Sporting Venues as Tourist Attractions

This book provides a comprehensive international assessment of the relationship between tourism and sporting venues. Sporting venues are important instigators of tourism, with many professional sport sites attracting millions of visitors annually while also becoming icons of communities, clubs, sports, and nations. However, the concept of what constitutes a sporting venue, how sporting venues are managed and interpreted, and why tourists visit sporting venues are important questions for researchers and practitioners alike. A variety of sporting venues from around the world are explored, from large professional stadia and Olympic sites to smaller community sporting venues, along with an understanding of what drives tourists to visit sporting venues, the marketing of sporting venues to visitors as sites of authenticity, cultural heritage, and hospitality, the challenges and opportunities for clubs and communities to develop tourism at sport sites, and the factors that go into presenting sporting venues to tourists, including the interpretation of the venue itself along with the personnel who create the experiences for visitors. This book is essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners in tourism management, sport management, event management, leisure studies, and hospitality. It will also appeal to venue managers, destination marketing organizations, sport administrators, urban planners, and policymakers involved in sport tourism development. The volume spans multiple subject areas including sport tourism, venue management, cultural heritage tourism, destination marketing, visitor experience management, and the socio-economic impacts of sporting infrastructure. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Sport & Tourism.