Why Travel is the Next Big Opportunity in Sports

Earlier this year, nearly 60,000 people finished the London Marathon, setting a new world record for total finishers. Athletes from around the world flocked to London to race. The London marathon is emblematic of a broader trend, traditional tourism is being amplified by a new breed of traveler who views their trips as personal missions rather than passive tourism.

The numbers validate this shift.

The global sports tourism market, which is already at $500B+, is on track to more than double in the next few years. Younger travelers are opting for more active forms of tourism than the legacy tourism model. Travelers are prioritizing participatory, community-driven, and difficult-to-replicate moments.

Adventure tourism bookings surged nearly 40% last year and research shows that 70% of millennial and Gen-Z travelers will pay a premium for experiences that actually align with their personal values and goals. Unlike price-sensitive tourists looking for deals, this generation of travelers is a high-intent customer spending a significant amount to pursue their passions.

Travel associated with sports - both fandom and recreational travel has a few tailwinds relative to traditional vacation travel.

1. This type of travel is higher intent - driving better unit economics and repeat behavior
2. Built in fandom & passion around a hobby makes targeting these travelers more effective and efficient
3. There are organic network effects that traditional tourism lacks. Sports fans and participants typically organize travel as a group. This makes scale much easier to achieve and maintain

In this essay, we’ll look at the rise in sports-related tourism across 2 key categories.

Spectator Sports Tourism: More people are traveling to visit their favorite athletes and teams than ever before.

Participatory Sports Tourism: A growing emphasis on health and wellness is driving an increase in participation for outdoor activities. The younger generation is moving away from sightseeing to experience-based travel.

Part 1: Spectator Sports Tourism

In 2024, there was nearly $50B in direct spending in the US sports travel sector. Globally, spectator sports tourism generated $115B+ in economic impact with millions of overnight sports travelers. This spend is expected to grow at ~16% until 2030.

Younger fans are at the heart of this spend. Two-thirds of millennial and Gen-Z fans indicated an interest in traveling to a sports event. And this travel is predictable. Unlike traditional tourism that is affected by weather, cultural trends, etc. - sports fandom drives repeat travel, usually from price-insensitive customers.

This rise in sports event travel is happening across leagues. The NBA hit record attendance in the 2023-2024 season. The same can be said about the NWSL, WNBA, MLS, and NHL. In the MLB, more than one-third of fans traveled to attend games from outside the designated market area (150 mile radius of the stadium).

Yet while teams and athletes are responsible for driving this travel spend, they don't participate in the economic value they generate.

This represents one of the more significant value capture gaps in modern entertainment. While fans are spending thousands of dollars per game on tickets, lodging, flights, and entire experiences, the economic benefits are highly fragmented across platforms and industries that have little connection to the sports properties driving the demand.

Let’s consider some of the economics. Fans are dropping as much as $20,000 to see their favorite teams or athletes. The value leakage is staggering.

When 50,000 fans travel to see the Super Bowl, they are generating $200-$300M in local economic impact. The NFL captures maybe 10-15% of that through ticket sales and official partnerships. The remaining 85-90% flows to airlines, hotels, restaurants, and local businesses that have no structural relationship with the leagues or teams driving the demand.

Some sports properties are able to capture travel spend through site fees to host events in certain locations (Saudi Arabia reportedly paid millions of dollars to bring UFC there for the first time). These site fees are nearly pure profit for these leagues.

However, most sports properties are effectively subsidizing travel companies without participating in the upside. At the same time, fans are paying premiums for a fragmented experience that requires them to visit multiple platforms with no coordination or optimization across the user journey.

This market structure is ripe for disruption. While media rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, and concessions have traditionally driven team economics, it is time for properties to capture travel spend as well while also creating a superior fan experience.

At Will Ventures, we see 2 major opportunities related to spectator sports tourism.

1. Sports-first Travel Platforms
2. Fan Data Infrastructure and Personalization Engines

Sports-first travel platforms

The fan experience to attend a game today is broken. Online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Booking.com don’t treat sports uniquely. They don’t optimize for the sports fan, such as making it easier for group coordination, creating an itinerary centered around sports, etc. While there are premium solutions (i.e., On Location) in the market, these solutions are only targeted towards a small segment of the population with a very high willingness to pay.

At Will Ventures, we believe that a platform that puts the fan at the center of travel can create a super experience that captures value across the entire travel stack. The goal isn’t to build another OTA, rather it is to build infrastructure for sports properties to finally monetize the demand they generate.

This kind of innovation is already happening in general travel. Journey recently raised ~$8M to create a more personalized loyalty experience for independent hotels. It would be interesting to see more startups specifically targeting the sports fan.

Key characteristics of startups that would be compelling in this space:

1. The ability for groups to book / coordinate travel together
2. Access to exclusive experiences centered around the team / game
3. Direct relationships with athletes and teams to enhance experience
4. Integrated ticket inventory
5. Proper tech (i.e., pricing algorithm, P2P sharing, etc.)

While there are existing platforms that allow for sports fans to book packages, they 1) have poor economics (operating on traditional OTA margins), 2) don’t share data with teams, 3) are more reactive than proactive, and 4) don’t optimize for group travel coordination.

The big unlock for a sports-first travel platform would be to get buy-in from major leagues and teams. If those properties can capture some of the upside, they will be more incentivized to open up exclusive inventory and experiences

On top of league and team buy-in, we think integrating athlete partnerships, creating a fan community flywheel, and introducing a better pricing engine would create a much more compelling user experience vs. traditional OTAs.

Fan data infrastructure and personalization engines

Sports fan data is highly fragmented today. Sports properties have massive amounts of fan data (game attendance, merchandise purchases, digital engagement), but it is barely monetized and often only focused on the local experience. Meanwhile, travel and hospitality companies collect a wealth of data when fans travel, but they don’t have direct relationships with properties. These companies don’t know if a guest staying at their hotel is a fan or what brands they admire and engage with.

In turn, the current system is highly inefficient. There’s no infrastructure in place that can connect fans' sports behavior, travel patterns, and preferences. A data infrastructure company that can be a bit of the connective tissue between teams/leagues and travel companies can create a lot of value for the properties, advertisers, and fans as well.

We think that creating B2B platforms that can help these teams monetize their fan data and also help travel companies access high-intent customers is compelling.

While many B2B companies have tried to monetize fan data historically - there are a few things that have changed.

1. There is higher economic pressure on sports properties - as talent costs continue to rise, media revenue is projected to slow (especially for local deals), and more cost-conscious ownership groups
2. The value of first-party fan data is increasing. As LLMs become more mainstream, the value of FB / Google data will decline. Being able to access sports fan behavior directly is enticing.

Some characteristics of startups that would be compelling in this space:

1. Real-time personalization: A product that can process real-time customer feedback in the stadium (i.e., concession purchases, sports bets, etc.) to deliver as much of a curated experience as possible
2. Cross-platform convergence: A platform that can track user behavior across platforms (both physically and digitally). Social media, websites, restaurants, hotels, and stadium activity all need to speak to one another.
3. Significant network effects: The data is much more valuable with each sports property that joins and offers their local fan data. Building a database across teams / leagues will be paramount to be able to monetize

A platform like this could monetize through sports properties and travel & hospitality companies. These travel & hospitality companies are already paying hundreds of millions of dollars for access to highly targeted audiences (similar to what TradeDesk and LiveRamp have been able to facilitate).

The sports fan travel experience can be significantly improved and solving the gaps that exist today is a big opportunity in the industry. We’re excited to back founders that can create the platforms and infrastructure that make travel more personalized for fans, while generating incremental value for teams.

Part 2: Participatory Sports Tourism

While fandom drives one side of the sports travel boom, the other is powered by participation. From destination marathons, Scottish golf tours, heliskiing to pickleball camps, travelers are increasingly building entire trips around their own athletic pursuits rather than watching others compete.

The scale is already massive. In 2023, 56 million Americans traveled to be active, up from 45 million pre-COVID. These trips generated $52B in direct economic impact, and that doesn’t even include indirect impact on lodging, food, retail, and experiences. Globally, the numbers are even larger. The adventure tourism market alone (which includes hiking, cycling, skiing, and water sports) is expected to hit $1.8T by 2030.

This shift is largely being driven by Millennials and Gen Z who are prioritizing wellness, activity, and meaningful group experiences over traditional sightseeing.Similar to fandom-based travel, the way these trips come together make for them to be highly attractive business models. These trips are often high-intent, group-oriented, and repeatable.

Unlike fandom based travel however, these travelers aren’t just buying flights, hotels, and tickets. They’re also spending a ton of money on gear, guides, training, and content. And these consumers are more price insensitive as they turn their hobbies into full-on experiences that drive real spend.

Yet the infrastructure remains fragmented. Most coordination happens across email chains, text, and offline operators. Few companies are taking a vertically integrated, technology-forward approach to capture value across the entire experience stack.

At Will Ventures, we think participatory sports tourism is one of the most underrated and underbuilt areas of travel infrastructure.

There’s a clear opportunity to build platforms, marketplaces, and tooling that:

• Help travelers discover and plan experiences aligned with their sport or activity
• Unlock hard-to-access inventory (i.e - guided trips, international races, backcountry permits, gear rentals)
• Bundle travel with coaching, community, or exclusive content
• Offer group-friendly booking, logistics, and pricing
• Track and personalize the experience over time (via wearables, training platforms, etc.)

We’re particularly interested in opportunities at the intersection of community and commerce where user engagement deepens over time, and where real-world activity drives digital value and vice versa.

Companies that can build a home for specific sport-based communities (running, fishing, skiing, etc.) and then monetize through commerce, memberships, or curated travel products are well-positioned. The tightness of this community would drive even more of a network spend across the board.

In many ways, the opportunity is similar to what Airbnb was able to do for housing or ClassPass did for fitness classes. Both were able to use technology to unlock latent supply and demand in a fragmented market.

Participatory sports tourism benefits from stronger network effects, higher customer LTV, and an ability to naturally expand across adjacent activities.

Beyond this clear venture-scale opportunity to build participatory travel infrastructure/platforms from scratch, there’s also a play to roll up the existing fragmented ecosystem of high-end travel operators already serving these communities.

Many customers have deep-pockets and are being served by a long tail of mom-and-pop operators who plan their trips (often with little tech and no cross-channel strategy). A PE travel rollup could unify vertical agencies under one brand, centralize operations to improve margins, and layer on technology to better understand the customer/cross-sell between activities. A traveler who books a guided elk hunt this fall could just as easily be marketed a heli-ski trip in February. But that only happens with shared infrastructure and a solid understanding of how these passions overlap.

This fragmented landscape is actually good validation of the market opportunity. While there is clearly demand and willingness to pay premium prices, the infrastructure isn’t at a point to serve it efficiently. Whether through venture-scale software companies or PE style roll-ups, it is clear that the sports travel industry needs some change.

Sports tourism is uniquely attractive compared to other travel categories. The emotional attachment around a team, community-driven behavior, and predictable demand patterns are all natural moats.

Unlike leisure travel which fluctuates dramatically depending on economic cycles, sports tourism is more consistent.

Still, there are risks that must be taken into account. Teams and leagues can be slow to adopt new revenue models and are protective of fan relationships. Traditional OTAs have massive marketing budgets that will be tough for new players to compete with. And finally, the seasonal nature of sports may create lumpy revenue cycles that startups will need to manage.

Despite this, at Will Ventures, we think the sports travel market is ready to be disrupted.

The next wave of sports travel - both fan and recreational - will be built by startups that truly understand the behaviors and needs of these new kinds of travelers.

And we’re actively looking to back founders in this space! If you’re building, investing, or operating at the intersection of sports, travel, and technology, we’d love to meet you!