Boston Marathon,Big Money Inside

BOSTON (TheStreet) -- The Boston Marathon endured the recession as other sporting events sucked wind, because, like the race's participants, its sponsors are in it for the long run.

The Boston Marathon steps off for the 115th time on Monday, April 18, with a field of 19 sponsors that didn't break during the past two years of economic instability. The 26.2-mile Boston Marathon gets a lot of support along its route from featured sponsors like Manulife Financial's(MFC_) John Hancock, Adidas and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. But it takes the efforts of secondary sponsors such as Coca-Cola's(KO_) Gatorade, Nissan, AT&T(T_), JetBlue(BLU_) and Nestle's(NSRGY_) Poland Spring and PowerBar to push the event over the finish line.

Of the roughly $7 million it costs to run the Boston Marathon each year, 70% (or about $5 million) comes directly from the sponsors, according marathon organizers at the Boston Athletic Association. That's a tough number to rely on from year to year, especially after U.S. ad spending decreased by 9%, or $11.6 billion, according to Nielsen, during the height of the recession from 2008 to 2009.

At a time when smaller sporting events like Boston's Head of the Charles rowing races were losing money from sponsors such as Volkswagen, Nautica(VFC_), MetLife(MET_) and UBS(UBS_), and sports breadwinners as big as Major League Baseball saw GM(GM_), MasterCard(MA_) and Anheuser-Busch InBev(BUD_) briefly fade from view as stadium advertisers, even major events were tailing off with huge losses. Spending for the 2009 NCAA men's basketball Final Four dropped more than $14 million from the year before, while the 2010 Super Bowl's ad spending slumped more than $8 million from the previous season. As other sports struggled along a Heartbreak Hill of declining revenue, the Boston Marathon managed to keep stride.