Passionate sports fans are part of a rapidly growing sector of tourism that includes watching their home team play in different stadiums across the league, such as Baltimore’s Camden Yards.David McBee
Last summer, Toronto lawyer Remy Sansanwal had to travel to the U.S. for a family wedding. But he combined the long weekend trip with one of his passions and turned the journey into a mini-baseball road trip, stopping in Pittsburgh, Penn. (Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Cincinnati Reds), Baltimore, Md. (Baltimore Orioles vs. Houston Astros) and Washington, D.C. (Washington Nationals vs. New York Yankees). “It was an intense Friday night game at Camden Yards,” he says, “because the Orioles were jockeying with the New York Yankees for first place in the AL East at the time.”
While the request from his mother to attend the wedding was the spark for the trip, the creative planning post-wedding all came down to him being a self-described baseball fanatic.
“I have always been infatuated with baseball stadium landscaping and design,” he says. “I like how each MLB stadium incorporates historical or contemporary elements of the city it’s in. At Nationals Park, there’s the President’s Race in the middle of the fourth inning of every game. Or at Camden Yards, where the stadium is connected to the historic Warehouse in right field, now restored for team offices. PNC Park in Pittsburgh has an incredible view of the skyline and the bridges that Pittsburgh is known for.
“You get a flavour – quite literally when you consider the food options at the stadium – for the city even if you don’t have time to explore the city beyond the confines of the ballpark,” Sansanwal says.
Baseball fan Remy Sansanwal on a three-game road trip, which included a stop at Pittsburgh’s PNC ParkCourtesy Remy Sansanwal
Sansanwal is far from alone in exploring his love of sport through travel. The United Nations’ World Travel Organization notes that sports tourism currently accounts for 10 per cent of the current global expenditure on tourism and it’s expected to grow by 17.5 per cent between 2023 and 2030.
Closer to home, a 2023 report from Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo found the average Canadian sports fan takes approximately three sports-based trips per year, spending an average of $4,294 on these trips annually. Sports experiences during travel are also prioritized over other leisure activities, including dining out and going to concerts. What’s more, 80 per cent of fans said they wanted to do the same amount of sports-related travel, if not more, in the coming year.
Some, like Sansanwal, want to visit every stadium in a particular league. Others want to watch their favourite team or player in a different city every year. For sports tourism companies, this completionist impulse can be very good for business.
“A big part of our success is the repeat business,” says Tim Macdonell, founder of Elite Sports Tours. “Generally, sports fans will pick a city or destination they want to travel to every year to see their team and continue to come back every year with a new destination in mind. It’s no different than a person who wants to travel to different countries to see the local attractions, but the focus is on the players, teams, stadiums and the rivalries.”
The company started out chartering buses to take Ontario-based fans to major league games in Montreal, New York, Boston, Chicago and Detroit, but thanks to customer demand, it now offers hotel and ticket packages for sporting events across North America. Customers hail from across Canada and the U.S., and even as far afield as the U.K. and Australia.
Macdonell notes there are some perpetual favourite destinations, including Los Angeles, New York and Boston. Plus, “Toronto is always a hot destination for Canadians outside of the city as the teams outside of hockey are viewed as ‘Canada’s’ teams,” he says. But outside of those cities, he describes demand as cyclical. “A popular player gets drafted to a team, a particular franchise starts winning championships – these are all things that draw demand. We have seen a rise in requests to destinations like Las Vegas for the ease of flights, hotels and new hockey and football teams as well,” he says.
Sansanwal isn’t sure when he will next travel to the U.S. Like many Canadians, he’s rethinking travel plans south of the border in protest of President Trump’s threat to apply a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports. Still, he’s certain he will absolutely do more sports-focused travel in the future, because while the best part of his baseball road trip was spending time with his mom on the drive from stadium to stadium, the games themselves were a very close second.
“Whenever our time in the car together started feeling like The Guilt Trip with Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, it was nice that I had my alone time at the baseball stadiums,” he says. “Unlike other sports, there’s no overall time clock in baseball, aside from the new pitching clock. Life always feels a lot slower when you’re at a baseball game. The slow-paced aspect of the game, coupled with trying new food at the stadium that the city is known for – like pierogis in Pittsburgh or crab dip in Baltimore – that is one of the best parts of the experience for me.”