Sports ETA and Northstar Meetings Group Expand Strategic Partnership

The Sports Events & Tourism Association has announced the expansion of its industry partnership with Northstar Meetings Group, the leading multi-platform brand for dedicated meeting and business planners and sports event organizers, to serve as presenting sponsor of the association’s key research products, including the State of the Industry research report.

Under terms of the extension, Northstar — the publisher of SportsTravel and organizers of the TEAMS Conference & Expo, TEAMS Europe and the EsportsTravel Summit — will continue to be the presenting sponsor of the State of the Industry report, as well as two new studies that will be released in 2023: The Sports ETA Salary Survey and the Sports ETA Facilities Study. Northstar will also continue to serve as the exclusive provider of content related to media and media relations for Sports ETA educational programming distributed by the association’s Sports Tourism Learning Institute. Northstar and Sports ETA will also collaborate on future international outreach.

Sports ETA, which serves more than 600 member organizations and 2,400 sports event professionals, is widely known for its State of the Industry study, which reported $39.7 billion in 2021 in direct spending on amateur sporting events equating to $91.8 billion in economic impact across the United States.

The landmark study presented the most comprehensive and representative data quantifying the value of sports-related travel in the United States. Conducted by Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company, the report incorporated original data from Sports ETA with Longwoods International Travel Survey Data, Bureau of Economic Analysis and Labor Statistics data, U.S. Travel Association data together with NCAA and annual sports attendance figures.

“Northstar Meetings Group and Sports ETA enjoy a long-time partnership in leading the sports events and tourism industry,” said Al Kidd, president and chief executive officer of Sports ETA. “We are honored to renew this important partnership to serve our members and the industry.”

“Sports ETA continues to provide the sports tourism industry with valuable education and research, which we are proud not only to sponsor but to disseminate broadly through SportsTravel magazine and our many other travel media brands,” said David Blansfield, executive vice president of the Northstar Meetings Group. “We’re excited to extend our support to Sports ETA’s new initiatives and look forward to continuing to work together to advance our industry and to measure and promote the value of sports-related travel.”