Summary

Sports tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in tourism. An increasing amount of tourists are interested in sport activities or the sporting history of a destination during their trips, whether sports is the primary motive to travel or not.

Sports tourism can be defined as: ‘All forms of active and passive involvement in sporting activity, participated in casually or in an organized way for non-commercial or business/commercial reasons, that necessitate travel away from home and work locality’. Cities and regions across the globe are now constantly bidding for events and constructing facilities to attract sports tourism in hopes of attaining the substantial growth potential that is associated with this type of tourism. 

Although sport tourism as a whole attracts tourists from different races, gender, age, economic classes and nationalities, individual sports will attract much more specific tourist profiles. Having specific tourist profiles for individual sports makes it easier for marketing departments to create promotional campaigns as they know which promotional channels to use and how to communicate to the specific segment.

The US was the most successful bidding nation in 2018, triumphing over last year's winner France. Its portfolio of five events was worth 12,027 points, on the GSI Bidding Nations Index, which was largely down to its successful winning bid for soccer's 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be jointly held with Canada and Mexico.

European nations were awarded almost 59.5% (50 events) of the events on offer in 2018, an increase of over 10% from 2017.

Scope

- GlobalData’s Tourism Insights Report "Key Trends in Sports Tourism", looks at the key trends & issues within the growing sports tourism segment, as well as the opportunities and threats.
- It also offers an insight into key destinations, traveler groups, and into the impact of national and international sporting events on the tourism industry.

Reasons to buy

- Gain an insight into the sports tourism industry
- Understand the key traveler types that travel companies and hotel companies can look to attract
- Look at the key destinations and why they bid for the right to host sporting events
- Take a detailed look at specific sporting events and the impact they had on tourism in the host nation/city
- Assess the potential impact of upcoming sports events including the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup