BLAINE, Minn. – Explore Minnesota Tourism is placing an emphasis on increasing the number of mainstream, adventure, and adapted sports events held in Minnesota. Sports events can generate significant business for communities. Small and mid-sized amateur tournaments and other sporting events can bring $1 million or more in visitor spending to the host city, and large events have multi-million dollar economic impacts. To that end, last week a number of individuals with a vested interest in expanding sports tourism gathered for a first of its kind conference at the National Sports Center (NSC) in Blaine.
John Edman, of Explore Minnesota Tourism, notes that the conference was a collaborative effort of sports and tourism enthusiasts from across the state. “What this day about is communities all throughout Minnesota getting together to figure out how we can grow tourism through sports,” Edman stated.
Conference attendees’ strategized on how they could collaborate instead of compete in the sports tourism field. “An event might work at the National Sports Center,” explained NSC Chief Commissioner Barclay Kruse, “but if it doesn’t, we might be able to refer that event to another community in the state and keep the business in Minnesota.”
Tourism generates more than $32 million per day in economic impact for the State of Minnesota; while a portion of that is related to sports tourism many believe that sports tourism has a potential to be a huge growth area. Barclay explained, “Eleven percent of sales tax in the state comes from the tourism industry– that’s not all sports tourism, but a lot of it is.”
Even the National Sports Center, which is a Mecca of sports tourism in Minnesota, still has room for more events.
Explore Minnesota continues to see several positive signs of growth in the tourism industry. “The future looks very bright for tourism in general in Minnesota,” stated Edman. “We’re seeing some optimism on the part of the tourism industry– there’s definitely a lot of optimism for sports’ tourism, as we’re finding out today.”
