Sport tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry as athletes, coaches, trainers and fans fill hotel rooms and restaurant seats in cities around the world.
Many cities or regions now have sport-host commissions. The South Island’s has undergone a major transformation in morphing from SportHost Victoria, under the now-retired Hugh MacDonald, to the new Greater Victoria Sport Tourism Commission under newly named executive director Keith Wells.
Wells, the former TV broadcaster and the founder of SendToNews, sees major international sporting events as “tentpoles” under which myriad provincial and national events can come to a region.
Whether hosting regional or international championships, the aim is the same, said Wells: “How do we get more eyeballs on our incredible region?”
But you don’t win them all. The B.C. government nixed Victoria’s nascent bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games and also Vancouver’s hosting of a group in the 2026 soccer World Cup, for which the Island was hoping to cash in by hosting national teams such as Germany or Argentina in pre-World Cup camps. This month, Victoria lost out to Halifax for the 2020 North American Indigenous Games. The University of Victoria, which successfully hosted the 2017 U Sports women’s national basketball championship tournament in CARSA Gym, lost its bid for the 2019 and 2021 U Sports men’s hoops tournament.
Victoria and Vancouver, however, are hosting the 2019 International Ice Hockey Federation world junior championships beginning on this year’s Boxing Day.
The Victoria Royals are bidding to host the 2020 Memorial Cup. Victoria remains in the conversation for a future Invictus Games, the Prince Harry-founded sporting event for wounded soldiers. And while saying no to funding 2022, B.C. Finance Minister Carole James pointed to the 2030 Commonwealth Games, the 100th anniversary of the first Games held in Canada, as a more logical goal.
Rowing Canada, Rugby Canada, Swimming Canada, Athletics Canada, Triathlon Canada, Golf Canada, Tennis Canada, Surfing Canada and Cycling Canada all have head offices or national training centres in Greater Victoria. The new Greater Victoria Sport Tourism Commission wants to leverage that.
“I don’t see why we can’t have ITU [International Triathlon Union], FISA [the international rowing federation], FIVB beach volleyball, and world sailing and kite-sailing World Series or World Cup events hosted here,” said Wells.
Two of the newest Olympic sports for Tokyo 2020 — surfing and wall climbing — have been leveraged well on the Island because this is where many of the future Canadian Olympians in those sports live and train. Wickaninnish Beach hosted the Surf Canada Nationals last weekend and the Rip Curl pro event this weekend, featuring the surfers who will be representing the nation at Tokyo 2020.
The 2018 International Federation of Sport Climbing world youth championships — featuring climbers on course to becoming Olympians at Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 — take place Aug. 14-22 at Boulders Climbing Gym in Central Saanich.
Two more literal new-wave sports will bring hundreds of competitors, support staff and fans from across Canada and around the world. Stand-up paddleboarding is being considered for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and the 2018 Canadian championships are taking place May 25-27 off Sidney while the 2018 world rowing coastal championships will take place in the waters off Greater Victoria Oct. 11-14. Both events will make shrewd use of the Lower Island’s natural environment.
Moving indoors, the Super Channel national boxing championships, the first step in the qualifying process for the Tokyo Olympics, take place next April in the tennis pavilion under construction on Bear Mountain.
Scores of young athletes from around the province, several of them surely to be future Olympians in the first step of the multi-Games pathway, will descend on the Cowichan Valley July 19-29 for the 2018 B.C. Summer Games.
Meanwhile, the new Greater Victoria Sport Tourism Commission is working in conjunction with Tourism Victoria, but as a separate entity.
“It’s similar to the Seattle Sports Commission, where you have a highly autonomous entity, as part of the legal structure of Visit Seattle,” said Wells.
“The sport tourism space has become increasingly competitive; that’s one reason this change makes sense. SportHost Victoria was a very capable team of one [MacDonald]. Now the power of the Tourism Victoria machine is behind this office and we are able to leverage that expertise.
“I know the sports people in Victoria. I have good connections at the national level. I want to work closely with all the stakeholders to bring more and more diverse provincial, national and international events to Greater Victoria. That includes big tentpole events that the whole community can get behind, like the world junior hockey tournament, and beyond.”
Tourism Victoria president and CEO Paul Nursey concurred.
“We view the whole Greater Victoria region as a tremendous platform for sports tourism. What is really important is that we now work quickly to develop a strategy of what our priorities are for sports tourism,” said Nursey.
Sports tourism is the fastest-growing part of the Canadian tourism industry, according to the Canadian Sports Tourism Alliance. Statistics Canada reported in 2014 that $5.2 billion was spent annually in Canada by domestic and international sports tourists as part of the overall $90 billion Canadian tourism industry.
There are different sections within sport tourism. The thousands of Island football fans who head to CenturyLink Field for Seattle Seahawks games each fall are part of it in reverse. But so are Washington state people who return the favour by coming up to golf Island courses or kayak Island waters.
Also within the sport tourism sector, a city like Kamloops labels itself as Canada’s Tournament Capital, and the sign outside of town proudly proclaims it so. Any pee-wee hockey or Little League softball tournament will do. No matter the level of the tournament, the dollars spent on hotel rooms and in restaurants all count the same. A city like Victoria, however, has over the years targeted events with more cachet — such as the Commonwealth Games, Skate Canada, Pan-Pacific swim championships, world men’s curling championships, FIFA U-20 World Cup soccer and the Toronto Raptors training camp.
There is another layer, provided by the annual sporting events hosted within a community, and those vary in terms of sports tourism. The two main Victoria running events bookend the spring and fall seasons, with the Times Colonist 10K and GoodLife Fitness Victoria Marathon drawing thousands of off-Island participants to the B.C. capital each year. The Bayview Place DC Bank Open Presented by the Times Colonist, next month at Uplands, attracts hundreds of off-Island pro golfers from the Mackenzie Tour PGA Tour Canada and their support staff. Yet the annual Stars on Ice at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre — which on Tuesday night will feature 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics medallists Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir, Kaetlyn Osmond, Patrick Chan, Eric Radford and Meagan Duhamel — has a lighter impact on sport tourism because there are not as many performers in skating as in golf and most of the fans attending the already sold-out show will be from the Island.
The same can be said of Victoria sports teams such as the Royals in hockey, UVic Vikes in basketball, HarbourCats in baseball, Shamrocks in lacrosse, Highlanders in soccer and Rebels in football. There are occasional busloads of visiting fans who come across, but most of the fans attending those games are locals.
It is more the spin-off, one-off sporting events — such as the world junior hockey championships and Memorial Cup — that sport tourism officials are interested in cultivating.
“What is the ideal mix of different types of events local, regional, provincial, national, collegiate, and multi-sport?” said Nursey, whose Tourism Victoria organization provided the $10,000 to Victoria bid organizers to pursue the 2020 North American Indigenous Games, that eventually went to Halifax.
“How can we best support and partner with our existing teams and national training centres and really be proactive about what we want to bid on, and then rally the community and needed resources, to win more bids than we lose?”
