That number for Millennials and Gen Z is higher than the average across all age groups (58 per cent interested in travel for sporting events). It’s also part of a wider trend among those travellers born after 1981 to plan their travel around major events, everything from big-name concerts – the “Taylor Swift effect” alone could power a small nation’s economy – to cultural festivals to natural phenomena.
And why shouldn’t sport play a part in that? Some of the greatest cultural experiences on the planet are sporting events. Some of the deepest insights I’ve gained into a nation and its people have come via a bunch of athletes running around bumping into each other.
I went to a baseball game in Japan and it was a riot of tradition and fanfare. Here’s an American sport that has been given a distinctly Japanese makeover, where only one set of fans cheers at a time, and servers walk up and down the aisles with beer kegs on their backs ready to top up your cup. Tell me…