SportsTravel Podcast

Houston and Dallas were recently in the spotlight as hosts for the NCAA Men's and Women's Final Fours. Each of the destinations hosted tens of thousands of visitors from out of town, providing a spotlight for Marriott, which has sponsored the NCAA for seven years through its Marriott Bonvoy program. The sports-related travel market was the first segment of the travel industry to come back in big numbers as the world started to reopen from the pandemic and the pace has only continued in the months since, a trend that Marriott executives have watched with interest.

In this conversation between SportsTravel Managing Editor Matt Traub and Mandy Gill, Marriott vice president of global marketing for the United States and Canada (recorded on location at the Men’s Final Four in Houston), we discuss the current state of the sports-related travel industry, Marriott's NCAA partnership and much more from the hotelier’s point of view on the strength of the industry.

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Until it just recently released its new report, Sports ETA as an industry association had not surveyed its members about their compensation and salary information for about 10 years. A lot has changed since then. And, of course, a lot has changed just within the past few years coming out of the pandemic, which led to massive turnover in the industry and a crop of new employees entering the space. The latest survey, which was sponsored and supported by Northstar Meetings Group, reveals some hard facts about not just what industry professionals are being paid, but how they are being compensated as well.

[article_sidebar]In this conversation between SportsTravel Executive Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz and the leading researchers on the report — Jennifer Stoll of Stoll Strategies and Cambria Jones of SearchWide Global — we explore those issues. That includes how many sales people on average are employed at destination marketing organizations, what kinds of benefits those employees are now looking for, the concerns that still exist over how some of these organizations are funded and, of course, what industry professionals are being paid. 

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For years, the Sports & Fitness industry Association has studied which sports people participate in and how often. Perhaps just as important, they also track the number of people who say they don’t participate in anything at all. For professionals in the sports-event industry, there is a tremendous amount of interesting data in the SFIA’s recently released Topline Participation Report, including which individual sports are trending well and which team sports are trending well. If you’re the organizer or a host city of a sports tournament or event, knowing where the interest lies could be the key to a successful future. As you’ll hear, there is no doubting the incredible growth that pickleball has seen not just in the past year but for the past several years. But pickleball is not alone. In fact, all racquet sports are on the upswing, including tennis, which has the largest participation of all. In this conversation between SportsTravel Executive Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz and SFIA President and CEO Tom Cove, we take a deep dive into the organization’s latest report and talk about what sports and trends he’s keeping an eye on next.

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The NCAA Men’s Final Four, for the fourth time in its history, will be held in Houston starting with the semifinals on Saturday and the championship game on Monday. For the third time the games will be at NRG Stadium, home of the NFL’s Texans and host to many events each year. The venue will also host the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship and be one of the host cities for the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup.

SportsTravel Managing Editor Matt Traub talked with Janis Burke and Holly Kesterson from the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority about the planning that has gone into this weekend’s events both on and off the court, working with the NCAA for years leading up to Saturday, civic engagement throughout the community, the hardest parts about putting on the event and what it means for the city to be the site for Jim Nantz to end his tenure as the play-by-play voice of the Men’s Final Four.

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Lisa Motley has worked in the Las Vegas events and tourism industry for more than 20 years. She has held various roles in her six-plus years at Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. As senior director of sports and special events, Motley works tirelessly to bring all sizes of sporting events to Las Vegas. She was instrumental in organizing the 2022 NFL Draft, and has held a large role in securing some of the biggest sporting events in the world for Sin City. This November, Las Vegas will host Formula 1 for the first time, and then three months later will welcome Super Bowl LVIII to Allegiant Stadium.

In this conversation with SportsTravel Associate Editor Justin Shaw, we talk with Motley about what it takes to bring these massive events to Las Vegas, and what to expect from the city as a host. We also discuss all of the college basketball action in Las Vegas, including this year's NCAA Men's West Regional Final and the 2028 Men's Final Four. Motley also divulges the one event that she still wants to check off her sports bucket list.

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One of the biggest sports in each Olympic Summer Games is swimming, which has been part of the Olympic program since 1896. But what casual fans of swimming may not realize is that the sport’s international governing body, World Aquatics, also oversees water polo, diving, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving throughout the world. The international federation has been around for decades but recently underwent a dramatic rebranding from FINA to World Aquatics.

One of the leaders of the federation is American Brent Nowicki, who has been executive director at World Aquatics since June 2021 after spending more than eight years at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. SportsTravel Managing Editor Matt Traub talked with Nowicki recently about the organization’s rebranding, the international scene especially in a time of turmoil in the Ukraine, the importance of the U.S. market five years out from the Los Angeles Games and how growing up in Buffalo has shaped his work ethic as an international sports executive based in Switzerland.

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Gary Hernbroth spent 17 successful and colorful years in the luxury hotel business in sales and operations leadership, including stints with Westin, Fairmont and Park Lane Hotels. It was there, especially in Northern California where he lives now, that Hernbroth discovered the power of sports-related travel at a time when it took some convincing to explain the potential benefits of the market. Hernbroth did this in part by attracting professional sports teams to stay at his properties when they were in the Bay Area to play the region’s professional teams. But once team travel secretaries began telling their counterparts about the services Hernbroth’s hotels could provide, word traveled fast and the case for going after sports groups became easier to make. In 1995, Hernbroth founded Training for Winners, taking his years of industry knowledge and sharing it through motivational talks and workshops for others in the industry. Today, he travels the country speaking to groups to encourage their sales professionals and leaders to be the best they can be. In this episode, we talk with Hernbroth about his early awakening in sports-related travel, what makes the market different than other group segments, and what advice he has for sales professionals in the current climate.

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The United States Figure Skating National championships was first held in 1914 in New Haven, Connecticut, and has been the spot for fans of the sport to see the best in the history of the sport, including Dick Button, ScottHamilton, Brian Boitano and Nathan Chen on the men’s side, to women’s sports icons such as Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hammill, Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan. This year’s event is in San Jose, California, at the SAP Center. SportsTravel Managing Editor Matt Traub talked with Bob Dunlop, the senior director of events for U.S. Figure Skating about what goes into organizing the national championships, how the event is more than just the elite competition seen on television, working with destinations and venues over the years including during the pandemic, best practices in the business and the one event that he still wants to check off his sports bucket list. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

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The Winter World University Games is the largest multi-sport winter event in the world, after the Olympic Winter Games. This year’s event starts January 12 and is an 11-day international festival and competition combining high-level sport with educational and cultural events, all taking place in Lake Placid, New York, and nearby towns. With more than 2,500 participants from over 50 countries, the Winter World University Games will reignite the celebrated history of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic venues, many of which have been recently modernized.

In this conversation, SportsTravel Managing Editor Matt Traub sits down with Mike Pratt, president and chief executive officer of the Olympic Regional Development Authority, and with Jim McKenna, the longtime president and chief executive officer of the Lake Placid CVB. We discuss not only the new venues and the logistics for the Winter World University Games but the legacy of Lake Placid’s Olympic history and how it still has an impact on sports tourism in the Adirondacks region and what he hopes will be this event’s legacy both in the field of competition and beyond when it comes to sustainability in sports.

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This past year has been an eventful and historic one at SportsTravel as we celebrated the magazine’s 25th anniversary since its first issue. During the past year, we promoted longtime senior editor Matt Traub to the position of managing editor and hired Justin Shaw, another sports journalism veteran as our new associate editor. In this episode of the SportsTravel Podcast, Matt, Justin and Executive Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz take a look back at this past year from our key takeaways about the year, to story lines that resonated with us to our favorite events we saw in person. But we also take a look ahead at what trends and story lines we’re watching in 2023 and specific predictions we have for the industry and the sports world in the months ahead. So sit back and take in this discussion from the entire SportsTravel editorial team. 

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