A Conversation With ... John Citron

Company: Springfield Sports Commission

Education: Bachelor’s degree in business management and master’s degree in physical education, Florida State University

Of interest: The Springfield Sports Commission is working to bring NCAA cross-country nationals to the Ozarks.

What’s the goal of the Springfield Sports Commission?

We are primarily an organization that tries to bring events to town. We work closely with the (Springfield-Greene County Park Board) to host events for Springfield. Any time there’s an event that has been secured, we’ll work hand in hand with the (Springfield) Convention & Visitors Bureau to work on the hospitality side of things, whether that’s hotel arrangements or other amenities. Our main mission is to help tourism and drive (hotel and motel) tax dollars to the community by hosting sporting events.

What kind of events do you try to bring to Springfield?

We just rebid on hosting Missouri State High School Golf for the next few years. We have a large presence and good history here in softball. The Amateur Softball Association has been here for many years, and it’s a stalwart of our summer activities. We’ve hosted national tournaments, regional tournaments and state tournaments, and we’re hosting a couple this summer. … Some events are more high-profile, like Tour of Missouri, and some on the other end of the spectrum, like Lake Country Soccer, are sheer participation numbers. There are those under the radar you may not hear about as much, but have huge impact – four- or five-night stays, where there’s five or seven thousand athletes coming into town.

What are Springfield’s selling points for sporting events?

The facilities are unbelievable. There are a lot of communities of like size or bigger that wish they had what we have here, and then you add all the universities (and) their venues. We’ll soon have six arenas in a town of 150,000 to 160,000 people. We’re able to bid on and stay on par with much larger communities because of their tax base and size. When (events) come here, it’s front-page news … because it’s a big event in a smaller town. … We’re big enough to have 6,000 hotel rooms and restaurants and attractions that are first-rate.

What obstacles do you face?

(The city is) geographically bound by what (it is). We can do some fishing events, and have done them, but obviously Truman Lake or Table Rock Lake down in Branson are going to be better locations (for those events). … One of the concerns is the cost of travel, and that’s very real. When you have events on the national scale, you have to think about if these are events that people are still going to come in for. There are events that we host, such as state high school championship events where (if someone’s) daughter or son is playing in the tennis championships in Springfield, (they’re) going to come. If you’re a 40-year-old male playing in an ASA softball event, you may look at your budget and consider if you want to travel for that. So there are some events that would be more directly impacted by travel costs. That’s why I love the college and high school events – it’s almost a guaranteed audience.

What’s on the horizon for the commission?

We’re actually looking at some collegiate events. Missouri State University has stepped up and we’re hosting conference and NCAA regional cross-country events, and we are laying the groundwork and looking into potentially hosting the nationals. It hasn’t come up for bid yet, but those are things where you have to host state or regional events to put your name (in for nationals). People start realizing, “Hey, they can host this.”

How do these events impact the economy?

When someone comes to town, they’re buying gas, they’re paying sales tax on every T-shirt, they’re spending money in restaurants and malls, and they’re also feeding money into general revenue for sales tax for the city and the county. It helps us keep our tax rate down. If those folks weren’t coming, we’d feel it; our taxes would go up. That’s kind of a hidden bonus. … We want to show them a good time, and we want them to come back.

What role does the business community play in attracting sporting events?

We want the folks who are benefiting from these events to reinvest with sponsorships and volunteer to support those events in any way they can, and they’re very good about it. If you look at the list of volunteers and sponsors who got involved with Tour of Missouri, it’s heavy hitters. A lot of those events, the larger ones, we can’t do without the business community’s support. It’s very important to us to have those sponsorship dollars. We’re limited in the tax dollars we have to go out and get an event.

Interview by Editorial Intern Stephen Herzog. You can e-mail Features Editor Maria Hoover with suggestions for future installments of this feature at mhoover@sbj.net. [[In-content Ad]]