Diverse sports generate $92 million economic impact

According to a recent study by Tourism Economics, Oklahoma City experienced a staggering $4.3 billion economic impact from tourism in 2022.

The study revealed more than 23 million visitors directly spent $2.6 billion on food, retail, entertainment, lodging, transportation and more. Those figures included expenditures made by visitors attending various sporting events around the city.

Sports tourism is big for Oklahoma City. That’s what Adam Wisniewski, Visit Oklahoma City’s vice president of sports, wants everyone to understand, especially as the city continues to grow and hosts even more sporting events well into the future.

“Our job is to utilize sports to create an economic impact and tourism,” Wisniewski said. “We want to bring sporting events here that will make people outside of Oklahoma City visit our destination and take their outside dollars and spend them here with our local restaurants, hotels and attractions.”

According to figures provided by Visit OKC, during their last fiscal year (August 2022 through July 2023), sporting events they supported generated an estimated economic impact of $92 million.

The popularity and economic impact that the Oklahoma City Thunder and other professional and collegiate teams such as OU and OSU bring to the table cannot be understated. But what many people may not realize is that other not-so-well-known professional and amateur sports have also been good for Oklahoma City’s economy.

Wisniewski said many people have some misconceptions in terms of sports in Oklahoma City. Topping the list is that the city is not a championship destination. He quickly rebuffed that notion, pointing out Oklahoma City’s long history of hosting NCAA championships, Big 12 championships and other popular sporting events. The NCAA Women’s College World Series is a great example. More than 110,000 people attended the event this past June at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium. About 70% of those in attendance were from cities outside the OKC market.

The Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon is another major sporting event that, like the Women’s College World Series, attracts thousands of people from across the state, nation and world.

“[The Memorial Marathon] is more than just a local event that we care about. There is a significant tourism component associated with it,” Wisniewski said.

Other significant and widely publicized sporting events Wisniewski said had a big economic impact on Oklahoma City last fiscal year included the World Paddlesport Festival on the Oklahoma River. That event brought international acclaim to the city.

Oklahoma City also hosted for the first time ever the USA Gymnastics Development Program National Championships. Approximately 1,800 athletes from across the U.S. participated in that event, held at the Oklahoma City Convention Center. Those athletes also brought along their families, which meant total attendance was well over 20,000. The youth and amateur market is a lot stronger than people may realize, Wisniewski said.

“When you host a tournament, for example, that brings in say 100 to 200 teams, and let’s say each team has 15 to 20 kids on it, that means there could be more people attending that particular tournament than there would be if you filled a small stadium,” he said, which includes a number of family members who also come to those events in support of the athletes.

Wisniewski said parents are willing to spend money when it comes to their kids. That’s why when he and his Visit OKC team attempt to sell Oklahoma City to parents, they try to convince them the trip could be turned into a mini-vacation.

“We can tell them, ‘If you stay one more day and you get to do these attractions, you go and see these museums and do these other things, the kids won’t be any wiser. You kind of knocked out two goals with one trip,’” Wisniewski said.

In addition to having many top-notch, quality attractions and restaurants as a way to attract sports events to Oklahoma City, he pointed to OKC’s other strengths, including its centralized location and lower travel costs.

“If we can make the argument that coming [to Oklahoma City] is a lot friendlier to your wallet than other bigger cities, like say a Dallas, then that is going to be very, very beneficial for us.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2023 edition of VeloCity newsletter.