Once a year, a crowd of thousands of runners fill Central Park as they look up at the sky with joy, relief, exhaustion, and tears, knowing they just completed the iconic TCS New York City Marathon.
Recognizing the endless storytelling opportunities that come from the event, New York Road Runners (NYRR), the nonprofit behind the marathon, is launching its own production studio, East 89th St Productions.
“It was clear to me that this was a huge opportunity for the organization from the first day that I went to the finish line of the marathon,” NYRR CEO Rob Simmelkjaer says. “It’s rare that you can look and see total strangers by the hundreds, having a moment that you know they’re never going to forget.”
Named after NYRR’s early headquarters on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, East 89th St Productions partnered with Tribeca Studios to produce Final Finishers, a short documentary film showcasing the last tens of thousands of runners crossing the finish line in the final hours of the NYC Marathon. The film is set to premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival on June 12.
‘A very significant next step’
The launch of NYRR’s production studio is a continuation of a larger effort to reach and connect with wider audiences through content creation.
Prior to assuming his leadership position in December 2022, Simmelkjaer spent almost 10 years at ESPN and eight years at NBC Sports. At the start of his tenure at NYRR, he set out long-term plans, including broadening awareness of NYRR’s initiatives beyond organizing over 60 local races.
Due to his background in media, Simmelkjaer saw content creation and storytelling as the logical next step towards building awareness and community.
“I had to sell both internally and externally the idea that this was an essential part of what we do, because we needed to be talking to our existing audience of runners and members and stakeholders in a new way,” he says.
In addition to expanding its existing content creation team, which focused on broadcasting the races and managing the organization’s social media, Simmelkjaer branched into podcasting. With over 100 episodes, “Set the Pace” features stories from runners, as well as running tips, every Thursday, in partnership with Peloton.
“The podcast was like a beachhead for us. It kind of planted our flag on the beach in terms of content,” Simmelkjaer says. “The studio is a very significant next step in the evolution of this vision.”
Take the money and run
In addition to building community engagement, content creation is also driving the nonprofit toward another goal: diversifying revenue streams.
While NYRR relies primarily on race entry fees and philanthropic donations, content creation opens the door for monetization, new partnerships, and the creation of a deeper connection between donors and the nonprofit’s mission.
“At the heart of every nonprofit is a mission and that mission can always be told as a story or a set of stories,” Simmelkjaer says.
The expansion to content creation as a broader strategy can also be adopted by other mission-based nonprofits, visually showcasing the impact of an organization.
“When donors support a cause, there is something that is moving them to support that cause,” Simmelkjaer says. “There’s something the nonprofit is bringing about a world that the donor wants to see. When you can see in really human and understandable terms what impact that an organization is having, I think that’s going to be more powerful than any PowerPoint presentation can ever be.”
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