SportsTravel Podcast

The 2021 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing season is set to kick off March 11 in Gainesville, Florida, a 23-race schedule culminating with the season-finale near Los Angeles in November. NHRA drivers are among the fastest in the world, navigating their 11,000-horsepower Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars down the track at speeds that exceed 330 miles per hour. Every ticket is a Pit Pass, allowing fans to walk through the pits and enjoy an up-close look at the cars in between rounds of racing. Fans also can walk right up to their favorite drivers to pose for a picture and get an autograph, while children 12 and under can get in for free. In this conversation with SportsTravel Senior Editor Matt Traub, three-time series champ Antron Brown and eight-time national event winner Leah Pruett discuss the NHRA’s devoted fan base, how they got started in auto racing and what stands out for them when they travel across the country.

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Women’s basketball is one of the biggest growth markets in the sports event industry. The NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament has been one of the best showcases for women’s sports each year and this March’s event will be no different. Held in a controlled environment in San Antonio, the tournament — in addition to broadcasts on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU — will have at least six nationally broadcast games on ABC starting with the opening day of action on Sunday, March 21, guaranteeing an audience for every one of its 63 games leading to the championship on April 4. In this conversation with SportsTravel Senior Editor Matt Traub, NCAA Vice President of Women's Basketball Lynn Holzman and Jenny Carnes, San Antonio Sports senior vice president and chief operating officer, discuss everything that is going into the planning for this year’s tournament from the viewpoint of both the tournament organizers and the host destination, and what they’re looking forward to the most about the event.

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The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament is one of the biggest events on the sports calendar each year. But last March, as college basketball conferences were about to start their postseason tournaments, the coronavirus began to sweep throughout the United States and forced the cancellation of the 2020 event. This year the tournament will be held in a controlled environment centralized in Indianapolis with a majority of the games at four venues throughout the city along with early-round action hosted at Purdue University and Indiana University. In this conversation with SportsTravel Senior Editor Matt Traub, NCAA Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt discusses the tournament’s organization with a focus on health and safety, what went into the original November announcement that the event would be held in a controlled environment, the shifting landscape upon which this season has been held and what aspects of this year's event the NCAA may be able to use going forward at future tournaments.

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Amanda Kraus took over as CEO of USRowing in November 2020, leading the national governing body at a time of challenges across the sports-event industry. But her background is expected to help her on a number of fronts, including adding much needed diversity to the ranks of participants and the chance to fundraise for any number of projects. Before taking the helm, Kraus founded and led the nonprofit Row New York, which provided opportunities to row for those who previously didn’t have access to the sport. In this conversation with SportsTravel Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz, Kraus outlines her goals for the organization, her interest in USRowing, the balance between supporting the national teams and growing membership, and the outlook for the Olympic Games and the NGB’s events in 2021.

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Since its founding in 2016, Super League Triathlon has been working to innovate the sport. Shorter distances, new formats, incentives for athletes to win each leg, a new indoor concept — all of these have been on the league’s radar. And while the league’s events have largely been held overseas, the organization is looking at the United States to expand its events. In November, co-founder Michael D’hulst announced that the company had acquired the Malibu Triathlon in California. And before the pandemic hit, Super League Triathlon had plans to stage its first U.S. race in Tempe, Arizona. In this podcast with SportsTravel Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz, D’hulst describes the league’s approach to triathlon, what his interest is in races in the United States and what the outlook for the industry holds in 2021 after the most challenging year on record.

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Florida has been the center of nearly every major sports event in the past year. That has included serving as home to the bubble setups for the NBA and Major League Soccer in Orlando and as home to the College Football Playoff in Miami. But Tampa Bay has seen some of the most significant action when it comes to its professional sports teams. The area is home of the current Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning as well as the home of the American League champions Tampa Bay Rays and the Tom Brady-led Buccaneers. And now it will be home to one of the biggest events of all — the Super Bowl. In this podcast with SportsTravel Senior Editor Matt Traub, we chat with Rob Higgins, the executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission and president and chief executive officer for the Tampa Bay Host Committee for Super Bowl LV, which is scheduled to kick off on February 7 at Raymond James Stadium. Higgins discusses what's on tap in the region around the game, what the past year has been like and how he and his team have kept their optimism in the face of challenging circumstances.

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All evidence has suggested that esports have gained fans during the pandemic as people who have been home have discovered new forms of sports and entertainment. But will those fans travel to events when they return? New research suggests that not only will they travel, but they’ll spend money when they get there. In this podcast with SportsTravel Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz, we chat with Nicole Pike, the global sector head of esports and gaming for YouGov, one of the leading international research firms. Data from the company provide some encouraging statistics and trends for destinations, venues and event organizers as they plan for a post-pandemic future of live esports events.

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Nick Carparelli was named executive director of the Football Bowl Association in December 2019, which in retrospect is a fascinating time to begin a job overseeing the college football bowl structure. One of his first goals was to launch an effort to rebrand the trade association whose members include the more than 40 bowl games that make up the postseason at college football’s highest level. That effort recently paid off with the announcement that the association would be renamed and rebranded as Bowl Season, along with a new logo that reflects the 10 conferences whose schools play in the games. But what will bowl season look like this year? In this podcast with SportsTravel Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz, Carparelli discusses what to expect from the bowl games that will be played this season and what the future holds for the postseason spectacles.

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David Baker took over as president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014 after a career that included his serving as the elected mayor of Irvine California and 12 years as commissioner of the Arena Football League. During his time at the hall of fame, he has since led the museum into new territory on a number of fronts. The Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village project on and around the grounds is an ambitious effort to add a center of excellence office building with research and development components, a premium hotel, a waterpark, a convention venue and a retail promenade to the famed grounds in Canton. The first phase of that project, Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium has already been completed, as has a complex of fields that have attracted youth tournaments and other events. The next phase recently broke ground as well.

But 2020, of course, has not been without its challenges. The August enshrinement ceremony had to be postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and along with that came the loss of the preseason NFL game from Tom Benson stadium that has been one of the hall’s highest-profile events. With two enshrinement ceremonies now planned for next year, Baker has suggested the hall will have twice the fun in ’21. But how exactly do they plan to pull that off? We’ll explore that and more in this episode with host Jason Gewirtz, the editor and publisher of SportsTravel, including what it’s like for Baker to be the one who tells former players they’ve just been inducted and how the tradition began of his knocking on their hotel room door to tell them the news.

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For years, the Sports Events and Tourism Association (formerly the National Association of Sports Commissions) produced an annual state of the industry report in an effort to gauge the economic impact of the sports tourism industry. But association leaders were quick to note that the survey, while producing interesting results, was only as good as the number of member organizations willing to participate. Earlier this year, and before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the association set out to do something more ambitious with its research. Combining data from Tourism Economics, Longwoods International and U.S. government research, as well as valuable  information culled from its members, Sports ETA, with the support of the Northstar Meetings Group, commissioned what is believed to be the most comprehensive research ever conducted about the sports tourism and sports-related travel industries. The end result: In 2019, sports-related travel accounted for more than $45 billion in direct spending, generating an estimated 69 million room nights across amateur sports and collegiate championship events.

In this podcast with SportsTravel Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz, the president and CEO of Sports ETA, Al Kidd, and Jennifer Stoll, the lead researcher on the project, discuss the data in the new survey and how destinations and event organizers can take advantage of the numbers that will serve as a benchmark as the industry continues its recovery.

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