Sports Tourism & Conventions
They say everything’s bigger in Texas and that definitely includes travel sports and business traffic. All three are big industries here with the economic impact to match.
The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is the home of five major league sports teams including Dallas Cowboys football Dallas Stars hockey Dallas Mavericks basketball FC Dallas MLS soccer and Texas Rangers baseball. Combine that mix with NASCAR and Indy racing and it adds up to an economic impact of millions. The Dallas Cowboys football stadium – located just across the way from the famed Texas Rangers’ Ballpark in Arlington – opened in 2009 and was booked almost immediately – including for the 2011 Super Bowl. With 75,000 seats a retractable roof open end zones linked to fan decks for increased capacity a Texas Sports Hall of Fame exhibit one of the largest flat-screen televisions in the world cutting edge technology throughout and a whopping $1.2 billion price tag the arena has already garnered an economic impact of hundreds of millions that has benefited the entire metroplex with increased sales tax numbers from all the tourist spending.
All that sports frenzy means plenty of tourists – and plenty of money. In fact it’s no surprise that the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is the top tourist destination in Texas. The Dallas/Fort Worth Area Tourism Council estimates that DFW gets more than 15 million visitors each year. According to the Council’s most recent statistics hospitality and tourism businesses and spending generated $967 million in local and state taxes. The DFW area also generates more than one-third of the state’s nearly $50 billion in overall tourist spending – a whopping $16.6 billion!
Business tourism is also big business in the DFW metroplex. The Dallas Convention Center one of the largest in the state means the area is ideal for large conventions. And in Fort Worth the Foart Worth Convention Center covers 14 blocks in the city’s Central Business District and has 253226 total square feet of exhibit space and 41 meeting rooms among other amenities to host conferences corporate meetings sporting events concerts trade shows banquets and consumer shows.
In fact the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area ranks sixth in the country for convention and meeting attendees with more than 3.8 million people attending more than 3,600 conventions here each year.
