Youth Sports Drives Local Economies (Sponsored Content)

Dana Vermule packs up the minivan with her teen boys and drives a couple hundred miles out of town, ready to spend a weekend watching youth basketball. In the 48 hours surrounding the tournament, Vermule estimates she spends at least $400-$500 on tournament fees, gas, hotel, dining and entertainment. During the summer, her sons’ teams play at least two out-of-town tournaments a month and often travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma, or northwest Arkansas. Very rarely, she says, are the larger tournaments held in Springfield.

That may be changing.

“Youth sports is clearly becoming a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to economic development,” says Richard Ollis, a Springfield City Council member and CEO of Ollis/Akers/Arney Insurance and Business Advisors.

He notes Vermule and many other parents travel with their families to other cities for children’s sports, and they automatically book hotels, dine out, do some shopping and possibly turn the weekend into a minivacation.

And it’s not just the tourism industry that benefits from those traveling families. Ollis says when cities have top-tier sporting facilities, it also impacts the local workforce, creating jobs and enticing new employees.

With the new Betty & Bobby Allison Sports Town and a state investment of $13.5 million, plus City Council infusing $7 million to upgrade Cooper and Killian Sports Complexes, Ollis is confident that Springfield can benefit further economically from youth sports. Both developments combined represent at least $40 million in private and public investments.

“We have a more natural competitive advantage if we can pull it off, in that families can extend their stay to a minivacation,” Ollis says, pointing to the Springfield Cardinals, Bass Pro Shops, Wonders of Wildlife and the natural trails, lakes and rivers as local attractions. “There are a lot of attributes that we have that we can play off of.”

What we are lacking, he says, though, is sustainable funding.

Ollis points to Elizabethtown Sports Park in Kentucky as an example of what Springfield can achieve through sports tourism. When the complex opened in 2012, Elizabethtown Tourism & Convention Bureau Executive Director Janna Clark recalls it transforming the community. Featuring 12 soccer fields and 12 baseball diamonds, plus event spaces, playgrounds and walking trails on 158 acres, it’s one of the largest youth sports venues in the country. Yet, Elizabethtown has a population of only 30,179, according to the 2020 census.

Building it “provided construction jobs, employment, college internships and a consistent workforce,” Clark says. She adds that it also helped bring in businesses that Elizabethtown was previously lacking, like a movie theater, a large sporting goods store, new restaurants and a water park.

“The sports park helped us,” Clark says. “It’s our Arch, our Disneyland, the thing that pulls people into town, and when we have them, we do our very best to entertain them. We become peoples’ family vacation.”

Clark recalls some initial pushback from the community because the funding came from a new 2% restaurant tax on prepared food. The tax money, she says, had to be spent on tourism efforts, “so instead of a meeting center or convention center, or amusement park, we did the research and opted to fill that void in our region to attract youth team sports.”

Ollis hopes Springfield citizens can rally around a similar tax incentive.

“Our taxpayers have supported our parks and recreation taxes in the past,” he says.

With Springfield’s Police-Fire Pension Fund almost completed, Ollis hopes that a portion of those funds may be considered as a potential source for sustainable funding toward tourism.

“The economic impact of these facilities is significant,” he says.

When Vermule travels out of town for tournaments, she says the family spends their free time shopping at places that aren’t available in Springfield. In Springfield Business Journal’s 2022 Economic Growth Survey, business leaders identify destination retail as a crucial piece for the city’s competitiveness over the next five years. Enhancing Springfield’s current sports facilities and paving the way for more, such as Sports Town, aligns with Springfield’s Forward SGF Comprehensive Plan.

“Communities like Elizabethtown are really generating a lot of economic activity, visitors and first-class sports facilities for their residents,” says Ollis, giving credit to the 2019 Springfield Sports Commission strategic planning report and Sports Town’s developers as really waking up Springfield’s stakeholders to the potential of youth sports. “I want to give (Sports Town) the credit of jump-starting and initiating this whole conversation.”

This content is brought to you by Ollis/Akers/Arney Insurance & Business Advisors.