Business of Sport with Sean Farrington
Wake Up To Money
BBC
4.1 • 775 Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sean Farrington has a look at the money behind sport - this week: mass-participation events.
It's big business - from the thousands of competitors that sign up to take part, to managing the event itself, to the fundraising.
Sean hears from Paul Foster, the Chief Executive of The Great Run Company - the company behind the Great North Run and many other events across the country. He'll also speak to Nick Tuppen, Chief Executive of Threshold Sports, one of the UK's fastest-growing active events agencies who coordinate more than 50 mass participation events per year.
Producers: Stefan Jajecznyk & Olivia Baron
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:09.0 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.0 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me, |
| 0:28.6 | Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | BBC Five Live. Wake up to Money. Business of Sports on BBC 5 Live. |
| 0:38.3 | Hello, welcome to The Business of Sport with Sean Farrington. |
| 0:42.9 | Today we're going to have a look at the money behind mass participation sporting events. |
| 0:47.9 | So could be ultramarathons, higher oaks, big cycling events. |
| 0:52.1 | It's big business, thousands of competitors sign up to take part, |
| 0:55.6 | managing the event itself, the fundraising. Today we're going to speak to the bosses of two companies |
| 1:00.5 | putting these events on across the country. |
| 1:04.9 | Wake up to Money. Business of Sports on BBC 5 Live. |
| 1:10.5 | So whether you've been running a 10K cycling the country's landmarks, maybe you've completed a crossfit or even just cheered on from the sidelines, you will know that mass participation sporting events are big business. |
| 1:23.3 | And even when it's not big business, but more big community, your local park runs on the Saturday mornings or Sunday mornings for your kids, showing how much demand there is for organised exercise, if we want to call it that. |
| 1:34.9 | That demand has exploded. |
| 1:37.2 | This week, when we're recording this show, we're going to see 60,000 runners taking on the 44th Great North Run from from Newcastle-O-Pontine to South Shields, an event. |
| 1:48.4 | They had just 12,000 runners when it launched back in 1981. |
| 1:52.3 | It's an example of looking at the sheer logistics sponsorships, economic impact as well on the areas in which they're hosted. |
| 1:59.2 | It's a fascinating industry right across the board. And I've got Paul Foster here with me, Chief Executive of the Great Run |
| 2:05.5 | Company, as it is called, which is the business behind the Great North Run, one of the UK's |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.