You own a restaurant, a hotel, a gym, a car wash, or a shop a few miles from a sports complex, and you just heard that a major tournament is coming to town, or that a new complex is opening down the road. Hundreds of teams, thousands of visiting families, and no obvious way for your business to be part of it. Here is how the opportunity works and what you can do about it.
The money is documented, not a sales pitch
Youth tournaments bring in travelers, and travelers spend money nearby on hotels, meals, gas, and things to do between games. The figures reported for big events are large:
- The 2026 Little League Baseball World Series drew more than 70,000 players, coaches, and fans to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The Lycoming County Visitors Bureau estimated it put $40 million into the state's economy.
- Before the 2023 AAU Junior National Volleyball Championships, Visit Orlando projected about $256.7 million in economic impact for Central Florida, with more than 5,000 teams entered.
- The city of Myrtle Beach reported $174.2 million in direct spending from sports tourism in 2023.
These are estimates from tourism bureaus and city governments, not audited totals, and a single business will see a small slice of any headline number. But the pattern is consistent: when a tournament comes to town, a lot of visitors with money to spend show up for a few days.
Who sells what
The biggest sponsorships at these events, such as naming rights and presenting partners, are usually sold directly by the organizer or the venue and priced for national brands. Grand Park Sports Campus in Westfield, Indiana, for example, has sold naming rights to its campus and to its baseball and softball diamonds. That is not the opportunity for a local business. The opportunity is the layer underneath: reaching the families who are in town, close to where they are staying, eating, and playing.
What a local business can actually do
- Signage near the venue. Banners, field-side signs, or a sign at a nearby entrance or intersection, subject to the venue's rules and local sign permits.
- Welcome packages for visiting teams. Coordinate with the host hotels so a coupon, a free item, or a team-night offer goes in each team's welcome bag.
- Restaurant partnerships. Teams often eat together between or after games. A set menu, a group rate, or a reserved room gives a coach a reason to choose you.
- Social media visibility with traveling families. Visiting parents look up where to eat and what to do on their phones. Showing up in local listings and posts around the tournament dates, with the event tagged, puts you in front of them while they decide.
Why this is harder to do alone than it looks
Three things get in the way, and the first two are the ones people underestimate.
- You have no relationship with the organizer. Many events are run by a national organization based somewhere else, and the facility, the local sports commission, and the host hotels each have their own contacts.
- You may not know who to ask. Rules vary by venue. Some allow outside signage, some sell all of it, and some have exclusive vendors. The person who can say yes is often not the person listed on the event website.
- The timing is early. Hotel room blocks, vendor lists, and printed materials can be settled well before the first game. The same point applies here as with sponsor activations: a banner can go up on short notice, but anything more needs real planning time. Start the conversation as soon as you hear about the event, not when the teams arrive.
This is the same kind of brokering Zubie Five does for local leagues and organizations — building the connection between an audience and the businesses that want to reach it — just aimed at a visiting crowd instead of a standing one. The research, outreach, and negotiation can all be done remotely, so this can be set up for a business in your market without traveling there. If a tournament or complex is coming near you and you want to reach the families it brings, Zubie Five can help you work out who to talk to and what to offer.
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