Events and Attractions
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 37 St. Louis
The city’s increasingly busy schedule includes this year’s Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships and the SBJ National Sports Forum. St. Louis also landed the 2027 NCAA Division I Men’s Wrestling Championships and LA28 Olympic soccer matches. Hometown brands Anheuser-Busch InBev, Enterprise Mobi...
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 28 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
The heart of Silicon Valley is home to Apple, Cisco Systems, Intuit and SAP. During our study, the area hosted and/or was awarded six matches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup; a Super Bowl; a CFP championship game; NCAA championships in golf and water polo; and U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee champ...
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 25 Houston
Houston is home to the annual Livestock Show and Rodeo that draws more than 2 million attendees to NRG Stadium over three weeks; a franchise in every major league; and nine companies that have a venue naming-rights deal, uniform sponsorship and/or a playing field sponsorship with a hometown team.
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 27 San Diego
Since 2022, San Diego has added six pro teams and opened a stadium and an arena. Twenty sponsors call the city home, including the naming-rights partner of Petco Park, a 2026 SBJ Sports Business Award finalist for Facility of the Year.
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 11 Washington D.C.-Northern Virginia
Compared to our inaugural 2023 study, no region had a greater improvement in industry executives’ positive sentiment than Washington, D.C.
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 9 Kansas City
For a city that has won a World Series and three Super Bowls since 2015, soccer has been dominating recent headlines in Kansas City.
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 31 San Francisco-Oakland
San Francisco last year welcomed the Golden State Valkyries, a Sports Business Awards nominee for Team of the Year after selling out all 22 home games at Chase Center and drawing a league-record total of 397,408 fans. The arena also hosted the 2025 NBA All-Star Game and will have a 2028 NCAA Divisio...
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 40 Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The city’s calendar includes several Stadium Managers Association annual seminars, June’s SBC Summit Americas for 10,000 sports betting and gaming executives and last weekend’s World Aquatics High Diving World Cup at the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center, which just completed a $47 million renovation.
Best Sports Business Cities: No. 22 Seattle
The Seattle Sports Commission is an independent nonprofit responsible for its own funding, a rarity in the destination marketing world.
Best Sports Business Cities: Methodology
Our rankings are based on a combination of more than 540,000 data points collected by SBJ’s editorial research team and input from more than 120 executives from across sports business through Feb. 28, 2026.
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I do believe that that will put pressure on those companies that retain or grow their NFL expense to make decisions on other content, and that we will selectively look at contracts.-- Versant CEO Mark Lazarus, on being well-positioned to secure media rights for some leagues as other companies spend more for NFL rights.
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