The Honest Scoop About Sports Tourism Salaries and Compensation

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Until it recently released its new report, Sports ETA as an industry association had not surveyed its members about their compensation and salary information for about 10 years. A lot has changed since then. And, of course, a lot has changed within the past few years coming out of the pandemic, which led to massive turnover in the industry and a crop of new employees entering the space. The latest survey, which was sponsored and supported by Northstar Meetings Group, reveals some hard facts about not only what industry professionals are being paid, but how they are being compensated as well.

In this conversation between SportsTravel Executive Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz and the leading researchers on the report — Jennifer Stoll of Stoll Strategies and Cambria Jones of SearchWide Global — we explore those issues. That includes how many sales people on average are employed at destination marketing organizations, what kinds of benefits those employees are now looking for, the concerns that still exist over how some of these organizations are funded and, of course, what industry professionals are being paid.
To download the full report, click here.

Among the topics discussed in this episode:

• Why this study was conducted now (3:36)
• Why compensation surveys can be challenging (4:30)
• How this study compares to other recent surveys in the travel industry (5:25)
• Are sports industry professionals overworked and underpaid? (6:19)
• How many sports sales people are employed per DMO on average (8:00)
• Were there any surprises about the size of market that employed more people? (10:09)
• Takeaways and concerns about how sports commissions and CVBs are funded (11:43)
• The value of sports as a market in the travel industry (13:50)
• Takeaways about how long people have been employed in sports tourism (14:20)
• How that length of service compares to other aspects of the travel industry (16:18)
• How much on average people in sports tourism are paid (16:57)
• How cost of living factors into the equation (19:43)
• The intangible about how fun the sports-events industry can be (20:00)
• The benefits of being employed in the travel industry (21:43)
• What young people getting into the market should think about (23:14)
• How people have advanced their own careers in the industry (25:19)
• The importance of having an employment contract (26:02)
• What benefits employees right now are seeing as being attractive (27:50)

This episode is sponsored by: