Facebook Followers of World's Top 25 Marathons

One of the supposedly sure ways of promoting your marathon in the second decade of the 21st century is to leverage your event's Facebook page.

Races put on quirky promotions.  Push out tons of advice and of course, break news on them.

But do the number of Facebook likes really translate into event finishers?

Using the Association of Road Racing Statisticians list of top marathons last year (2011) by number of finishers, here are the number of Facebook likes of each event in the top 25:

192,547 - Walt Disney World Marathon (13,512 finishers, #18)*
57,978 - ING New York City Marathon (46,759 finishers, #1)
52,085 - The Boston Marathon (23,833, #9)
51,625 - Marine Corps Marathon (20,895, #10)
42,724 - Bank of America Chicago Marathon (35,670, #2)

40,163 - Virgin London Marathon (34,656, #3)
18,942 - Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore (15,343, #14)
18,642 - Marathon de Paris (31,133, #6)
16,032 - BMW Berlin Maraton (32,997, #5)
15,726 - Honda LA (Los Angeles) Marathon (19,614, #12)

 9,387 - BMW Frankfurt Marathon (12,438, #21)
 9,268 - Maratona di Roma, Italy (12,611, #19)
 8,234 - Dublin Marathon (11,245, #22)
 7,474 - Marato De Barcolona, Spain (12,564, #20)
 6,471 - Honolulu Marathon (19,078, #13)

 5,759 - Philadelphia Marathon (10,082, #25)
 3,591 - Asics Stockholm Marathon (15,171, #16)
 2,018 - Haspa Marathon Hamburg, Germany (11,185, #23)

Events with no official Facebook pages
Tokyo International Marathon (33,328, #4)
Osaka Marathon (26,175, #7)
Naha (Japan) Marathon (23,988, #8)
Kobe (Japan) Marathon (20,103, #11)
Shonan International (Oiso, Japan) Marathon (15,278, #15)
Shonan International (Oisi, Japan) Marathon (14,072, #17)
Eco-City Tsukuba Marathon (10,376, #24)

*Run Disney site encompasses multiple events and races.