Case Study: European Running Championships and haku

Overview

In April 2025, European Athletics launched the first-ever European Running Championships, introducing a new “race-with-the-elites” format. Elite athletes competed for official European titles in the 10km, half marathon, and marathon, while thousands of amateur runners took part in the same races, on the same courses.

Hosted across Brussels and Leuven, the event proved to be a crowd favorite, as registration numbers shattered their forecast, attracting more than 28,000 non-elite runners (40% more than expected!) and established a strong foundation for future European road running championships. 

To support the mass participation side of this new format, European Athletics, and the Local Organising Committee, Golazo Events partnered with haku as their official registration and participant management platform.

The Challenge

The European Running Championships were anything but a typical road race. 

As the first edition of an entirely new championship format, the organisers had to combine elite competition governed by European Athletics’ strict protocols with a mass participation event open to runners from across Europe.

This was an ambitious event to organize from the outset. With a target of 20,000 participants, the event demanded a registration system that could handle large volumes, complex payment flows, and detailed participant management without friction. It also needed to reflect European market expectations, including multi-language support, VAT-inclusive pricing, and local payment methods such as Bancontact. Their registration system needed to deliver this seamless registration experience across geographies and cultural differences as well.

Adding to the complexity, the organising team was stepping away from its own in-house registration and timing platform for a high-profile championship. This meant they would have to migrate their data to a new system. Any external solution had to integrate reliably with a wide ecosystem of race-day systems without introducing operational risk and do all of this across multiple formats.

The Solution

European Athletics selected haku as their all-in-one mass participation registration system and to serve as the central platform for all participant data, giving organisers a clear and structured overview of the full field.

haku provided European Athletics with participant experience capabilities designed for their European market. Runners could register and manage their entries in multiple languages, use familiar local payment methods, and see clear, all-in pricing from the start. Through self-service accounts, participants were able to change distances, transfer registrations, and purchase add-ons through a smooth shopping cart experience. 

Behind the scenes, haku also supported key operational needs, including start wave and corral allocation. Organizers with European Athletics were able to use predicted finish times and uploaded proof of previous results to place runners accurately. This was an essential requirement given the narrow courses and competitive field. Crucially, with haku, they were able to do this without cross-checking against spreadsheets or other tools.

haku also served as a single point of truth for auxiliary race operations needs. With haku, European Athletics was able to send reliable data exports to timing systems, results platforms, TV graphics, event apps, and photo services, helping all event partners work from a consistent and dependable data source.

The Results

The European Running Championships went better than anyone expected. Despite being a first-time event the new format shattered their initial goal of 20,000 participants. The “race-with-the-elites” event finished with just over 28,000 runners, proving there was real appetite for a championship where everyday runners could share the same roads as Europe’s best.

Something else that stood out was how smooth it felt for participants. Thomas Huyberechts, Head of Project Management at Golazo Group,  described the registration experience as,

“modern and intuitive… the kind of flow you don’t usually get in endurance events.”

His favorite way to measure it was simple: if his 10-year-old could do it and his mom, nearly 70, could do it too, then it was working for everyone. Thanks to haku, they could. 

The event also performed well beyond registrations. haku’s in-flow eCommerce capabilities were a bright spot. Sales of ad-ons were 16 % higher than what the team typically saw across other races. This was especially impressive in Belgium, where runners can be hesitant to spend more once they’ve already paid the entry fee. The difference, according to Thomas, was that everything was presented clearly and “very nicely,” so it felt like part of the experience, not an extra push.

On the operations side, the European Athletics team got another operational win. They saw fewer manual requests than with typical events of this size. Instead of sending emails back and forth with the team, their runners could log into their accounts and handle common changes themselves. If a participant needed to switch distances or transfer a registration in the past, they would have had to send an email or make a call to the European Athletics team. With haku, and even though this was a new platform for the organisers and the event was massive, the customer service workload stayed “surprisingly manageable” for the size of the field.