{"id":345436,"date":"2026-06-03T21:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/345436\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T21:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:33:12","slug":"cities-see-opportunity-in-emerging-sports-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/345436\/","title":{"rendered":"Cities see opportunity in emerging sports markets"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published on Smart Cities Dive<\/a>. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Smart Cities Dive newsletter<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Research shows that tax-funded sports stadiums<\/a> don\u2019t boost local economies. But a group of mayors believes sports teams and venues can still bring money to their cities.<\/p>\n

Mayors from Bridgeport, Connecticut; Cedar Park, Texas; Chester, Pennsylvania.; Dothan, Alabama; Long Beach, California; and Youngstown, Ohio, are partnering with the U.S. Conference of Mayors<\/a> and building services company Amrize in the inaugural cohort of the Game Changer Program, designed to help cities attract sports teams and develop strategies to build facilities for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are more professional sports opportunities emerging, like women\u2019s sports and minor league baseball,\u201d Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson told Smart Cities Dive. \u201cSo you don\u2019t need to create a new sports market \u2014 just leverage it to get a bigger piece.\u201d Richardson said Game Changer can help cities \u201cevaluate what investment to make in relation to the economic impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richardson said the \u201cstool for tourism\u201d has four legs: conventions, special events, entertainment and sports. Long Beach has the first two, he said, but lags in the latter two. \u201cWe have the hotels and restaurants, but we don\u2019t have the [entertainment and sporting] venues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city does have a new minor league baseball team, the Long Beach Coast, which debuted this year. And in 2028, Long Beach is slated to host 18 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games events.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s goal is to leverage that interest in sports \u201cto create permanent economic activity,\u201d Richardson said. He believes the Game Changer Program can help by bringing in subject-matter experts who can answer mayors\u2019 questions about how best to position their cities to attract more sports-tourism dollars.<\/p>\n

In Long Beach, that could include building a new downtown sports venue, Richardson said. Because only one Game Changer meeting has been held so far, details on how the participating mayors can add successful sports facilities to their cities\u2019 real estate portfolios are limited.<\/p>\n

USCM Director of Communications Sara Durr said if more mayors want to participate in the Game Changer Program, additional cohort meetings will be held starting in the fall.<\/p>\n

Recommended Reading <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published on Smart Cities Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,141797,131,133,132,30782,15766,141801,141799,141798,141802,141800],"class_list":["post-345436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-game-changer","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-minor-league-baseball","tag-rex-richardson","tag-sports-stadiums","tag-sports-teams","tag-sports-venue","tag-the-game-changer","tag-u-s-conference-of-mayors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}