Want to run the world’s top marathons? Good luck getting in.

The increasing popularity of the series is clear, attracting celebrities like musician Harry Styles, who ran the series’ Tokyo and Berlin marathons this year, along with hundreds of thousands of others.

Demand for entry into the races has become so high that it has fueled an industry around access. Beyond the handful of guaranteed entries for ultrafast runners or charity fundraisers, one of the only ways to secure a spot is through marathon tour companies that sell bibs bundled with travel packages for thousands of dollars. Other hopefuls can try their chances in ultracompetitive lotteries put on by six of the seven marathons, but chances are slim. The New York City Marathon admitted just 3% of lottery applicants last year — lower odds than getting into an Ivy League college.

As the circuit’s popularity has skyrocketed, figuring out how to even be accepted to the races has become a major challenge, and what was once a coalition of marathons tied together by a shoestring has had to figure out how to scale for increasing demand.

Humble beginnings

The Majors weren’t always this way.

When the series debuted in 2006, its focus was exclusively on appealing to elite runners, offering $500,000 in prize money for the top man and woman over a two-year cycle.

That idea grew out of conversations among race directors who had begun informally sharing best practices, which turned into collective action.

Before the group debuted the circuit, for example, its members worked together to petition for more stringent doping procedures from the International Amateur Athletic Federation, now known as World Athletics, said Carey Pinkowski, the longtime director of the Chicago Marathon.

Mark Milde, the longtime race director of the Berlin Marathon, remembered that the inspiration for the series came partly in response to a sponsor’s attempt to use results from major races to crown its own “runner of the year.”

“We didn’t like the idea,” he said. “This was kind of the initiator to do something together.” In 2004, he said, he and directors from four other marathons around the world got together in New York City ahead of the New York City Marathon to come up with a scoring system to determine the best marathon runner.

In the beginning, Milde said, the planning fell to the team of race directors. Now, the Abbott World Marathon Majors is an independent corporate entity from the marathons themselves, with its own CEO and staff. Many of the race directors sit on that group’s board of directors.

But it didn’t grow into what it is today overnight.

Milde said it took several years to convince the other race directors of the value of investing more deeply in participation from everyday runners.

“We thought, OK, it makes sense to reach out to the normal runner, or the average runner, however you want to call it, and to do something for them,” Milde said.

The investment would turn into one of the defining elements of the series.

In 2011, the World Marathon Majors introduced a five-star certificate, with signatures from all five race directors of the original World Marathon Majors group, awarded to everyday participants who completed all five marathons.

That year, Milde remembers, they gave out just seven.

But the idea of appealing to everyday runners, not just elites, was the beginning of what would become the hallmark of the major marathon circuit, ballooning in a matter of years into a phenomenon, and becoming a fundamental aspect of the growth of marathons over the next 15 years.