[Source: Florida Sports Foundation] The Florida Sports Foundation announced its recently commissioned study found the total economic impact of the sports industry on Florida’s economy amounted to $146.5 billion in Fiscal Years 2019-20 and 2020-21.

CLICK HERE for the direct link to the full $146.5 Billion Economic Impact Study.

The report, conducted by the independent research firm Tourism Economics, also showed that the billions injected into the economy by sports supported 978,200 part-time and full-time jobs on an annual basis and generated $13.9 billion in state and local taxes.

“We applaud the Governor for the extensive steps he has taken to ensure Florida has remained open for sports throughout his administration,” said Angela Suggs, President and CEO of the Florida Sports Foundation. “The findings of this report show the wisdom of the Governor’s strategy to prioritize access to golf courses, beaches, hiking trails and other recreational venues.”

Amateur and leisure activities were the largest contributors to Florida’s sports economy over the course of the study. This category, which includes golf, hunting, fishing, and other recreational activities, accounted for $113.6 billion in total economic impact. Within the amateur and leisure activities category, golf was the largest contributor, generating $44.2 billion in impact.

Other highlights of the report include:

• Florida’s sports industry accounted for nearly 28.1 million non-resident visitors to the state, representing 14 percent of all Florida tourism.

• Professional sports accounted for $10.2 billion in economic impact, while college athletics contributed $5.5 billion in impact.

• The efforts of the state’s 36 sports commissions, supported by the Florida Sports Foundation, generated $24.9 billion in total economic impact.

About the Florida Sports Foundation

The Florida Sports Foundation, a 501(C) 3 non-profit corporation, is the official sports promotion and development organization for the State of Florida. It is charged with the promotion and development of professional, amateur, recreational sports, and physical fitness opportunities that produce a thriving Florida sports industry and environment. With a seemingly endless list of sporting ventures and venues, the Florida Sports Foundation strives to promote Florida’s unique sports industry. The Foundation’s staff is dedicated to serving the needs and interests of Florida’s sports community and assists with all questions concerning Florida sporting activities and issues.
To create the thriving sports industry and environment, the Florida Sports Foundation:

• Provides grants to support sporting events that bring out-of-state visitors to Florida;

• Produces and distributes annual golf, fishing and boating, and baseball spring training guides for both in-state and out-of-state tourists; and

• Organizes the annual Sunshine State Games, an Olympic-style festival for Floridians of all ages, and the Florida Senior Games State Championships for senior athletes, age 50 and over.

About Tourism Economics
Tourism Economics is an Oxford Economics company with a singular objective: combine an understanding of the travel sector with proven economic tools to answer the most important questions facing our clients. More than 500 companies, associations, and destination work with Tourism Economics every year as a research partner. We bring decades of experience to every engagement to help our clients make better marketing, investment, and policy decisions. Our team of highly-specialized economists deliver:

• Global travel data-sets with the broadest set of country, city, and state coverage available.

• Travel forecasts that are directly linked to the economic and demographic outlook for origins and destinations

• Policy analysis that informs critical funding, taxation, and travel facilitation decisions

• Market assessments that define market allocation and investment decisions.

SailGP was launched just last year, but already the event is moving as fast as the catamarans that fly through the waters of its growing number of host cities.

From the off, SailGP co-founder and Oracle CTO Larry Ellison made a decision that he wanted to go to great cities. SailGP co-founder and CEO Sir Russell Coutts KNZM CBE tells Host City: “That was the right move. We needed to establish ourselves in our first year, so we went to San Francisco, Sydney, New York, Cowes – which is an iconic sailing venue – and Marseilles. These are iconic cities with great waterfronts. You are showing the city in a way that doesn’t normally get shown.”

After a successful opening season, SailGP commissioned Deloitte to do an economic impact study. “We looked at the data and we returned an average of USD 23m per event last year, which is a great starting point. That’s creating value.”

With this information, the event owner started to attract prospective hosts. “We approached them last year to go there; and now it’s a different story. we’ve got venues approaching us”

Two new nations have already joined the programme: Denmark and Spain. “Spain’s exciting because Spanish is widely spoken, and also they are going through a purple patch in their Olympic sailing programme, with a huge pool of talent. So we know that team will be very competitive almost from the word go.

“We are also looking to partner with venues that fit with our sustainability messaging too. Copenhagen is fantastic in that regard. They have a huge focus on clean energy, and where we are racing you are going to see some wind farms right there.

“Sailing is powered by nature. Our boats can go three or four times faster than the wind, as strange as that sounds! If you sent out a helium balloon, one of our boats would be get there at least two and a half times faster.”

SailGP aims to link each venue with a team, with a single team per nation. “There are a lot of logistical challenges we need to solve to do that, but I can confidently say that we’ll get to eight teams very quickly.”

“Beyond that we are going to have to address some hurdles. If I look way ahead, which might be five years’ time, I can see the potential to have two groups – let’s say we get 12 franchises, two groups of six with a grand final at the end where the top teams of each group meet each other.”

The fact that the teams are national is important to the appeal of the event. “We’ve got to build national pride in these teams and a following. For a start off we’ve made a commercial decision, which some may say us a compromise, that we are not selling a title to any of the teams. We could get money if we sold a title, but the affiliation with the country is the main thing.”

“If you look at events like the Olympics, people follow them and they may not even know of any of the athletes – they just want their country to win. That’s an association you can create. Our branding is very much focussed around that.

Another key motivating factor for audiences is personality. “If we can get one personality in each country that becomes well known as a personality – the Ben Ainslie type connection – then we’re winning, were giving people a reason to connect.”

This exclusive Host City interview was conducted at Global Sports Week Paris in February 2020

[Source: The Sports Consultancy] The findings of an economic impact and benefits analysis carried out on behalf of the ICC by The Sports Consultancy show that the tournament generated almost GBP 350 million of economic impact through additional money spent in the host economy by event visitors and organisers as well as business to business supplier contracts and broader consumer spend.

More than half a million bed nights were generated with an income of GBP 46.5 million thanks to almost 650,000 out of town spectators, 128,385 of whom were international ticket buyers.

London attracted the most direct economic impact of almost GBP 65 million, whilst semi-final venues Manchester and Birmingham attracted a direct economic impact of GBP 36.3 million and GBP 29.7 million respectively.

The live coverage of the event reached a global cumulative average audience of 1.6 billion viewers whilst digital video content netted over 4.6 billion views confirming the event’s position as one of the world’s most watched sporting events.

ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said: “The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 was an outstanding success across all measures which is further underlined by this report and the significant contribution of GBP 350 million it has brought to the UK economy. This makes it one of the biggest sporting events in the UK in recent history.

“ICC events provide a wonderful platform to connect more deeply with a diverse audience of hundreds of millions of fans and to aggregate audiences like never before even in our increasingly fragmented world.

“The rise of cricket tourism is clearly demonstrated with almost 20% of attendees coming from overseas and a total of 85% of ticket buyers coming from out of town with cricket fans increasingly prepared to travel to support their team. We expect this trend to continue to rise as the Asian sub-continent continues rapid economic growth.

 “We are currently in the process of getting expressions of interest from our Members to host future events post 2023 as part of our ambitions to grow the game globally. This report clearly demonstrates staging ICC events not only provides our host countries with the opportunity to showcase the very best they have to offer to an enormous global audience they are also a major global driver for social, cultural and economic impact.”