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Richmond’s rebirth as a sports destination began with a simple road race and now involves 13 events that it owns and operates.
Photo by: SPORTS BACKERS |
When the organizers of the long-standing Richmond Marathon came to the city’s sports commission for help two decades ago, entries had fallen to fewer than 500 and the title sponsor had pulled out.
“To be honest, when people started calling to say we had to save the marathon, my first thought was, ‘Why?’” said Jon Lugbill, a former Olympic kayaker who since 1993 has served as executive director of Richmond Sports Backers, the nonprofit that functions as the city’s sports commission. “Yes, it could be an incredible thing for our community. But it hadn’t been.”
Today, it is the nation’s 12th-largest marathon, with more than 26,000 entrants expected in November.
Rescuing that marathon — taking over ownership and production of it and working with the local road runners club to improve it — not only gave the midsize city a signature event, but also changed the way the commission would approach its business. If Richmond could grow a marathon that had hit the skids into a nationally known event, what else might it find if it spent more resources launching events than chasing them?
Two decades later, Richmond is considered a leader in the emerging trend of communities creating and owning sporting events rather than vying against others to attract them in a marketplace that has become increasingly competitive and, at the same time, cluttered by an alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies and tournament operators.
Hot for a slice of the sports tourism pie, communities often focus largely on how many hotel rooms an event can fill and how many fields or courts it will require. Some events charge cities bid fees to even be considered as hosts. That frenzy has led Lugbill and some others to wonder about the value of what so many are chasing — and whether they can deliver more benefits at a lower cost on their own.
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Utilizing the natural “venues” that it has on hand, Richmond’s Dominion Riverrock adventure sports festival includes numerous outdoor activities such as kayaking (above), mountain biking (right) and even events for man’s best friend.
Photos by: SPORTS BACKERS (3) |
“Having so many more cities bidding on events pushes everybody to think about not just what we can attract, but what we can create,” said Frank Viverito, president of the St. Louis Sports Commission. “We look at it a little more cautiously than other places. But it’s a trend and it’s going to continue.”
Lugbill said Richmond Sports Backers now rarely is a bidder,
instead owning and producing 13 events, including seven road races that range from competitive marathons to corporate mixers and kid runs, two cycling events, a rowing event and the Dominion Riverrock adventure sports festival that features a mud run, climbing and stand-up paddleboard, among other events.
In sports driven more by the youth travel market, such as soccer, lacrosse, volleyball and field hockey, Richmond has opted to seed its local clubs and organizations through an incubator fund that helps them develop their own events rather than bidding for tournaments operated by larger sanctioning bodies.
Between its own properties and those it helped create, Lugbill said Richmond Sports Backers now is involved in 40 locally owned annual events.
“Jon [Lugbill] is my hero,” Viverito said. “He kind of invented this path for a sports commission in a city and has had as great or a greater impact in his community as any one of our organizations across the country.”
When St. Louis was thinking about what it could develop to supplement the robust menu of national events it regularly lands, Viverito turned to Lugbill, who pointed him toward a corporate run that would allow St. Louis companies to field teams. The St. Louis Commission bills its Biz Dash 5k to be held in August at Ballpark Village, as the city’s “Biggest Office Party.”
“There’s run after run after run here, but the corporate market is our partnership target,” Viverito said. “We have a board of over 100 corporate leaders. So even I could figure out that would be a natural for St. Louis. It was a home run right out of the box and is doing really well again this year.”
Lugbill is quick to point out that while Richmond’s strategy was born from the success of the marathon, it took hold largely because of what Richmond lacked at the time rather than what it had. While its metro population puts it in a class with New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, Louisville and Memphis, Richmond is without a major pro sports franchise or a power conference college program, leaving it without the sort of arena it would need to compete to host an NCAA basketball regional or an Olympic qualifier.
“A lot of bid activities are spectator driven, and our spectator facilities weren’t great,” Lugbill said. “For events that are more participation driven, our facilities have gotten really good. What we became really good at was the thing that was available for us to get really good at.”
Hosting more events, or a large signature event, requires not only a different approach, Lugbill said, but also a level of staffing and expertise that differs from that of a commission focused on attracting events. For some, that can be daunting. For Richmond, the payoff has been worth the buildout, Lugbill said, especially since the sports commission continues to work with the region’s tourism staff to attract some events.
“Championship events still matter at the high school, college and pro level,” he said. “Major events matter. I don’t want to lump created events into that. However, the vast majority of events were eventually created by somebody for some purpose. The Daytona 500. The Kentucky Derby. The Boston Marathon. The New York Marathon. These are created events that went on to become big things. Some people created a stock car race in Daytona and it grew into what it is now.
“There are so many examples of where created events have become huge factors for communities. What we have done is try to be intentional about that. What would our community really like or be proud of? That’s usually how our discussion starts.”
