Chesterfield County is paying $5.5 million to acquire the River City Sportsplex — a sign that the sports tourism boom has peaked?
Spending associated with sporting events was $9.4 billion nationally in 2015, a 5% increase from the previous year and part of a steady growth pattern for at least six years. Much of the activity consists of amateur and youth athletics in which participants and family members are looking for inexpensive, family-friendly venues. Virginia municipalities have taken notice, reports Virginia Business.
The city of Salem in the Roanoke Valley is conducting a feasibility study to build a new basketball and volleyball venue. Loudoun County is reviewing the potential for a sports complex. With the goal of holding more competitions, Stafford County is spending $12 million to add a swim center, two turf fields and two synthetic fields. Chesterfield County is in the final stages of acquiring the $5.5 River City Sportsplex, notes the magazine.
And that list is far from comprehensive. My home county of Henrico is spending $10.9 million to build Greenwood Park, “a tournament quality sports complex,” with the idea of tapping into the amateur/youth sports boom.
To give you an idea of the scale of the mania, consider these two quotes appearing in the Virginia Business article:
“In Virginia, I can’t name a city that isn’t looking at taking advantage of the growth in sports tourism,” says Dev Pathik, founder and CEO of The Sports Facilities Advisory, a Florida company that specializes in developing and managing recreational assets.
“Everyone wants to be in sports marketing,” says John P. Shaner, director of Salem’s Parks and Recreation Department. “Everyone is building facilities.”
When everyone is targeting sports tourism and everyone is building facilities, everyone is cruising for a bruising. It would be one thing if Virginia localities were the only ones to have caught on to the trend — it would be a wonderful thing as they pulled in sports tourists from around the country. But they’re not. Other places are thinking even bigger. Consider this quote from the same Dev Pathik cited above in a 2014 CNBC story:
“When we started in 2003 we only got two calls a day about sport development projects,” said Dev Pathik, founder of the Sports Facilities Advisory, a planning and management firm in Clearwater, Fla.
“But now, because of the youth sports explosion, we get calls every day about projects worth $150 million to $200 million,” he said.
One of the projects that SFA is helping to get off the ground is Rocky Top Sports World, in Gatlinburg, Tenn. The $20 million, 86,000-square-foot multisports facility is scheduled to open this summer.
That sounds like a lot of competition. Pathik is only too happy to pump up interest in the industry — that’s how he makes his money. Local governments, always on the lookout for easy economic development, are eager to jump on board. Sports facilities don’t just create revenues through event fees, they fill hotel rooms, pack restaurants and generate hospitality taxes.
Now, if entrepreneurs want to launch multimillion-dollar sports complexes like the River City Sportsplex in Chesterfield or the Rocky Top Sports World in Gatlinburg, that’s jim dandy by me. But please note that the River City Sportsplex went bankrupt before Chesterfield decided to take it over. Also please be advised that the consultants who conduct market studies for proposed sports complexes tend to exhibit an optimism bias. Lastly, beware the fact that local government officials promoting these projects have no skin in the game. If the deals go bad, they lose nothing.
Amateur/youth sports may be enjoying a boom. That boom may even prove to be lasting. But when everyone is jumping into the game, you can be assured that there will way too many sports facilities and someone will lose his shirt. Everyone thinks that will happen to “the other guy.” But someone always ends up being the other guy. Voters should insist that the “other guy” is not the taxpayer.
