When several contests compete for the participation of a common set of players, a contest's allocation of prizes not only induces incentive effects but also participation effects. Our model predicts that an increase in the sensitivity with which contest outcomes depend on players' efforts makes flatter prize structures more attractive to participants. In equilibrium, contests that aim to maximize the number of participants will award multiple prizes if and only if this sensitivity is

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... y high. Moreover, the prize awarded to the winner is decreasing in the contests' sensitivity. We provide empirical evidence from professional road running using race-distance as a measure of sensitivity. We show that steeper prize structures are more attractive to top ranked runners in longer, i.e. less sensitive, races. In line with our theory, longer races do in fact offer steeper prize structures. * We are especially grateful to Michele Piccione and Alan Manning for their guidance and support. We also thank participants at various seminars and conferences for valuable discussions and suggestions. Additionally, the comments of two anonymous referees were highly appreciated. We thank Zeeshan Azmat for his helpful research assistance.