Travel sports is how I traveled as much as I did as a child. – Holly
Travel sports may not be the most convenient as far as time and money for a family, but it can be pretty great for a local economy!
This month, I am plugging the St. Louis Area Foodbank. To get more information, or to find out how to donate your time/money/food, visit their website: https://stlfoodbank.org/
SOURCES:
https://sportsplanningguide.com/the-next-evolution-of-youth-sports-destinations/ https://www.deseret.com/sports/2024/03/12/pros-cons-travel-sports/ https://projectplay.org/news/2025/2/24/project-play-survey-family-spending-on-youth-sports-rises-46-over-five-years https://medium.com/@groundwork_bill/the-most-and-least-expensive-travel-sports-4f6664d3c2e2 https://youthsportsbusinessreport.com/sports-travel-industry-trends-2025-expert-insights-on-growth-youth-sports-and-major-events/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
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TRANSCRIPT:
So last weekend, I was visiting some family in Kansas City and my wife and I decided to get a hotel room nearby while the kids stayed with our relatives.
We were looking forward to some quiet time in the hotel to read and relax – we’ve been married over 20 years, so that’s like a vacation for us! – but we clearly picked the wrong hotel, because the moment we arrived, we noticed that the place was absolutely swarming with kids.
Most of them were wearing sports jerseys and kneepads, but a lot of them were young. Like 1st or 2nd grade young. And they were clearly used to being in hotels, because they were running around like they owned the place. And I mean running quite literally – up and down the halls, playing in the elevators, squealing and making tons of noise pretty much the entire day and well into the evening.
Remember, my wife and I were trying to avoid kids. So we asked to be up on the top floor where the fewest kids were, but even there, many of the rooms we walked by had signs on the door with the kid’s name and number and their team’s logo.
And down in the lobby, we saw a large group of adults about our age sitting around the tables pulling out bottles of beer, shot glasses and large liquor bottles. I guess they were lucky there was a liquor store less than a block away from the hotel. It was clearly doing good business.
All in all, it was a pretty rowdy scene for a hotel that usually caters to business travelers.
So, look, I’m not trying to get in the way of anyone’s fun. We both have noise-cancelling headphones for a reason, and we weren’t bothered too much by all the racket. But even though I’ve been seeing people stay in hotels for youth travel sports for years, this whole scene seemed a little different from what we’ve encountered before.
So I started doing what I do best – research! – and I found out that it’s not my imagination. Over the last few years, youth travel sports have gone from being a seasonal niche to a full-blown, year-round sector the tourism and hospitality industry is increasingly dependent upon.
And it’s not just about filling up hotels – restaurants, attractions, service industries, retailers and yes, liquor stores are all looking for a piece of the action.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought some big changes to the world, and as we discussed in yesterday’s episode about remote work, one of the biggest changes has been to what people do in their free time.
After a year or two of being stuck at home with nothing to do, a lot of parents decided to enroll their kids in youth sports programs, and there’s an even more specialized segment of these youth sports called travel sports where families travel pretty regularly not just to the park or rec center a few minutes away, but to large facilities or parks in urban centers. Some of these families are driving hours every weekend, maybe even crossing state lines to get to these events.
And what kinds of sports are their kids playing? You name it. Soccer. Baseball. Softball. Basketball. Football. Rugby. Hockey. Volleyball. Gymnastics. Cheer. Dance. Swimming. All of these sports have both amateur and more selective leagues, and the way they tend to be structured is that teams spend all week practicing locally – three to five nights per week! – and then travel to two or three-day tournaments that last all weekend.
Many kids specialize in one sport, and there are often year-round opportunities for them to play. For some kids, playing in these leagues is a way to get extra practice and experience so they can be superstars on their local school teams. For others, the local teams aren’t good enough and this is how they can move up to the next level and perhaps get scouted by more selective private schools to play for scholarships.
And, of course, a lot of the parents view their kids’ participation in youth sports as being an investment in their future – keeping them fit, teaching them valuable skills, helping them make friends through their teams, giving them an opportunity to travel and, of course, being well-positioned for college applications and scholarships down the road.
But these leagues come with a steep cost. According to a 2025 report published by Project Play, the average cost of participating in youth sports is $1,016 per child for just their top sport. And that’s actually a misleading number because the cost goes up as the kids get older and also depending upon which sport they play. The cheapest sports tend to be Rugby, Football and Basketball. And the most expensive? Ice Hockey, Gymnastics, Cheer, Dance and, surprisingly, Volleyball, which can cost $3,000 or more per child just for fees.
And by the way, those costs are not usually inclusive of equipment costs, travel, food and other expenses. Nor do they account for the massive amounts of time and gas money parents spend getting their kids to and from events. All told, it’s not unthinkable for parents to spend thousands of dollars on youth sports per child, or even tens of thousands for teams that travel a lot.
But families who can afford that sort of expenditure – and the statistics do show these tend to be higher-income families with combined household incomes of $100,000 or more – are really desirable for hospitality services, restaurants and tourism, and attracting these families to a community can significantly impact the local economy.
The youth sports industry is currently valued at over $52.5 billion in direct spending, and it’s growing fast, projected to hit $70 billion by the end of this year. And this money is, surprisingly, not going so much to the teams themselves, but rather the event organizers and staff, uniform makers, equipment manufacturers, hotels and regulatory groups that oversee these sporting leagues.
These numbers may even be underreporting the actual spending, because families who travel frequently often split up and have some members visit attractions or retail shopping areas while other members are busy playing. It’s hard to measure that economic impact directly.
So, how can smart marketers capture a piece of this spending? Let’s consider a few industries.
Hotels near major event areas are already on this – they offer packages targeted to youth sports programs and have reservation programs and promos set up already. It was actually because of one of those weekend promos I selected the hotel we chose to stay in, and now I know why it was offered. Next time we’ll stay somewhere that isn’t catering as much to youth sports teams, and I’m sure some other family will benefit from having the room we’re passing up.
Restaurants are one of the most obvious industries that can reap a windfall, particularly if they’re located near the hotels that youth sports teams are staying in or are near the parks or sports complexes where they’re playing. The key is visibility, because many of the families traveling in for a youth sports tournament will not be familiar with the area and the options available to them. So sponsoring events, positioning restaurants to show up in searches or digital ads or even putting up some billboards can be very helpful in building visibility for the restaurant.
Additionally, looking for opportunities to be an onsite vendor or to offer delivery to families who are spending all day at these events can also help enhance visibility and make some sales. Food trucks, stalls or pop-up concession stands are all viable ways of making the brand more visible, and offering bounceback promotions to entice families encountering these onsite options to visit the actual restaurant can help build future business and perhaps get them to become repeat customers when they’re in town.
Restaurants can also benefit from looking for ways to help teams fundraise, because many of the youth sports teams are constantly looking for ways to generate cash. So offering teams a fundraising program where they can get a cut of the sales if they drive families to a particular restaurant is a great way to generate traffic, particularly if the teams can get in the habit of taking advantage of this fundraiser every time they’re in town.
It’s also worth building partnerships with local hotels to offer recommended delivery services or flyers for those seeking local options for meals. Families will typically go for chain restaurants if they don’t know the local options, but being recommended a really good local pizza place or sit-down restaurant by the hotel staff can generate considerable interest because those staff will have credibility for understanding the local area.
What about retail? Families are often bored and looking for things to do while they’re in town, so malls, retail districts or other large shopping centers are going to naturally attract them. Retail businesses in or near these areas can certainly advertise online or via billboards or sponsorships to make their stores a destination, but specifically targeting sporting events with promotional offers can greatly increase visibility.
For example, a nearby retailer that offers athleisure clothing and which offers $5 in in-store cash to anyone who’s in town for a specific tournament with proof of registration can definitely attract some of the parents or older siblings who need something to do and want to see what $5 can buy them. If the retailer can partner with the event or teams and send these promotional offers out to registered attendees ahead of time, they may see even greater returns because families can plan a visit to the retailer into their trip.
Local attractions should also be positioning themselves to take advantage of online search traffic and to have information available to families who are looking for something to do while they’re in town. This could be as simple as sending promotional materials to teams ahead of their trips or having informational booths at the sporting events run by a collaborative effort mean to promote local attractions.
One other group of marketers who might benefit are those promoting products targeted towards kids or families. Building campaigns around multiple youth sports events to offer trial products, coupons, special promotional events or branded sponsorships can go a long way towards building brand awareness and stimulate word of mouth, particularly if families encounter new products during trips and take them back home to their local communities.
There’s something special about being away from home, encountering something new and then wanting to take it back to show the people you know. Product marketers often utilize professional sports for this purpose, so youth sports would be a natural extension.
But along with these ideas, I want to mention one more thing, and that’s the importance of looking at youth travel sports as an ecosystem that needs to be kept healthy and supported rather than as something to be exploited.
Building brand relationships with young athletes can have a powerful shaping effect on their associations with the brand for the future, and by being good corporate citizens – providing sponsorships, scholarships, partnerships and perhaps even volunteers or other involvement in the leagues and events themselves – marketers can help to keep youth sports viable for building awareness and generating business.
But to those who go into marketing towards youth sports leagues looking at the potential windfall without thinking about the need to build relationships, let me just remind you that those sports parents who were sitting in the lobby drinking were talking a lot. And I’d be willing to bet that just as surely as they were recommending the good times they’d had in Kansas City to one another, they were also happy to share any bad experiences and warn other people away from restaurants, retailers, hotels or service businesses who’d treated them badly.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
PLUG
This month I’m plugging the St. Louis Area Foodbank, which is a not-for-profit organization that gathers and distributes food to over 500 food pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens and community program partners in the Greater St. Louis Area. This is a time of year when people are fighting not just the cold, but also the hunger that comes with higher heating bills, and supporting a food bank is a great way to have a powerful impact on your local community.
Over 40 million people in America struggle with food security and rely on government programs and charitable services to put food on their tables. Food banks are also facing more hardship than ever before due to operational strains from late 2025 due to the government shutdown and increased demand for assistance. They need us to step up and be donors and volunteers, and I encourage you to, at the very least, donate a few bucks today to help out.
While I always recommend supporting local food banks if you can, the St. Louis Area Foodbank is also a great choice because they provide so much support to so many organizations and are extremely transparent about how they utilize their funds. They have a perfect score on CharityNavigator and are an accredited charity with the Better Business Bureau and a partner with the United Way and Feeding America.
You can learn more at http://stlfoodbank.org/
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