. Race Day Events is very proud of the triathlon community that we have built in the Midwest and looks forward to continuing to grow the sport.”

While Griessmeyer’s independent series may be thriving, being USAT-sanctioned and insured is still the option the majority of events choose, and it is not unique to the U.S. Other national federations run similar systems, including the British Triathlon Federation (BTF), which charges £8 ($11 USD) for an adult day license that provides third-party public liability insurance. Full membership, which comes in different levels, is currently £70 ($95 USD) for a core membership.

BTF’s permitting fees (the amount charged to a race organization to hold an event) are capped at £540 ($737 USD). A BTF spokesperson told Triathlete that an official event permit demonstrates the event has “met a set of national standards, including being conducted in a fair and safe manner, aligned with national governing body guidance and the competition rules, and includes a review of event documentation by national governing body staff, as well as on-the-day support from qualified technical officials.”

In 2025, over 128,000 participants took part in permitted events in Britain, BTF says, representing a 4% increase compared to the previous year.

Even if the practice of charging for day licenses is global, it doesn’t sit well with Richmond. “If you go into a restaurant, and someone says you have to pay $20 for a steak or it’s a $100 steak and somebody else has to pay, which steak are you picking?” he says. “That’s what is going on, and that’s why it works. But it’s hard to consider yourself athlete-first if you’re making a decision to pass this cost on to athletes as a condition of participating in the race.”

USA Triathlon’s role beyond insurance

Prescott argues the comparison is too binary. “I vehemently disagree that membership is [solely] insurance,” she says, explaining that there are many other USAT member benefits from the provision of training resources to direct connection to community, coaches, and clubs.

“The money is used to support the entire ecosystem,” she adds. “We’re here for the long-term health of the sport.” Similar to BTF, USAT’s role spans governance from competition rules to disciplinary procedures, training and providing certified officials, and putting in risk-management guidance. It also facilitates elite competitors targeting Olympic and Paralympic success.

That being the case, it’s worth noting that while the number and popularity of events are a yardstick for the health of triathlon as a whole, membership fees also provide critical income for USAT to fund these measures. The organization earns revenue from a variety of sources, including sponsorship, grants, investments, and fees for sanctioning races, but its biggest chunk of income comes from membership fees that contributed over $7.6 million to the organization’s $19.18 million total revenue in 2024. In short, USAT would struggle to survive without making money from events.

A path forward for USA Triathlon, TriFind

Where do we go from here? Prescott didn’t rule out a closer working relationship with non-sanctioned events in the future, but that wasn’t always USAT’s stance. When Steve Adams started work on what would become TriFind in 1998, he didn’t even have a computer. He’d become interested in triathlon after a doctor suggested running wouldn’t help his hip injury. “I said I’d rather have a good heart and a bad hip than a good hip and a bad heart,” Adams recalls, and started compiling an events database in Florida that would grow to encompass the whole U.S.

Adams’ site, started as a hobby, eventually became so popular that USAT paid him “a six-figure sum” following the pandemic to only promote USAT-sanctioned events. “At first, they wanted only their races listed,” Adams says, admitting that the cancellations due to COVID had set back his advertising model, and the USAT partnership was much-needed financially. “I told them that would be insane. Why pay money to have a website with fewer races? My idea was to compromise.” This meant still listing all races, but making unsanctioned events much harder to find. “Some race directors were offended, and I don’t blame them, but it was a business agreement.”

Prescott doesn’t deny the arrangement, but says it wasn’t about suppressing non-USAT events, but about giving the governing body its own race calendar. “It was before my time, but we did engage in a partnership with TriFind,” she says. “We didn’t have the capability, time, and bandwidth to manage an event calendar and went to an external partner. We looked at TriFind under this partnership as our own race calendar, and, of course, were promoting all USAT races. But we went away from it because we should be providing our own resources and tools. At the time, we didn’t have the technology.” Adams would go on to sell TriFind to Richmond last year, and USAT has since established an event calendar on its website.

A call for collaboration

Prescott says that the aim is never to “drive division” because USAT’s role is to help build and bolster the industry as a whole and to provide a robust racing ecosystem, while Richmond believes the arrangement was a further example of how the national governing body has been too inward-looking and self-serving, and urges change. But while disagreeing with their event policies, he still believes USAT has a vital role to play in the shaping of triathlon in the US.

“In order for the national governing body to fulfill their role as storytellers of the sport, they should immediately reverse direction and collaborate with races that have chosen alternate insurance options,” he says. “The alternative to change is irrelevance.”

6 most-popular short course triathlon races in the USA, 2025

*Non-USAT sanctioned events