Business View Magazine | September 2022

139 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 between an event owner and a destination to conduct sporting events within that city. It started very small and had a small cadre of rights holders and a small cadre of cities, and it grew as that industry grew.” In 2010, the NASC began to include more and more Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVB) as they began to diversify their sales channels organizing the industry into various areas of expertise. At this time, it was noted that sports were a major economic driver in many communities. Kidd recounts, “Sports was emerging as a very consistent provider of local tourism. It wasn’t necessarily big group travel, but it manifested itself in competitions, participation, and youth tournaments. All of a sudden group sport was really beginning to get some visibility around the country. Virtually every city had some form of sports tourism.” The Convention and Visitors Bureau sports sales departments joined the National Association of Sports Commissions and began to benefit from the relationships and expertise developed through NASC. When Kidd joined the association in 2017, he brought the change that was needed to help grow this segment of the industry, which had so much untapped potential. “When I started, the organization was relatively small. It had about 500 members and was doing about $1.2 million in annual sales. It made a very modest profit because everything they made, they poured back into the services for membership, which most trade associations do,” he relays. “Within about two weeks we formed a plan to put together a total remaking of this association to become more involved in the wider value chain of sports tourism, which included much more than a Sports Commission. At the time, we only had about 50 Sports Commissions, and about 400 CVB SPORTS EVENTS AND TOUR I SM ASSOC I AT ION