Travel for youth, amateur sports fuel hotel spending

Sixty-three percent of the respondents to a 2023 travel study for the sports sector said youth and amateur sporting events were their top generator of room nights.

Americans took a record 204.9 million sports event-related trips last year, according to the State of the Industry Report that the Sports Events and Tourism Association (Sports ETA) released last week at the trade organization’s conference in Portland. That's up from 192 million in 2022 and 179 million in 2019 before the pandemic.

On the spending side, travel outlay reached $52.2 billion, a jump from $47 billion in 2022 and $45 billion in 2019.

The report defines a sports traveler as someone who is at least 50 miles away and took a trip as a participant or attendee to an adult or youth amateur event or collegiate sports tournament, race or other event (professional sports and collegiate regular-season games are excluded).

The analysis is based on data from multiple sources: This spring’s Sports ETA membership survey; Longwoods International (traveler spending and visitor profiles); Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics (employment and wage data, by industry); Bureau of Transportation Statistics (U.S. domestic itinerary fares); U.S. Travel Association (domestic travel data); STR (lodging data); and official event attendance. The study was overseen by Tourism Economics, and a continued collaboration with Northstar Meetings Group Sports.

The total room nights also were up 6.5% from 2019, reaching 73.5 million. The lodging sector accounted for 21% of all sports-related travel spending, which is important because lodging taxes are a primary funding source for most destination marketing organizations.

“Sports really got the whole tourism industry through the last four years,” said Sports ETA President and CEO John David. “And now destinations are understanding what the long-term impacts sports tourism can really mean for a community and they’re jumping into it full heartedly.”

More than $1.5 billion was spent building youth and amateur sports facilities from 2020-23, according to SBJ research, and another $1.6 billion is expected to wrap up by the end of next year.

“The market continues to expand every year,” said Mike Sharpe, director of sponsorship and events sales at AdventHealth Sports Park, one of the 70 youth/amateur venues in the Sports Facilities Companies portfolio. “We have 10 projects underway and 10 more that we will manage.”