Research shows that tax-funded sports stadiums don’t boost local economies. But a group of mayors believes sports teams and venues can still bring money to their cities.
Mayors from Bridgeport, Connecticut; Cedar Park, Texas; Chester, Pennsylvania.; Dothan, Alabama; Long Beach, California; and Youngstown, Ohio, are partnering with the U.S. Conference of Mayors and building services company Amrize in the inaugural cohort of the Game Changer Program, designed to help cities attract sports teams and develop strategies to build facilities for them.
“There are more professional sports opportunities emerging, like women’s sports and minor league baseball,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson told Smart Cities Dive. “So you don’t need to create a new sports market — just leverage it to get a bigger piece.” Richardson said Game Changer can help cities “evaluate what investment to make in relation to the economic impact.”
Richardson said the “stool for tourism” has four legs: conventions, special events, entertainment and sports. Long Beach has the first two, he said, but lags in the latter two. “We have the hotels and restaurants, but we don’t have the [entertainment and sporting] venues.”
The city does have a new minor league baseball team, the Long Beach Coast, which debuted this year. And in 2028, Long Beach is slated to host 18 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games events.
The city’s goal is to leverage that interest in sports “to create permanent economic activity,” Richardson said. He believes the Game Changer Program can help by bringing in subject-matter experts who can answer mayors’ questions about how best to position their cities to attract more sports-tourism dollars.
In Long Beach, that could include building a new downtown sports venue, Richardson said. Because only one Game Changer meeting has been held so far, details on how the participating mayors can add successful sports facilities to their cities’ real estate portfolios are limited.
USCM Director of Communications Sara Durr said if more mayors want to participate in the Game Changer Program, additional cohort meetings will be held starting in the fall.
