Agents Can Score Big With Fans and Athletes

Part one in a series.

Travel agencies that aren’t selling sports-related travel are leaving a lot of money on the table. Here’s why – and how to get involved.

Sports fans are passionate. They will brave all kinds of weather and travel virtually any distance to see a favorite team or the best of the best compete.

Tourists who travel to see special sports events stay longer and have larger budgets than other travelers, research shows.

And sports-related travel, already a huge market, is expected to balloon over the next decade.

Fast-growing market
Sports-related travel generates more than 47 million room nights annually in the U.S., according to SportsTravel magazine..

Globally, sports tourism accounted for $600 billion, or 10%, of the international tourism market in 2008, according to research by the World Sports Destination Expo (WSDE), SportBusiness Group, the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

Last year, sports-related travel may have accounted for as much as 14% of all travel and tourism expenditures, according to the U.K.-based World Sports Destination Expo.

“Sport tourism is the fastest growing sector in the global travel and tourism industry,” Sion Rapson, head of the World Sports Destination Expo told Travel Market Report.

“In North America alone, our research predicts that over the next decade sport tourism visitor numbers will increase by a massive 52% to approximately 950 million,” Sion said.

Sports tourism encompasses two distinct types of travel: participatory sport tourism and spectator sport tourism.

Participatory sports travel
Participatory sports travel includes travel by athletes to their games and events. This includes pros, semi-pros and amateurs, college athletes, high school athletes and younger.

The niche also encompasses active vacations centered around sports and activities, such as golfing, skiing and horseback riding.

One agency that specializes in participatory sports travel is Waterloo, IA-based Shorts Travel. The agency arranges all travel for NCAA championships, as well as for nearly 100 college athletic teams during the regular season.

Arranging participatory sports travel is not a slam-dunk. “There are so many intricacies with this travel,” agency president David LeCompte told Travel Market Report.
 
For instance, when arranging March Madness basketball championship travel, the agency has just a 24-hour window to book the air travel of several hundred players, coaches and trainers. And the agency doesn’t know until the last minute who the teams are or where they’re traveling from.

How to get involved
Understand the demands. Before contacting a nearby college to offer their services, agents need to be aware of what each sport entails, LeCompte advised. 

“For the track and field, you have a long pole vault, so certain planes don’t work. A football team – you can’t put 50 football players on an RJ plane [a 70-passenger jet] because these guys are 300 pounds. These are details you need to know.”

Expand on existing knowledge. Look at what you already specialize in and grow from there, LeCompte suggested. For instance, if you book a lot of golf travel, you’re perfectly positioned to arrange golfers’ travel to tournaments.
 
Choose a focus. If you don’t already have a market niche or specialized knowledge, pick one sport and do your homework, LeCompte said.

Find answers to questions such as: What equipment do players need to bring with them? Can it be transported on a plane or would a bus work better? Shorts Travel did close to six months of research before it began arranging travel for the NCAA.

Start with the fans. “It’s probably easier to do fan travel,” LeCompte said, suggesting that agencies start with that market.

Spectator travel
Spectator travel is pretty much what it sounds like – sports fans traveling to watch matches and events. Travel can be as simple as a short-notice weekend trip to Chicago to see the Bears or a week in Brazil in 2012 to see the World Cup. 

“It’s a combination of fulfilling one’s dreams and passions, and getting to games and events that they normally wouldn’t,” said Jay Smith of Sports Travel and Tours, a tour operator based in Hatfield, MA.

Baseball attracts more spectator travel than any other sport, followed by football, basketball and auto racing.

In the U.S., sports spectators hit the roads annually to see certain popular events. These include: baseball’s spring training, college basketball’s March Madness, the Kentucky Derby, the Indy 500, the National Football League’s Super Bowl, US Opens (golf and tennis), among many other events.

Sports events overseas that lure U.S. spectators include annual championships such as Wimbledon and the French and Australian Open (tennis), and the European Soccer Cup, as well as special events such as the Olympics and various World Cups.

Less obvious forms of sports spectator travel exist as well.

For instance: baseball road trips, where people travel to two or three cities to see games in different stadiums. Sports Travel and Tours offers several baseball road trip programs, all available to agents on a net rate or commission basis.  

Visits to sports hall of fames, museums and the birthplaces of famous athletes are also popular.

How to get involved
Arranging spectator travel usually involves procuring tickets to sporting events, so most travel agents choose to work with a specialist tour operator.

The websites of specialist tour operators are good places to find information and learn more about spectator travel. For instance, Sports Travel and Tours’ site includes Q&As on sports travel, stadium diagrams and information about upcoming sports events.