SportsTravel Podcast

Spikeball is a beach and park game played with four people and described by some as a warped version of 2-on-2 volleyball that's heavy on spikes, drop shots, trickery, and diving around. The sport, originally created in 1989 before its modern revival in 2008, has grown not just throughout the United States but internationally. Nora White , senior sport development manager at Spikeball , got hooked...

At 37 years old, Travis Shumake may be new to drag racing as a driver, but he’s definitely not new to the sport. His late father, Tripp Shumake , was the winner of multiple NHRA titles and his mother, Susie Shumake, is a member of the Arizona Drag Racing Hall of Fame for her contributions to the sport. But it wasn’t until recently that Travis decided he wanted to give it a go behind the wheel. And...

If you don’t follow surfing terribly closely, you may not know that Coco Ho comes from a legendary surfing family that is considered Hawaiian surfing royalty. Her father is pro surfing pioneer Michael Ho , considered the godfather of the North Shore surf scene on Oahu. Michael had a 25-year career that included two Triple Crows and finished No. 3 in the world. Meanwhile, her Uncle Derek was the 19...

The World Games is an international multisport event that gets underway on July 7 with the Opening Ceremony at Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Alabama. The event will culminate a seven-year planning process after the Alabama destination was first awarded host duties and will feature 30 official sports in 54 disciplines, which will be contested at 30 venues across the Birmingham area. We talked w...

TOCA recently became the largest operator of indoor soccer centers in the United States after adding locations in Dallas, Cleveland, Nashville, Chicago and Denver. In addition, the company launched TOCA Social , a soccer entertainment and dining venue, in London with plans to expand to additional two UK locations as well as Dallas in 2023. TOCA was founded in 2016 by two-time U.S. World Cup and fo...

This is the second time we’ve had Al Kidd and Jennifer Stoll on the SportsTravel Podcast. The last time was in early 2020 when the pandemic was just becoming evident and an incredible amount of unknown lied ahead. The Sports Events & Tourism Assocaition had just released data from its first comprehensive State of the Industry report , which covered data from 2019 — right before the...

Starting June 5 at Exploria Stadium, the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games will unite more than 5,500 athletes and coaches from all 50 states and the Caribbean and 125,000 spectators. This event will have 19 Olympic-style team and individual sports and 30 events at venues across Orlando. We talked with the president and chief executive officer of this year’s Games, Joe Dzaluk , about the work...

One of the many sports vying for the chance to be included in the program for the 2028 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles is teqball, a soccer-based sport founded in 2014 in Hungary. Played on a specially curved table called a Teq Table, the sport has 60 official registered clubs and will have several tournament events throughout the summer on ESPN’s various platforms. We talked with AJ Nwo...

Neil Schwartz , the president and chief data officer of SBRnet , has spent decades researching sports fans, including their willingness to travel. In his company’s latest research report — the 2022 Study of Sports Fans — he has insights on which sports fans travel the most to attend or participate in events. He also has research showing which specific collegiate and professional...

The United States will host the Rugby World Cup in 2031 and Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2033, planting a flag in the ground for the sport stateside by World Rugby, the international federation in charge of the event. The announcement also completes a remarkable comeback for USA Rugby , which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2020 before it emerged from bankruptcy last year. In this epi...

In the increasing competitive collegiate landscape, it is becoming harder and harder to stand out. But Coastal Carolina University is a prime example of a university that has managed its growth well, fielding a football team that has become a powerhouse out of nowhere in recent years and a formidable basketball program. Its new football stadium is already paying dividends, hosting the Myrtle Beach...

Scott Howson was named president of the American Hockey League in February 2020 with plans for a short transition period before assuming control ahead of the 2020–2021 season. Obviously the sports landscape, along with the world landscape, looks a lot different now than it did a little more than two years ago. Howson worked during the pandemic to steer the league through a shortened 2020&nda...

If you went back to 1997, you would find a sports-event industry that was truly in its infancy. The National Association of Sports Commissions, now known as Sports ETA , was only a few years old itself at the time. It was a few years prior to that when Tim Schneider started to identify something interesting in the other magazine that he published called Association News . Why were so many sports o...

The Women’s Final Four in Minneapolis was the biggest gathering in women’s college basketball since the pandemic began more than two years ago. And in the light of last year’s NCAA gender equity report, all eyes were on the destination to make sure that women’s sports were celebrated not only on the court and in the Target Center, but that the experience extended beyond the...

There is nothing quite as valuable to sports organizations and destinations that host their events than data. And one of the leading organizations that has been diving into data analysis for years is the Sports & Fitness Industry Association . The association, whose members include sporting goods and fitness brands, manufacturers, retailers and maerkters, has one of the deepest data pools in t...

When the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association announced that it was moving its annual men's and women's conference basketball tournament to Baltimore after 13 years in Charlotte, North Carolina, it sent shockwaves shockwaves through the collegiate landscape. The event, which attracts about 100,000 people with an estimated economic impact of $50 million has become about much more than baske...

The Sports and Fitness Industry Association has made it official in its latest trends report: pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the country. Over the past two years, participation is up 39 percent, including an increase of more than 20 percent from 2019 to 2020 when the pandemic helped drive the sport’s appeal. Leading the charge on the sport’s growth is USA Pickleball , which...

Skiing and snowboarding have always been among the spotlight sports at the Olympic Winter Games and the 2022 Games in Beijing  will be no different with Mikaela Shiffrin and Chloe Kim being among the biggest names for Team USA. But getting to Beijing and passing strict COVID protocols has been a hot topic in the Olympic world, among many others as China hosts another major sporting event. Nam...

The Ironman Group has been a leader in mass participation events for years. The company’s portfolio now extends well beyond the Ironman triathlon series itself and includes the  Rock ‘n’ Roll Running Series , the multi-day road cycling event series Haute Route  and a strategic partnership with UTMB Group , which organizes ultra-trail running events. The company has also...

Indianapolis has hosted eight NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Fours and is known as one of the best college sports cities in the country. On Monday, January 10, it will for the first time host the College Football Playoff National Championship Game, becoming the first cold-weather city to host the event and the first city that does not have a regular bowl game to host the CFP. Susan Baughman has...

As chief operating officer of Chicago Event Management , which organizes the Bank of America Chicago Marathon , Mike Nishi has been the logistics lead for the race since 1990. What started out with 6,000 runners has grown to the one of the largest marathons in the world. In 2019, more than 45,000 people finished the race. After the 2020 race was forced to go virtual, the 2021 race on October 10 pr...

Danny Martin has known esports for years even before the industry was calling itself esports. In college, he was the one who would fix video game consoles for his classmates when things broke down. That led to him organizing what were essentially esports tournaments from his dorm room or apartment, allowing him to assess all ends of what would be soon become an industry in itself. Martin sees the...

Nashville Superspeedway reopened in June 2021 and was on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule for the first time this past season. Leading the track’s renaissance both within the Nashville and NASCAR communities is Erik Moses , a longtime leader in mid-Atlantic sports and entertainment circles with an extensive background in sports tourism as senior vice president at Events DC for more than a deca...

Greg Sankey has been the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference since 2015 and is generally regarded as one of the more powerful people in collegiate athletics, given the SEC’s dominance over college football. But Sankey’s career spans multiple regions and divisions across the NCAA, from working in Central New York as the director of intramural sports at Division III Utica College...

The San Francisco 49ers were one of the few NFL teams that did not have fans at a single home game last season because of the pandemic, finishing the season with its last two scheduled home games being played in Arizona. This year the 49ers have been able to play to capacity crowds at Levi’s Stadium while also opening a new club space and unveiling an innovative food and beverage program for...