Cabarrus

Cabarrus County, NC

ONE OF THE TOP MOTORSPORT DESTINATIONS IN THE COUNTRY, CABARRUS COUNTY ALSO FEATURES PLENTY OF GREAT RESTAURANTS, VENUES AND ATTRACTIONS

Scan to discover more of what Visit Cabarrus offers sports planners at SportsPlanningGuide.com

PLANNER PERSPECTIVE

“The Team at Cabarrus County CVB have been amazing to work with. With each of our events in Cabarrus County, they have been more than helpful and accommodating from start to finish. Cabarrus County CVB is among the best support team we deal with in the country.”

— Kevin Williams, President

Cabarrus Arena

West Cabarrus Turf Complex

Cabarrus County is famous for its high-energy racing scene, but you don’t have to be a motorsports enthusiast to take advantage of all that this scenic region has to offer. Why not choose a destination for your next sports event or tournament in a place where you can make memories on and off the field?

POPULAR ACTIVITIES

▶Cabarrus is home to the Charlotte

Motor Speedway and several NASCAR racing teams.

▶Concord Mills Mall is where visitors can get plenty of shopping done with a number of popular brands and stores to choose from including Adidas,

Aeropostale, Coach and Forever 21.

FACILITY SPOTLIGHT

West Cabarrus Turf Complex

Brand new and game-day ready

West Cabarrus High School Turf Complex is home to three new turf fields including one stadium and two practice fields. Ready for competition, all fields feature T°Cool® evaporative cooling technology and are equipped with lights. These versatile fields are lined for soccer, football, and tic-marked for lacrosse. With three additional stadium fields, Cabarrus County offers a total of six turf fields. All include the same features and are located near each other as well as top attractions and hotels.

Carolina Courts

Basketball, volleyball, pickleball

Carolina Courts is Charlotte’s premier basketball, volleyball and pickleball facility. This massive indoor facility features 48,000 square feet of available space for various sporting tournaments and event needs. The facility can host large basketball and pickleball tournaments as it features seven full-size basketball courts and 17 possible pickleball courts.

Cabarrus Arena & Events Center

Consumer shows, sporting events

Cabarrus Arena & Events Center in Concord is one of the best places to host events in the county. This huge arena can host wrestling events, badminton tournaments, taekwondo matches and even indoor volleyball tournaments. The facility has more than 140,000 square feet and hosts more than 150 events on nearly 300 event days each year.

VISIT CABARRUS

John Poole 704-456-7968 johnpoole@explorecabarrus.com www.explorecabarrus.com

PLAYING 3D CHESS

The best organizations will be raising the bar and following a smart plan in the upcoming year

As we noted last year in this column, sports tourism now has a better seat at the collective tourism table than ever before. Destinations are dedicating more time and resources to the sports market than at any time in my 26 years serving this industry. For our eighth edition of the Sports Planning Guide trends article, our team at Huddle Up Group looked back at the past year to craft and share the eight trends to look for in 2023 and beyond.

1Emphasis – Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) across the country are investing more resources in sports tourism today than ever before. This comes in the form of an increased sports marketing effort and often times in facility development.

The pandemic proved to us what we have been saying all along – sports tourism is immune from economic downturns, international conflicts and yes, pandemics.

2Bricks and Mortar – Nearly every project our team touched this past year had a facility element to it. What venues is that destination missing? Which of their existing facilities can be enhanced to become tournament friendly? Ten years ago, very few tourism agencies were investing in bricks and mortar. Today, nearly every one we work with is getting in the weeds with their community leaders to help develop new facilities and/or enhance existing venues.

3Funding – How do we fund facility development and enhancement? Tourism Improvement Districts (or TIDs) are definitely the most popular route to take today. Nearly every community we work with is pushing forward some form of state and locally enabling legislation to put a TID in place to fund sports tourism marketing and facility development.

4DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (or DEI) has become a front line topic for CVBs and event rights holders alike. Several event owners have rebranded to give notice that they are intentionally addressing DEI issues. Destination International has also provided some excellent best practices in this area for CVBs through their DEI Committee’s work.

5Pickleball – The fastest growing sport in America is taking over. Pickleball has become an “overnight success” starting in a driveway in Washington State in 1967, with the first official organization for the sport being formed in 1972. One thing our team talks about when looking at the rise of pickleball over the past decade is this – what new sport will emerge next? Slamball? Maybe teqball? More sport options mean more potential participants which mean more tournaments to host.

6Regionality – Even prior to the pandemic, there was a growing trend of “national championship” events becoming more drive market than cross country flights. That is, the teams were more and more coming from a day’s drive to a tournament than getting on a plane to travel long distances. The pandemic only accelerated that trend. This is important to consider when you are working to create your own events, as you will want to focus on clubs and teams from within a day’s drive versus trying to recruit teams from greater distances.

7Special Events – More tourism organizations are adding the marketing and management of special events to the sports department’s plate. The ability to execute a sporting event isn’t that much different than producing a music festival. Putting on the “backpacks” (as we like to call it) for special events is becoming quite common for those with an experienced sports staff on the team.

8Bigger, Better, Stronger, Faster – One of the most common calls we got this past year from destinations was this, “We had to furlough all our people during the pandemic, but sports kept rolling. So, we need to build our sports program back up to a place where it is even bigger and better than it was before.” This is another form of doubling down on the great performance sports tourism offered the industry over the past two-plus years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jon Schmieder is the Founder of the Huddle Up Group LLC, a sports industry consulting company led by award winning executives. Schmieder has 25 years of experience in leading sports tourism and events organizations through strategic growth and increased community collaboration. We can be reached at Jon@HuddleUpGroup.com or 602.369.6955. To receive the weekly “Monday Huddle Up” visit www.HuddleUpGroup.com or sign up at www.tinyletter.com/JonSchmieder. © Huddle Up Group, 2021