Image Source: Rocky Top Sports World
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The owner of a vacuum store once came into a bar and approached Janna Clark, executive director of the Elizabethtown Tourism and Convention Bureau. He told her that the Kentucky city’s sports tourism initiative – namely Elizabethtown Sports Park – saved his shop.
What does an athletic complex sporting 25 fields have to do with sucking up dust? More than you may imagine.
All of the restaurants, retail stores, and hotels serving out-of-town guests were suddenly a lot busier once the park opened in 2012. That meant better cleaning equipment and more repairs. The greater business kept the store going until the owner’s retirement.
For all of the massive numbers associated with youth sports, the industry’s impact can be felt even at the smallest levels. Tourism dollars help fund infrastructure improvements, pay for new amenities and attractions, and help sustain many local businesses. It encourages building more restaurants and hotels, generating new jobs ranging from the C-Suite to cleaning crews.
There are also less tangible but equally important results, such as promoting more optimal health among citizens and improving city pride.
Here, we explore how sports tourism has helped craft the identities of three destinations and trace the vast benefits the facilities hosting young athletes continue to have on those communities.
While Elizabethtown had a vacuum shop, it lacked a large sporting goods store prior to the sports complex’s debut in 2012.
“I don’t know what we did – did we drive to Louisville to go to the Dick’s?” Clark asked rhetorically.
Image Source: Elizabethtown Sports Park
The Academy Sports + Outdoor big box in town is just one of several examples of retail gains resulting from the influx of sports travelers. Clark also cites other added amenities like Crowne Pointe Theatre, a state-of-the-art cineplex opening in 2018, and Social on Main, featuring 40 self-pour taps, duckpin bowling, an e-gaming lounge, and an indoor food hall with options for any taste.
Such growth is what city planners had in mind when they decided to distinguish Elizabethtown – an hour south of Louisville and two hours north of Nashville – through sports tourism. “Sports are more fun than meetings,” said Clark, explaining why a sports complex won out over a convention center.
By attracting travel teams for roughly 50 events per year, Elizabethtown is able to collect a restaurant tax to generate much-needed revenue for the construction of the sports park and other community projects like a planned 55-acre amphitheater that will hold 10,000 guests opening in 2026.
Needless to say, Elizabethtown Sports Park has delivered upon its goals. According to Clark, the park, which has been operated by The Sports Facilities Companies since 2019, hosts 35,000 players and an average of 105,000 guests annually, resulting in an economic impact of between $17.5 and $22 million per year. In 2022, officials marked the collective total at $150 million for the complex’s first decade – a number now closer to $200 million.
But the impact can’t be strictly measured by economics. Elizabethtown opens the sports park to local athletes and recreation leagues when a tournament is not in town – typically Mondays through Thursdays. Of note, the local flag football organization was recognized as one of the fastest-growing leagues in the country at the NFL Flag Football Summit last year.
There is a Miracle Field on-site for adaptive sports, playgrounds for siblings to run off energy, and trails to walk and bike. The park also supports 10 year-round full-time and up to 150 part-time positions during the nine-month event season.
Clark credits the sports tourism success to being selective about which tournaments to host rather than going for all the business, even if it’s not a good fit.
“We know who we are and we know what we’re capable of,” she said. “Sometimes, facilities will kind of take on any business they can get because they just want people in their community. But if the participants and their families don’t have a good experience in your community, they don’t want to return. Hosting may start with a facility, but guests’ experiences are a huge part of the equation.”
Wayne Miller, chief administrative officer for the City of Gulfport, Mississippi, can’t help but smile when it takes a bit longer to drive around town.
“You can tell if there’s a tournament in town because you’re going to have some traffic,” he said. “Traffic is a good thing to have. Traffic means there’s people in your city spending dollars.”
As his son’s former travel baseball team coach, Miller is well-versed in the power of sports tourism. He knows the city’s decision to expand and upgrade Gulfport Sportsplex – a project that included installing turf fields – was a true game-changer.
All of a sudden, Gulfport and the surrounding Coastal Mississippi region went from a “land mass between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama,” – as Miller puts it – to a destination for top-of-the-line baseball, softball, and soccer tournaments.
“When we first built the sportsplex, it was one of a kind,” he recalled.
With 15 baseball and softball diamonds and six rectangular fields – for soccer, flag football, etc. – Gulfport Sportsplex is among the premier athletic facilities in the Southeast. Youth tournaments and college championships fill the venue’s calendar nearly every week of the year, drawing visitors from as far as Texas to the community, filling hotel rooms, eating at restaurants, and shopping in local retail stores.
The most recent economic impact study notes the Sportsplex is responsible for 100,000 annual visitors and between $20 million for the local economy. It is also a home base for clinics and camps for local residents.
Image Source: Gulfport Sportsplex
“Sports tourism is like a gateway to economic development,” Marquez Singleton, general manager of the Gulfport Sportsplex, said, adding he hopes to attract longer tournaments to the venue in coming years.
Prior to working at the facility, Singleton pitched the venue and region to rights holders and event planners while working at the Coastal Mississippi Convention and Visitors Bureau. So, he sees the connection between locality and facility as a “marriage.”
While Gulfport’s fields are pristine, planners and participants are seeking experiences. Gulfport sports a water amusement park, white sand beaches, and a relatively new aquarium, which opened in 2020 in part to meet the growing demand of entertaining sports families. There is also Keesler Federal Park, formerly known as MGM Park, a Double-A baseball stadium, in nearby Biloxi that is across the street from the MGM-operated Beau Rivage Resort & Casino.
“The destination really helps sell our complex,” said Singleton
Miller agrees. “We don’t want them staying in their hotel rooms.”
Located in the outskirts of the Washington, D.C. suburbs, the Maryland SoccerPlex prides itself on being one of The Old Line State’s top sports venues.
Despite its name, the complex in Boyds, MD, near Germantown, is hardly a onesport site. In fact, soccer comprises only about 60 percent of its use at this point, noted Maryland SoccerPlex Executive Director Matt Libber.
Due to creative planning, marketing, and vision toward the future, the venue is popular for lacrosse and rugby, and the on-site 66,000-sq-ft Adventist HealthCare Fieldhouse hosts indoor sports, including basketball and volleyball.
Image Source: Maryland SoccerPlex
As a result, Libber is in the midst of rebranding the 24-field facility to better reflect its capability to sports tournament organizers. A former event planner himself, Libber understands the needs of his business partners and has built a network of connections to keep the SoccerPlex busy – but not at the expense of its value to the local community.
More than 6,000 recreational players use the fields – providing elite fields to those players in an era when many grassroots organizations across the county struggle to find adequate fields. The revenue generated from travel sports allows the complex to offer its amenities to residents of Montgomery County and neighboring municipalities. Staff also travel to schools to offer instruction, which introduces newcomers to the SoccerPlex.
“We want those kids to have the same experience as travel sports and play on the best fields,” Libber said of the heavy recreation use.
Marilyn Balcombe, the District 2 Montgomery councilmember who lives in Germantown, enjoys walking and biking on the on-site trails and her daughter played sports there, too. She has seen the complex’s reputation grow nationally, allowing it to attract many top-tier events.
“When you think about tournaments, it’s our time to shine,” she said. “People who come to tournaments know that it’s going to be as hassle-free as a weekend tournament can be.”
Libber said the conservative estimate, based on the model he created while running Elite Tournaments, is a $36 million economic impact. Because many of the hotels are in Bethesda, Rockville, and Gaithersburg, the entire county benefits from incoming tournaments.
Notable events played at the facility include the National Collegiate Rugby Sevens Championship featuring 300 teams and the Big East Soccer Championships. Even Libber’s former company Elite Tournaments uses the SoccerPlex for a lacrosse tournament.
Balcombe added: “The SoccerPlex is such a critical aspect of our economy. It is a regional asset.”
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