Twenty-one years ago, armed with a backpack and England rugby shirt, I set off for Australia. After 18 joyless months of saving up my salary and holiday days, three glorious, sunlit weeks Down Under awaited. But it wasn’t just Australia’s manifold charms that had drawn me in. England were among the favourites to win the Rugby World Cup, which was being held there that October, and I’d bought a tickets-and-accommodation package to cheer them on. Would I have sacrificed so much to go to Australia if it hadn’t been for the tournament? Doubtful. Would I have followed England on tour anywhere other than this most alluring of destinations? Definitely not.
It’s this seductive symbiosis that forms the foundation of what — in the intervening years — has grown to become one of the most profitable and influential sectors of the global travel industry. Today, sports tourism is worth more than £500 billion and accounts for 10% of the total tourism market, according to Madrid-based United Nations agency UN Tourism. And that’s set to accelerate over the coming decade, with some projections suggesting a quadrupling of the sector by 2033 to £2.25 trillion.
“The industry is constantly expanding. It feels like we’re riding the crest of a wave at the moment,” says Jimmy Rowan, head of UK sports travel specialist Spectate. Catering to what it calls the ‘I was there’ moments, the Chester-based operation encompasses a dozen sports, scores of destinations and trips ranging in duration from a weekend away at a Formula One race to cricket tours such as the Ashes that last nearly two months. “What we’re seeing is that people are either building travel ideas around iconic sporting events or going to such events and tagging on a holiday as part of that.”
The growing trend of using travel to celebrate landmark birthdays and other milestones is further fuelling the sector, he says. “A lot of the time we get people who are looking to mark an anniversary or a 50th or 60th birthday by heading off for a once-in-a-lifetime sporting experience.”
Like many of the big players in sports tourism, access to the stars — usually in the form of a Q&A or after-dinner speech — is offered as an additional incentive. Book on Spectate’s four-night Abu Dhabi Grand Prix trip, for example, and you’ll find yourself brunching with Guenther Steiner, former Haas F1 team principal and star of the hit Netflix series Drive to Survive.
