EVENT ADVERTISING
CHICAGO MARATHON ADVERTISING + SPONSORED RIDES
The Course Runs Through Chicago. So Does the Opportunity.
The Bank of America Chicago Marathon is not a one-block event. It is a citywide race weekend that starts at McCormick Place, fills downtown hotels, takes over Grant Park, and sends runners and spectators through 29 Chicago neighborhoods. For brands, that creates something better than one giant crowd: it creates multiple places and multiple moments to reach the same audience.
Kween Cab helps brands extend their race-weekend presence beyond a booth or sponsor sign with mobile OOH, sponsored pedicab rides, street teams, sampling, and trackable street-level execution around the places people are actually moving.
55,000 RUNNERS. 1.7 MILLION SPECTATORS. A WHOLE CITY WATCHING.
The Chicago Marathon brings 55,000 participants from across the country and around the world onto a 26.2-mile course through 29 neighborhoods. The event estimates 1.7 million spectators along the route. That is not a static audience. It is a moving one - runners, families, supporters, tourists, volunteers, sponsors, media, and hospitality guests circulating across Chicago before, during, and after race day.
That movement is the opportunity. The strongest campaign does not need to chase every mile marker. It needs to be visible where race-weekend traffic concentrates: the Expo, downtown hotels, Grant Park, hospitality corridors, restaurants, transit connections, and post-race gathering points.
THE EXPO IS A CAMPAIGN WINDOW OF ITS OWN
Before race day, the Abbott Health & Fitness Expo creates three full days of concentrated access to runners and fitness-minded consumers at McCormick Place. The Expo is free and open to the public, hosts participant packet pickup, and features running footwear, apparel, nutrition, technology, merchandise, and other exhibitors.
In 2025, the Expo drew more than 157,000 unique visitors over three days. That makes it more than a packet-pickup stop. It is a significant consumer event sitting inside the same race-weekend ecosystem.
Extend the Expo Outside McCormick Place
A booth reaches people while they are inside. Pedicab advertising, sponsored rides, sampling, and street teams can keep the campaign visible as attendees arrive, leave, head back to hotels, move toward downtown, or continue into race-weekend activities.
SPONSORED RIDES: USEFUL MEDIA ON A VERY LONG WEEKEND
Marathon weekend already asks people to walk a lot before anyone even gets to the starting line. Sponsored pedicab rides can turn that friction into a brand experience: complimentary transportation paired with branded vehicles, trained drivers, campaign messaging, QR codes, or hospitality routing.
The result is more than an impression. The brand becomes useful - and useful tends to be remembered.
MOBILE OOH THAT MOVES WITH RACE WEEKEND
Traditional OOH waits for the audience to pass. Pedicab media can be deployed around the places where race-weekend traffic is building in real time. That may mean McCormick Place during Expo hours, downtown hospitality corridors, Grant Park before and after the race, or selected high-traffic areas tied to sponsor events and post-race activity.
The point is not to follow runners around the course. The point is to follow the commercial traffic around the event.
A SPONSOR ECOSYSTEM THAT ALREADY UNDERSTANDS ACTIVATION
The Chicago Marathon already sells a broad mix of sponsorship and marketing inventory, including race partnerships, Expo presence, participant-bag opportunities, digital assets, and partner communications. Brands do not need to be convinced that race weekend is a marketing platform. They are already spending against it.
Kween Cab gives agencies, sponsors, exhibitors, and hospitality teams another layer to work with - one that can live outside the booth, outside the barricades, and closer to the city movement surrounding the event.
STREET TEAMS + SAMPLING
For brands that need more than visibility, Kween Cab can pair mobile media with ambassadors, sampling, promotional distribution, QR engagement, and campaign support. This works especially well for categories already native to marathon weekend: fitness, apparel, footwear, nutrition, hydration, health, financial services, travel, technology, and consumer products.
BUILT FOR A CITYWIDE EVENT
A marathon changes how a city moves. Streets close. Traffic patterns shift. Pedestrian volumes build in different places at different times. A successful street campaign needs to be planned around the actual event footprint rather than a generic map.
Kween Cab plans around timing, access, traffic flow, sponsor goals, operating zones, and the practical realities of race weekend so the campaign can work where it matters without pretending the whole 26.2-mile course is one giant activation zone.
PROOF OF PERFORMANCE
Campaigns can include route tracking, GPS data, ride counts, activation reporting, photo documentation, QR engagement, and post-campaign recaps depending on the program. The goal is simple: give the client something more useful than “the bikes were out there.”
MAKE RACE WEEKEND WORK HARDER FOR THE BRAND
Whether the campaign starts with an Expo booth, a sponsorship, a hospitality program, or a standalone Chicago activation, we can build the street-level layer around it.