SportsTravel Podcast

USA Gymnastics is looking to build a national training and wellness center that will serve as the hub for the national governing body and has issued a request of expressions of interest directed at destinations and real estate developers targeting a 2026 project completion, said President and Chief Executive Officer Li Li Leung during a discussion on the SportsTravel Podcast. The NGB is seeking a...

You wouldn’t be much of a sports fan if you didn’t have a bucket list of events you want to see in person before you, well, kick the bucket, as it were. While plenty of people talk about such a list, few of us write it down, and even fewer of us set out to actually accomplish it. And that makes David Carter unique. Carter is a national authority on sports business and strategic marketing, and the...

USA Boxing Executive Director Mike McAtee discussed the years-long process in coming with plans for a new international federation in the wake of the IOC’s expulsion of the International Boxing Association, the various issues the national governing body has had with the IBA — including fight manipulation — and more in this episode. McAtee also discussed the future plans for World Boxing; whether t...

Dr. Kris Alexander had an upbringing not unlike many of us in that when he discovered the joy and excitement of video games, he never looked back. But unlike many of us, he has turned that passion into a successful career, not just playing the games but educating the future work force that will help the industry continue to flourish and thrive. As professor of video games at Toronto Metropolitan U...

Jim Scherr was named the first chief executive officer of World Lacrosse in 2017. Prior to that, he was CEO of the United States Olympic Committee from 2003 to 2009. Scherr, who competed as a wrestler at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games, was the first Olympian to serve in that position with the USOC. Before joining the USOC, Scherr served as executive director of USA Wrestling from 1990 to 2000, and a...

Izell Reese is the chief executive officer of RCX Sports, a youth sports experiences business, running and operating leagues, camps, combines, tournaments and events. Reese has been the Executive Director of NFL Flag since October 2019, working closely with the NFL to expand the sport of flag football around the world. RCX has also recently entered into partnerships with the National Hockey League...

One of two international federations in the esports world, the International Esports Federation’s mission is to further esports on a global scale. With 130 member national federations, IESF president Vlad Marinescu discusses esports on a global level, the international outlook for the industry, esports at the grassroots level around the world compared to the United States, the tightening of financ...

Houston and Dallas were recently in the spotlight as hosts for the NCAA Men's and Women's Final Fours. Each of the destinations hosted tens of thousands of visitors from out of town, providing a spotlight for Marriott, which has sponsored the NCAA for seven years through its Marriott Bonvoy program. The sports-related travel market was the first segment of the travel industry to come back in big n...

Until it just recently released its new report, Sports ETA as an industry association had not surveyed its members about their compensation and salary information for about 10 years. A lot has changed since then. And, of course, a lot has changed just within the past few years coming out of the pandemic, which led to massive turnover in the industry and a crop of new employees entering the space....

For years, the Sports & Fitness industry Association has studied which sports people participate in and how often. Perhaps just as important, they also track the number of people who say they don’t participate in anything at all. For professionals in the sports-event industry, there is a tremendous amount of interesting data in the SFIA’s recently released Topline Participation Report, includi...

The NCAA Men’s Final Four, for the fourth time in its history, will be held in Houston starting with the semifinals on Saturday and the championship game on Monday. For the third time the games will be at NRG Stadium, home of the NFL’s Texans and host to many events each year. The venue will also host the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship and be one of the host cities for the 202...

Lisa Motley has worked in the Las Vegas events and tourism industry for more than 20 years. She has held various roles in her six-plus years at Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. As senior director of sports and special events, Motley works tirelessly to bring all sizes of sporting events to Las Vegas. She was instrumental in organizing the 2022 NFL Draft, and has held a large role in se...

One of the biggest sports in each Olympic Summer Games is swimming, which has been part of the Olympic program since 1896. But what casual fans of swimming may not realize is that the sport’s international governing body, World Aquatics, also oversees water polo, diving, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving throughout the world. The international federation has been around for de...

Gary Hernbroth spent 17 successful and colorful years in the luxury hotel business in sales and operations leadership, including stints with Westin, Fairmont and Park Lane Hotels. It was there, especially in Northern California where he lives now, that Hernbroth discovered the power of sports-related travel at a time when it took some convincing to explain the potential benefits of the market. Her...

The United States Figure Skating National championships was first held in 1914 in New Haven, Connecticut, and has been the spot for fans of the sport to see the best in the history of the sport, including  Dick Button,   Scott Hamilton,   Brian Boitano and Nathan Chen on the men’s side, to women’s sports icons such as Peggy Fleming , Dorothy Hammill , Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan . This year...

The Winter World University Games is the largest multi-sport winter event in the world, after the Olympic Winter Games. This year’s event starts January 12 and is an 11-day international festival and competition combining high-level sport with educational and cultural events, all taking place in Lake Placid, New York, and nearby towns. With more than 2,500 participants from over 50 countries, the...

This past year has been an eventful and historic one at SportsTravel as we celebrated the magazine’s 25th anniversary since its first issue. During the past year, we promoted longtime senior editor Matt Traub to the position of managing editor and hired Justin Shaw , another sports journalism veteran as our new associate editor. In this episode of the SportsTravel Podcast, Matt, Justin and Executi...

From its signing in 1972, Title IX has become the backbone for which women’s sports have climbed from decades of inequity and ignorance to the spot they have today. Particularly for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement, the past decade has seen the biggest names and biggest accomplishments come from the women’s teams. Indeed, women’s professional sports teams saw record attendance and ratings...

Youth sports are a bigger industry than any professional sports league in the country and are valuable for destinations of all. With multi-sport venues continuing to be built around the country, the industry shows no signs of slowing, but challenges remain from keeping children safe at events to getting them engaged in the first place. In a discussion that was recorded at the TEAMS Conference &amp...

The last World Cup sliding event in North America was held in 2019. All three North American tracks lost events — including world championship races in Whistler and Lake Placid — because of the pandemic, with international officials relocating those events to Europe and Asia. American and Canadian sliders spoke out about a wish for more races on home ice and how having essentially the first half o...

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, mass participation races were some of the first to shut down. And when events started to return, they were some of the last to come back by nature of their key element: bringing large amounts of people together to experience a similar event. But mass participation events — running races, triathlons, cycling tours, obstacle races, to name a few — remain some of the...

Wayne Moss began his career in professional sports, working for the Detroit Lions and the Baltimore Orioles before taking the call to service and joining the recreation divisions in his hometown of Cleveland and later Dekalb County in Georgia. He then worked 15 years at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, where he led program planning and assessment efforts. In 2018, he was appointed the executiv...

Max Siegel has been the chief executive officer at USA Track & Field since May 2012, making him one of the longest-tenured CEOs in the U.S. Olympic movement. During that time, USA Track & Field has remained one of the best-performing NGBs and made huge strides in the sponsorship landscape thanks to a long-term deal with Nike. [article_sidebar]Coming off the 2022 World Athletics Championshi...

There aren’t many kids who have the opportunity to be exposed to the Olympic version of the sports of canoeing and kayaking, but Joe Jacobi was one of them. After being exposed to the sport in a summer camp near the Washington, D.C., area where he grew up, Jacobi found himself on the path to elite competition. Years later that led to international rankings for him and his partner Scott Stausbaugh...

Phil Andrews is credited with making multiple changes for the better over a decade of service at USA Weightlifting , including the past six years as CEO, and overseeing an elite team that at the Tokyo Olympics took home its first Olympic silver in women’s weightlifting. Among his challenges at the governing body was a deep debate internationally over the future of the sport, one that very well may...