The Sports Tourism Model
If we take long look at the professional sports world, it is not hard to recognize the legions of both enthusiastic young and mature fans, living vicariously with the images, exploits and successes of their chosen team. North America has it’s mainstream professional sports teams in the National Hockey League, Various pro Football leagues, the wildly successful National Basketball League and Major League Baseball. Europe has a number of premier soccer leagues. The UK, Australia New Zealand and South Africa have their Cricket Leagues and are also linked with their Rugby Leagues along with France, several islands in the South Pacific and Canada.

Alongside these pro-sports leagues, and in many respects mimicking their structure, is a huge, largely untapped amateur sports scene, which is home to millions of young and mature athletes. These skilled amateurs, compete with skill and enthusiasm and more often than not they are accompanied by supporting families of moms and dads and siblings.

“First we will be best, and then we will be first”

Grant Tinker

Burnett Thorne recognizes the substantial opportunity for amateur Sports tourism and has designed a Sport tourism model, which can help you to capitalize on the economic footprint of this segment.
Our process recognises the regional opportunity for both modest size communities and larger centers. It has a research component designed to identify what can work best for your community and a networking component to link your community with others in the region. Burnett Thorne is a strong advocate of sports –in – the- community as a character builder for young adults. We also recognise the growing life – long commitment to sport being made by mature adults along the lines of the “life – long – learning” movement.

Product development check-list

• Ask whether (or not) your community can facilitate world championship events or local sport tournaments. Sport tourism can be tailored to individual communities based upon their inventory of sport venues.
• Sport Tourism can bring a dedicated audience to your community for a specific purpose. It's a product development initiative that can be achieved without a strong product offering of other tourism attractions.
• Success is achieved by well-organized, well-managed events. A thriving sports commission is managing 3-4 large events a year. A healthy balance of providing recreation facilities for community citizens and creating an economic driver in the local economy.
• Support services that provide a strong infrastructure in sport tourism can be used laterally in other tourism sectors and define your destination as a tourism service provider.
• Sport travel generated $2.4 billion in domestic spending, according to the recently released 2004 Canada Travel Survey, conducted annually by Statistics Canada in conjunction with the Canadian Tourism Commission and other partners. The 2004 figures represent an increase of 85% from the last comparable analysis conducted in 1998, which indicated that sport travel spending amounted to $1.3 billion in spending.