Cities of Hope

Pick any area of the United States in 2003, and you can find a story like the one unfolding in Greenville, S.C. Seven years ago, residents of nearby Easley approved a referendum to increase taxes by eight mills so the city could help, build the J.B. "Red" Owens Recreational Complex. Around the time that facility was completed, residents of Mauldin approved the construction of Sunset Park. Nearby Simpsonville got in the tournament game soon thereafter, as did Anderson, which in 1999 developed the $20 million Anderson Sports and Entertainment Complex.

As the number of amateur events being held within this 30-mile radius grew, it began to dawn on business leaders in Clemson that attracting tournaments could be potentially more lucrative than a string of football Saturdays. The Clemson Area Chamber of Commerce's Sports Council was born.

Easley has now twice played host to the Independent Softball Association's Super World Series. Mauldin has brought in the Dixie Ponytails All-Stars and Dixie Belles All-Stars state championships. Simpsonville got the Dixie Angels state tournament. Anderson hosted the Balloon Federation of America National Championship and the Southern Softball Athletic Association World Championships. And in its first year of existence, Clemson's Sports Council landed the U.S. Cycling Federation Junior/Espoir National Road Championships and the Olympic Torch Run.

Can that many groups devoted to sports -not to mention all the different local recreation departments that could also host special events -coexist peacefully in such a small area? That's a question faced by communities everywhere with the meteoric rise of the sports commission, which 10 years ago was the almost exclusive domain of first-and second-tier cities hoping to land the Olympics, the Super Bowl or the Final Four. Now, sports commissions -configured independently or as an arm of a local Convention and Visitors Bureau -overlap in region after region, in some of the unlikeliest of places. Noting that the International Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus' 450 American members represent perhaps half of the total bureaus in the United States, Don Schumacher -himself executive director of the 276­member National Association of Sports Commissions -says, "The world has undergone a sea change since 1993. There could be upwards of a thousand cities or regions or crossroads with sports commissions now, and a lot of them don't even have 'Walk/Don't Walk' on the corner."

The NASC is doing its part to grow the number of sports organizations setting up shop in cities, counties and hamlets. Founded in 1992 with just 15 members, the NASC represents at this writing 225 American cities. About 100 of its members are full-fledged sports commissions operating independently of their local CVBs.

Scan the association's membership list, and you're likely to find quite a bit of overlap. For example, hop I­85 north out of Greenville to Charlotte, N.C., an hour's drive away, and you'll reach the zone of influence of Visit Charlotte, the Charlotte Regional Sports Commission and the Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau in Kannapolis. All are members of the NASC, as is the Hickory Metro Sports Commission, a mere 40 miles away.

That's quite a change from 1989, when Schumacher left arena management to help found the Cincinnati Sports Commission. At the time, Cincinnati's was one of 35 commissions operating, and like most of those it worked closely with the city's CVB to match dates with hotel availability, negotiate special hotel rates and so on. Such a symbiotic relationship between the commission (whose members came from sports event management) and the CVB (which dealt mainly with conventions) was, and remains, a logical one. Many of the industry's newer players, however, are either CVBs whose members lack a sports background or sports commissions without well-forged local business relationships. As a result, the NASC spends much of its time enlightening wannabes and newcomers alike with Best Practices seminars and educational sessions. "We have members for whom Sports Commissions 101 is a real challenge," Schumacher admits.

Of the two categories of fledgling professionals, Schumacher says that those familiar with sporting events have an easier time. "CVBs don't necessarily understand what they need to know to participate in the sports event and travel market," he says. "With a convention, when you make the sale, you're sort of finished. Conventions work with the on-site coordinators and call the shots. Those of us who come from the events side know that it's when you make the sale that the work starts."

Prospective sports commission founders might think that they must start by wrestling with knotty issues such as the proper organizational structure or the makeup of the group's board of directors. However, the NASC believes that all sports commissions undergo a natural process of evolution -typically, from an arm of a larger organization to an independent, nonprofit corporation. More difficult is the issue of funding, since existing organizations that might run events -CVBs, colleges, parks and recreation departments ­will all be trying to sip from the same watering hole. Most sports commissions draw a fair chunk of their financing from hospitality taxes (other revenue streams involve memberships, corporate donations, grants and event management fees), but how they get to that money varies. Some cities wanting to create a sports commission have to put such a tax increase to the voters; others merely dip into the existing pot.

The possibility for friction is high in both circumstances, since corporate funding for sporting events is likely to be limited in a given municipality no matter how many sports organizations there are. But it goes beyond funding issues. The introduction of a sports commission, or the sudden entry of a CVB into the realm of sports competitions, puts tremendous pressure on local facilities operators to accommodate the new events. Working relationships can become strained, and a recreation department's customers can become outraged when, for example, they go to the pool and find that open swim has been muscled out by a bunch of out-of-state swim teams.

"The way people do it incorrectly is to bid on an event and then afterward call the parks and recreation department and say, `You've got to help us, we've got to have all the town's softball diamonds for a week,' " Schumacher says. "That kind of approach almost always produces hurt feelings. On the other hand, if you get them involved early and promise no surprises, it's hard for them to resist, because it's really good for the community. It will displace residents, but people will be coming in and sleeping in our hotels, shopping in our stores, eating in our restaurants, and they're going to go home having left behind $500 or $1,000 apiece. Whenever you hear people venting frustration at a sports commission or CVB, it's because they didn't handle the bid process properly. They weren't thinking that the parks and recreation people had a job to do."

The frustration, though, cuts both ways. Jeff Toler, director of sports marketing for the sports commission arm of the Coastal Fairfield County (Conn.) Convention and Visitors Bureau, says he has already met a great deal of resistance during his commission's nine-month history.

"I have cities that won't give up their parks for a day," Toler says. "Some of them just refuse to see the benefit of hosting an event. And I'm not asking for their fields for free; their towns are going to see some.