Transparency report
The disclosure gap
64 of the 73 official ticket ballots we track publish no demand figure at all: no applicant count, no allocation, no success rate.
Each of those ballots asks fans to enter a draw without saying how hard the draw is. The 9 that do publish something, listed below, show that disclosure is perfectly possible: a marathon can name its applicant count to the exact person, a cricket venue can say how oversubscribed its ballot ran. The rest publish nothing, and this page keeps the score. Entering the official ballot is still almost always free and still the route we point to first; the gap is the missing number, not the ballot.
Scored from organizer and press material checked record by record; the newest checked date on the scorecard below is 8 Sept 2026. Method at the bottom of the page; the full dataset, including every empty cell, is free to download.
The other side
The transparency league
The 9 ballots whose demand has a published number: 8 publish an applicant-side count, 2 publish the allocation, 2 state a success rate, and 1 publish both sides of the ratio, so the odds are computable from their own figures. Every figure names the cycle it describes, because most describe a past edition.
5,000 applicants · 2,500 places
The organizer's own site states 'over 5,000 riders applying for just over 2,500 places', roughly a 1-in-2 ballot and the best published odds of any record in this database. The statement is a recurring description and names no edition, so odds_cycle is 'typical'. It appears on the homepage; the entry page at /entry/ carries no figures.
12,000,000 applicants
LA28 said on 29 Jul 2026 that ticket registration had climbed to 12 million fans, from over 200 countries and all 50 US states, up from the more than 5 million it announced on 23 Feb 2026. Registering is not the same as applying for a session: the draw allocates purchase time slots, and a slot does not guarantee inventory. The 12 million is a cumulative total across every draw, and LA28 has never published how many time slots a drop issues, so no success rate can be derived.
5,500 places
Official 2027 entry outline: the general lottery category carries 5,500 places and is drawn whenever applications exceed capacity. Other categories are first-come and are not part of the draw (challenge 5,000, travel plan 4,000, overseas 3,500, charity 3,000, heart support 1,000). The number of lottery applicants is not published, so this is a denominator without a numerator.
1,338,544 applicants
Organizer figure for the 2027 ballot: 1,338,544 people from the UK and across the globe applied in the public ballot, a world record, up 18 percent on the previous record of 1,133,813 set for 2026 and more than double the 578,304 for 2024. UK applications were 1,008,091; 330,450 came from non-UK residents across more than 200 countries. The number of places allocated through the ballot is not published: the 2027 double event carries about 100,000 runners across the two days, but that is the whole field including championship, Good For Age and charity routes, not the ballot allocation.
240,000 applicants · about one percent of applicants accepted
NYRR press release of 4 Mar 2026 for the 2026 race: a record 240,000-plus applications from more than 160 countries, a near-20 percent increase on 2025, with 'only about one percent of applicants accepted'. This is the only record in the database where the organizer states a success rate outright. Figures describe the 2026 cycle; the 2027 drawing had not run when this was recorded. Read on 26 Jul 2026 via the Road Race Management reprint at https://rrm.com/2026/news/nyrr-new-york-road-runners-sets-record-with-240000-applications-for-2026-tcs-new-york-city-marathon-drawing/ because nyrr.org sits behind a virtual-queue redirect.
123,000 applicants
Organizer release of 29 Oct 2025 on tcssydneymarathon.com for the 2026 race: 'More than 123,000 runners entered the 2026 ballot, representing a 56% increase on 2025, the highest in the event's history', with 'increased capacity targeting 40,000 finishers'. The 40,000 is a whole-field finisher target, not a ballot allocation, so the places-through-ballot figure remains unpublished and no success rate can be derived. Prior cycle, per the NSW Government release of 19 Jan 2025 (https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/dciths/ministerial-media-releases/sydney-marathon-ballot-overrun-international-entries): more than 79,000 applications for 35,000 positions on the starting line for the 2025 race, from 156 countries; the 35,000 was likewise the whole starting field, which is why no odds_places figure is stored. No figure for the 2027 cycle had been published when this was recorded.
750,000 applicants · Championship Day applications up to ten times oversubscribed
R&A chief executive Mark Darbon said in his pre-championship address on 15 Jul 2026, nine days into the ballot, that over 750,000 applicants had already entered for 2027 tickets. The R&A separately states on theopen.com (6 Jul 2026, https://www.theopen.com/latest/ticket-ballot-st-andrews-2027-open) that in recent years applications for Championship Days have been up to ten times oversubscribed, which is why it recommends practice days. The number of tickets allocated through the ballot is not published. Attendance at the 2022 St Andrews Open was 290,000 and a similar figure is anticipated for 2027, but attendance is not the ballot allocation.
119,000 applicants · 1,100,000 applications
Surrey reported on 12 Dec 2022 that the Kia Oval ballot for the 2023 international summer, which included an Ashes Test, closed with 119,000 individuals requesting over 1.1 million tickets, against around 33,000 entrants for the 2019 Ashes summer. Surrey said demand for the men's Ashes Test could have sold out all five days ten times over. Figures describe the 2023 cycle, the most recent home Ashes. The number of tickets released through the ballot is not published.
140,000 applicants · 1,000,000 applications
MCC reported on 26 Nov 2025 that the Lord's ballot for the 2026 international summer drew over 1 million ticket applications from a record 140,000 unique applicants, covering the men's Tests against New Zealand and Pakistan, the women's Test against India and a men's ODI against India. Figures describe the 2026 non-Ashes summer, not the 2027 Ashes ballot, which had not opened. The number of tickets released through the ballot is not published, so no success rate can be derived.
Every confirmed ballot
The full scorecard
One row per confirmed ballot, 73 rows in all. A No means the published material was checked on the stated date and no figure was found in it, never that nobody looked: every row carries its checked date.
Method
What checked means
- Checked means the published record was searched. The Checked column is the date we searched what that organizer publishes for demand figures: its ticketing pages, entry outlines, newsroom and press releases, plus press coverage quoting the organizer. A No means checked on that date and nothing published. It never means not-researched.
- Figures are quoted, never derived. A number enters the database only when a source states it outright. Nothing is estimated, interpolated between cycles or borrowed from a similar event. Where applicants and applications differ (one person can apply for several days or sessions), both are recorded rather than the more dramatic one.
- Every figure names its cycle. Most published figures describe a past edition, so each one carries the cycle it belongs to, and the source is labelled organizer or press so you can weigh it yourself.
- The dataset carries every cell. All the odds columns, the checked dates and the source links ship in the open dataset below, so this count can be re-run by anyone.
Re-run it
Take the data
The whole database, including the odds columns this page scores, is free to download and reuse under CC BY 4.0. The field reference on the open data page documents every column.