The Rise of Sports Travel

A jersey can do what a guidebook cannot: it gets you welcomed. That single idea opens the door to a much bigger trend, the rise of sports tourism as one of the most powerful forces in experiential travel today. With the FIFA World Cup 2026 set to take place across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and cities like Toronto preparing to take center stage, the momentum behind sports-led travel is only accelerating.

In this episode, Dan is joined by co-host Aizaz Sheikh, Senior Marketing Leader in Adventure Travel and a lifelong soccer fan, bringing both an operator’s perspective and a genuine passion for the game to the conversation. Together, they sit down with Brandon Ehrhardt, VP of Marketing at Expedia Group, and Daniel Velásquez, Founder and COO of Homefans, to unpack what both the data and on-the-ground experience are revealing. Brandon shares the true scale of sports travel, why it’s a structural shift rather than a seasonal spike, and how travelers are increasingly extending their trips well beyond match day. We also explore the “spillover effect,” where demand expands into nearby cities as fans optimize for price, stay longer, and explore more.

Daniel explains why the future of sports travel goes far beyond tickets. It’s about locally led, immersive experiences that shape what happens before, during, and after the match, from food and rituals to logistics, safety, and that hard-to-replicate sense of community. Along the way, we discuss groundhoppers, iconic derbies, stadium nostalgia, and how even mid-sized cities can transform during major events, as well as emerging categories like endurance and participation travel.

If you work in travel marketing, distribution, or advising clients, this conversation is packed with practical insights on packaging, curation, and where the real revenue opportunity lies as sports tourism continues to scale globally.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Sports Travel

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Travel Trends Podcast. This is your host, Dan Christian, and here we are midway through season seven, and we have an incredibly special episode for you today. We've been working on this for a while with my good friend Azaz Sheikh, who not only is a great friend of mine, he's a football fanatic, he is a travel industry expert, and he is an amazing keynote speaker. And he's gonna co-host this episode today on sports tourism with me.

SPEAKER_04 0:30

Azaz, welcome to Travel Trends. Hey man, it's good to have you. I remember we were on a podcast a couple of years ago, and just to see where Travel Trends has come, I was with you in Chile for ATTA last October and I saw your roadshow. And yeah, we're we're great friends and we we catch up in Toronto often, but it's super cool to be actually on the show and co-hosting.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Terrific. Well, welcome back because yes, as you mentioned, you were part of our event Spotlight from Chile at the Adventure Travel Trade Association Spotlight. That was the episode where you gave an extraordinary keynote on the main stage. I know you've just gotten back to Chile again, but let's make sure everyone knows a bit more about your background because obviously you worked at G Adventures, Tour Radar. Many of the people in the industry know you from your work in the industry. Many people see you at events around the world wearing the coolest football jerseys. And for those of you who are watching this on YouTube right now, you're gonna see this is the man that has the most, the biggest collection of football jerseys I've ever seen. And you have to follow him on social after this because you just see him around the world, especially with the World Cup coming up, wearing classic jerseys. Um, Azaz, tell us a little bit more about your background because obviously you're based in Toronto with me, but you have a lovely accent.

SPEAKER_04 1:36

So give everyone some context to your background. Thank you, Dan. Uh, born and raised in the UK, I moved over to Toronto in the early 2010s and I've been in the travel industry from 2014 originally with G Adventures. I've worked at G Travel Zoo, Tor Radar. A lot of my experience has been in the small group adventure travel space. And um, yeah, passion-wise, travel was always 1B, because 1A from the moment I could remember was football, including collecting soccer shirts. So this isn't an avant-gard new passion of mine. This has been going for years. And yeah, I I spoke, we were we were chatting about our good friend Shannon Stow before I actually did a keynote in October in a throwback chili jersey, and afterwards got some pretty good compliments from the kit collecting community on that too. So yeah, I think from my side, travel is um, in my opinion, one of the most universal languages in the world. And I also think football, sports in general, but football is as well the the way I've seen that sport, that passion. For example, when I was at G, I went to Cambodia and I was in one of their Planetera projects called New Hope. And they had this football team, which they ended up letting me and one of my colleagues play for. And the way that sport is able to break down barriers and get, in fact, when we first got there, we had this marketing leadership team on one side and all these New Hope folks on the other. And all it took was three words to make everyone break the ice, which was Messi or Ronaldo. That was the only thing that needed to happen. And within five seconds, everybody was friends. So travel is a global universe. So language, it brings people together. Um, so does sport, but particularly football. And um, yeah, I'm excited to talk to these guys about the way these two interact with each other in 2026.

Meet The Co-Host And Guests

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Fantastic. So, on that note, to introduce our the amazing guest that you've brought together for this discussion.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

Absolutely. So, first up, I've got Brandon Erdhardt from he's the vice president of marketing at Expedia Group. Now, Brandon's got an interesting background from the research, and and I'll ask Brandon to speak about his own background too, because he'll do it much more eloquently than myself. But Brandon was um, it was like United Airlines for a good five years. And then since then, he's been at Expedia in various roles for almost 12 years. But the one thing that really stood out to me when I was creeping his LinkedIn was sports production intern. So Brandon has the background of not just travel and his professional career in travel, but also that sports production, the wanting to be in sports media or dipping his toe in as a younger person. And we've already connected on having the same football team, probably the same leader, goal, Jürgen Klopp. So, Brandon, I'm very excited to have you here. And the role you folks already play in sports, with the logo being on some pretty prominent places, including on the side of many jerseys that are just behind me, is super cool. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, absolutely. Um, this is a dream because I started my career as an intern for a sports department of the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis. Uh quickly decided I wanted to do business because I could always go back to TV. But talking sports, talking travel, and talking with you all, gonna make for a good hour today.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

Definitely amazing. And then Daniel, founder and COO of HomeFans, but he's also the co-founder of Lyra Sports, which is a sports marketing agency, co-founder and COO there too. Uh Daniel is has a company that, in my opinion, bridges the two things I spoke about in my intro better than anyone else, which is small group, authentic experiences run by local people. So they're the experts, whether it's food, the hotspots. But what his company, Home Fans, brings into the mix is the sports experience in the middle. And it started off with football. Daniel will give us better, um, a better coverage of that, but now it includes other sports as well. And before he did that, he actually was the co-founder of the 93 Club, which was actually the prelude to home fans. Um, he so, in in terms of where this company is going, I think that being in a sports city like Toronto, I see week in, week out, and I live right near the arena as well. So many people are traveling here for particularly the NBA, the MLB, and the NHL experience. So something like this is just going to continue to bubble. And Daniel, I also think like what you're doing right now with Lyra Sports as well, your sports marketing agency, is genius because right here, while the World Cup 2026 is about to embark itself in Toronto and across all of North America, I've never seen a closer inflection point between football fan culture and the need to get brands who want to connect with that huge audience.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Oh, thank you. Thank you for that intro. Excited to be here. Adding to the accents, Dan, I'm I'm originally Colombian for everyone listening and watching, but I've been living here in the UK for for more than a decade. And yeah, excited to tell you a bit about home fans, why we started it, um, based on personal experiences, addressing personal pain points. Probably most of us have experience in different fields. And the beauty of it is that it flipped the coin and became mainstream. So we're actually now tapping into the mainstream traveler, which is the main sort of value proposition that we offer is not just for ISIS or me who are really die-hard sports fans, but it's actually for everyone. It can be for someone who hasn't even attended a sporting event yet. But the experience element sort of like opens up the opportunities for people to connect and really discover what sport is all about, which Isaaz already meant, mentioned, sorry, uh, which is bringing people together, breaking down barriers, having a fun time, you know, and experiencing things that you'll always cherish in your memory. So that's exactly what we do.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Sometimes it's making people happy, you know? That's great. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for those intros, Azaz.

Why Sports Tourism Is Surging

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Brandon, Daniel, Azaz. I've got an opening question for all three of you. And then Azaz and I will be sharing the conversation. And I've said to Azaz before, he's the expert here, so I'm gonna let him lead a lot of the conversation. But I wanted to start to set the stage for all of our listeners around why we're having a once-in-a-generation sports calendar event in 2026 that is leading us to have this conversation, you know, the rise of sports travel from events to experiences. Given the background of both of your roles, and particularly, Daniel, with the focus of home fans, which is something that I have found incredibly fascinating, your growth over the last few years. So I'm really thrilled to have you on this conversation. So I'm going to ask you this question first, and then we'll go back to Brandon and back to Azaz, is why you think sports travel is having a moment. And I just wanted to share with our listeners because seeing the growth of home fans, which is homefans.com, the idea of being able to connect with fans at their home stadium. And I think it's very cool you're Colombian. I sit on the board of a uh tour operator called Impulse Travel, and I know how fanatic they are about football. And now you're in the destination, living in London, with the premiership that so many people gravitate from around the world to be there for matches, and they want to experience the home stadium and be amongst the home fans. So I love the branding, I love the concept, and I love that you're now having a moment. Tell us a little bit more about the background and context, and then specifically why you think 2026 is going to be a defining year for sports tourism.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Well, regarding home fuss, thank you, Dan. Uh, I think there are various elements to to to sort of um verify and and and state. One is definitely uh sport has risen within within trouble. You know, Brando will will bring a lot of data, so he'll probably do better than me, but it's it's definitely there. And the second is that experiences have positioned themselves, you know, in the market. Like after flights and accommodation, we all know experiences are, you know, a must right now. And and home funds tries in our vision is to blend the best of both worlds. One thing that I have to say is that uh sports tourism traditionally is linked to the large-scale, maybe bucket listy type of events. They're super huge, they bring people together around the world, for instance, namely the World Cup this year, if we're talking about football, but they don't happen every single day, they don't happen that much often. And what we wanted to portray and convey in terms of the vision of the company was it's amazing that we have really large-scale, high-profile events. You can name Super Bowl, F1, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, there's an element that sport can connect anyone, anywhere, anytime. And this is what we wanted to do. And the recipe to find it was connecting all the dots. So bringing the best of experiences. And I always sort of mention this example analogy. I love food. Uh, you know, I love doing culinary tours. And if I'm in Paris and I'm looking I'm doing the basic croissant tour because I love pastries, I'm expecting that the local croissant tour, you know, they know their way around. They will take me to the best hidden jams, they will take me to the best places, and I don't have to do anything by myself. Plus, I will connect with someone who is really, you know, passionate about it. So we try to sort of translate that into sports, whereby you're attending an event, and it's not only about the ticket, it's actually understanding the whole culture around it, connecting with a local fan. And the beauty of it, and I have mentioned it at the beginning, is that every single time that you attend a home fans experience, the whole experience is different. Sorry for being redundant, because it's all about the stories of that particular local fan, the relationship with the club, you know, how they brought up, how their dad or mom, you know, passed the baton to them, and et cetera, et cetera. And all of them, you know, really, really make it unique. And hence you create a very personalized product in a standardized way. And that's what we're actually achieving. We are present in more than 100 cities around the world. And now, as answering your question finally, uh 2026 has risen a lot. The growth is incredible. Um, there's a lot of in sort of interest, both from you know, mainstream travelers, very specialized travelers, different stakeholders within the travel industry who are, you know, putting their eyes on, okay, what can bring sport to us. And what we're doing is trying to amass the largest inventory of these experiences all over the world, even working for the likes of, for instance, Sixpedia or Airbnb, get your guy clue, or different types of other partners that we have to really, really sort of uh curate the best inventory of experiences around the world. Primarily in football, but in other sports as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

That's great. Thanks for sharing that. And Daniel office, you hit on a few things there that are driving this trend, which is you know, experience-driven travel is certainly dominating in the marketplace today. Fans are really turning into sports travelers because of this desire to be participatory and actually be there in real life, to have that in-person experience that you just can't have elsewhere. And I'm gonna eventually ask Azaz this question about culture because of the jerseys themselves and the identity that it's a part of it, that you know, much of our travel is inherently tribal. And so it's really written on our DNA. And the fact you get welcomed into a community when you travel by wearing a jersey is something really special. Um, but before we get into that, I really want to go to Brandon to talk about the data because this has now become a massive industry.

Expedia Data On Demand And Spend

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Tell us from Expedia's vantage point and the data that you see, how significant is sports tourism in 2026? And what else do you think is driving this mega trend?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

It's massive. It's massive. And I'll I'll zoom out past Expedia Group. I'm gonna cite a United Nations tourism study. Sports tourism is about 10% of all travel spent today, and that's pretty incredible. I think what's interesting about this segment is it's that's value to the travel industry. Number one, like these are people who are going on, you know, trips of a lifetime potentially. These are people who are gonna go for more than just the game. Um, we'll talk a little bit more about that today. But it's really about how you connect with these fans about the experience. And so as we think about travel, experience, passion, like I'm pumped for this conversation today because one, it's critical to the travel industry, but two, it just touches on so many things that make travel unique, right? We talk about like the tribalism you just mentioned, like feeling welcomed. And what we see is whether it's like a moment like the World Cup or it's a local event in Japan, maybe you're going to sumo a wrestling match, or you're going to Banana Ball in Savannah, Georgia, or where they're traveling to. Like people go to have fun and they go to have a great time. And when you put travel and sports together, you end up with this like really passionate experience that connects. And I think that is what gives the segment resiliency. I do not think we're going to see a lot of ebb and flow amongst sports tourism that diverges really from tourism in general in a negative sense. I think we'll continue to see the acceleration of sports tourism. We're seeing that in the World Cup data today. Host cities are projected uh to be about $8.1 billion uh in total spend. So that's a significant chunk of change that a lot of people are competing for. And obviously a lot of travelers are looking to uh, you know, expend their money, their capital, and come to the United States, come to Canada, come to Mexico and experience the games this summer.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Fantastic. Yeah. And I just gonna add too, I mean, just from uh preparing for this conversation for our listeners to really understand the economic opportunity. I mean, uh Sports Events and Tourism Association estimated that this is going to be a $274 billion business in the US alone. And so you're gonna have like 339 million sports travelers generating more than 124 million hotel nights. I mean it's a global market that's heading towards 700 billion in 2026, and this is where it's a global phenomenon. So uh, and I know XPD obviously is a global business, but has a huge market share in the US. So we're definitely gonna come back to you for some additional insights here.

Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_01 15:20

We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

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SPEAKER_01 17:52

And now, back

Jerseys As A Cultural Passport

SPEAKER_01 17:54

to the show. Let's let's continue on that discussion of culture because Azaz, you and I have had a number of conversations around the importance of connecting, yeah, the being able to connect to your tribe when you're traveling. And that's obviously part of our background with taking small group tours. And you had been the one that highlighted to me how much more meaningful it is when you put your jersey on and you connect with locals that are also obsessed with those sports teams. So tell us a little bit more about the cultural connection and why you think this year is going to be so meaningful for sports tourism.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Yeah, from the experience of wearing football shirts, soccer jerseys, and also NBA, I'm I'm a big Toronto Raptors fan too. From wearing those colours around the world, they they open doors and conversations, mostly positive, but not always. You know, you do get rivals of, for example, my club Liverpool, their rivals are everywhere as well. Uh, I think that if, particularly if you're in a place where you do want to immerse in the culture, nothing will bridge that gap closer than wearing a classic jersey of that team. So, an example, I was in Chile in October. Chile's first World Cup was in 1998. They had an amazing squad at the time, very nostalgic, very iconic. And around Santiago, I was wearing the Chile 1998 World Cup jersey. And my my Spanish, it's bad now when I'm on day 89 of Diorlingo, but at that time I was on day minus 50 of Diorlingo. And I I have to say, the amount of love and affirmation and nods I got just from wearing that was something that you can't really replicate from just wearing, you know, it could be really cool, it could be high-end fashion, it could be very cultural in terms of North American fashion, it could be anything like that, but nothing will bridge that divide because the way people feel when they see it, well, number one, they immediately assume that you are part of their tribe. But the second thing is, particularly with the throwback jersey, it it reminds them of a simpler time, an easier time. And for in that example, for Chile, a time where they didn't got to the World Cup for the first time and saw their heroes battling Italy and they eventually ended up going out to Brazil, but it still remembers for them a really simple time to bring that conversation full circle. I think that what we're talking about here is very much the convergence of three different things at the same time. Firstly, fandom itself has changed. So it's not just passive or screen-based. People don't just want to watch, they kind of want to be a part of it. And and and there's so many different reasons for that, particularly social media and and being able to show this to the world. Uh, but you know, being in the stadium, in the city, amongst other fans is now a lot more of a calling for people. The second thing is discovery's moved. So social platforms are now where a lot of travel and trends are discovered. So those platforms where people are spending five, seven, nine hours a day, they're literally you're scrolling and you'll see an atmosphere in Buenos Aires where Boca Juniors are gonna play, or you'll see Liverpool's iconic the cop stand and it rocking, and you want to be a part of it. So that naturally converts into travel. And we are seeing social commerce now starting to finally move into travel, particularly through creators. The last thing is the industry caught up. So it's now actually easier to do this. So flights, short-term rentals, um, experienced platforms like home fans, it's a lot more accessible now. And people are able to, whether they're jumping on AI and telling, asking Claude or ChatGPT to give them an itinerary, or they're jumping on home fans and seeing that, hey, I don't even need to think about this. Very similar to how small group travel started to evolve over the last 15, 20 years as well. It's similar. Similar to that, except now a ticket is included. I think those are the three things that have really created this atmosphere and this bubble. And I think it's bigger than 2026, personally. I think 2026 is just where the spotlight is going to be on it. But this is here to stay.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

For sure. And I think that's where what we're seeing is that when people are experiencing sports tourism, they're getting hooked on it. If they go to an F1 race, and then it's going to become an annual uh kind of rite of passage for them to go, and they're going to get more friends to join them because they're going to see. And I think I'm just going to add two other things, Azaz, and then I'm happy to hand the conversation over to you because I know you're keen to ask both of these guys some uh more in-depth questions about sports tourism. But a couple last things just for our listeners that you hit on there. Technology and media have certainly amplified demand. Social media, of course, with people seeing other people attending these events, the accessibility, as you highlighted, obviously those have been big factors. But one other one I just want to highlight that you know when the stars align and uh the one of the big factors is governments and cities are aggressively investing in stadiums and infrastructure and they're bidding for these global events. And so when you all of a sudden have governments backing these opportunities, that's another key driver where you know you look at a country like Colombia, Daniel, and that's another uh perfect example where the infrastructure is now in place to travel to Colombia for luxury and and real immersive holidays. And Colombia's having a moment because the investment has been made and the infrastructure is in place. And so that is very clear when I was in Vegas recently and saw the F1 race, and you see how quickly they can set it up and tear it down and how it moves on from city to city. And if those people who were, I got intrigued. I listened to the acquired podcast, which I really enjoy as well, and they did an amazing recent episode on F1, and I found it so fascinating. All of a sudden, I want to go to F1 races. So it's definitely for all these reasons having a moment, but Azaz, keen for you to dive deeper into what Expedia is doing and what HomeFans is doing because I want to make sure for all of our listeners on today's podcast, we talk about the marketing, we talk about the product, we talk about distribution, and we make sure, like you and I both know, we have many travel advisors that listen to this, and they're probably trying to figure out how do I get in on this and make sure that I recommend these to my clients and how do I book them. So let's make sure we cover all those topics for our listeners. But on that note, let me hand it over to you.

SPEAKER_04 24:14

Amazing.

Longer Trips And Stadium Spillover

SPEAKER_04 24:15

Thank you, Dan. So, firstly, Brandon, from the data that you've you're ready to share with us, can you go a bit deeper in what you're seeing in terms of demand? You did give give us an overall perspective on the intro, but is this really something more structural and here to stay, or is this a seasonal spike? And to Dan's point, is this something that now the travel advisor should be quickly tapping into to really make more of their own business?

SPEAKER_00 24:41

If they're not tapping in, they're behind. Uh, don't say flatly. This is not seasonal, it's absolutely structural. I think the first thing that you've got to consider is that the tr like the travel itself has changed. This is not a I'm going in and I'm going out just to see the game. 62% of people who are traveling for a sports event are staying for up to six days. So you have people who are not just going to the event, but they're, they're, they're bookending the trip with leisure. And I think if you think about that complete package of the experience, you know, maybe it's it's sports, it's food, it's culture. It's an entire trip where you get to immerse yourself. That's where there's just obscene value to be unlocked by by providers of travel and uh and and experiences. When we think about what we're seeing in terms of the demand today, like why I'm confident that it's structural is it's not just the spikes. World Cup, gonna be huge. It's gonna be a lot of travel demand. But we're seeing that same type of trend. And I'm I'll go back to what, and I I hate to bring this up if it's a sore subject, Raptors Calves.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

You know, it was a tough series. Too soon, I think. Too early. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

But you see people going to an NBA, you know, playoff game in the first series, right? You see people um going to Indianapolis to see Caitlin Clark play a regular season WNBA game. You have people who are using the event as the reason to go, and then they're they're staying for the food, they're staying for the culture, they're staying to explore the town next door, right? If you go to Dallas, like you're going to Fort Worth, here's what we're seeing in San Francisco for the World Cup that really contextualizes this. We're going to term this the spillover factor. Everyone knows you go to the Super Bowl, you go to the World Cup, you go to Wimbledon. There is a limited supply on where you can stay that is walkable to the stadium. So what we see is that people are willing to transit to the stadium to save a little bit, to stay longer, to spend more on just, you know, the experience over the accommodation. Let's talk about San Francisco. Travel intent search data is up about 15%. That's, you know, not crazy. I wouldn't write home about it. If you look at three counties or three cities that are close to San Francisco, so I'll start with Contra Costa County, plus 670%, Oakland plus 110%, Santa Cruz County plus 67%. What that tells me is that people are finding the value and they're saying, okay, I'm going to home base from this from this accommodation that might not be next to the stadium. I'm going for the event, but I'm going to stay longer and I'm going to go see other things. So what we see and why we think that that value continues to balloon is the trip's extending, people are exploring more destinations, and you're building a broader leisure trip from the sporting event itself.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Can I can I add something if I may?

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

I would say excellent. That that is definitely what's happening. But if you're looking from the other way around, where somebody is not traveling for sport, we are seeing that sport is emerging as an option. And this is actually what we are experiencing a lot. Whatever the time they're staying at. I'm sorry, that that data, I mean, I have some data, but not as as accurate as Expedia from our own travelers. But many of those are the ones looking and asking Claude or asking, you know, GPT or searching, okay, what else can I do whilst I'm staying here? Because I'm going for business or I'm going for leisure, I'm visiting a friend, whatever it is. And then the option appears or pops up, you know? And that's super interesting. At least I'm super passionate about that because it's not only about is us or me who I really die hard. I, you know, Wimbledon, I love it. I go every year here. Uh, I love F1 as well. But there are people that are probably don't even know. I went to the Madison Square Garden once to to watch the Rangers Highlanders. Actually, it was a derby. A coincidence, you know. I didn't know much about the rules, but I enjoyed the experience because that's the that's the discoverability element that probably sometimes you don't even know the rules, you don't even know the players, but it's a fun experience to take part into. So that's also another element that probably is not being measured yet, but it should be measured because we're seeing that trend of people that are actually having other plans, but they're squeezing in the sports experience.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I didn't pay Dan to say that, but I wish I did because it's actually it's I do have the data. 57% of people, 57% of people who travel for a leisure trip look for a sporting event to attend. And in our unpack research that we'll that we released last fall, it's it's not like the um the popular sports, right? It's you want to feel part of the tribe, as we were talking about earlier. So it's highlight, it's sumo wrestling, it's getting into the local experience. And like it to Dan's point, it doesn't matter if you know the rules or not. One, there are a lot of tools at your fingertips so you can have kind of the 101, but there's so many experience platforms out there that can help you understand it. And I know home home fans in a lot of ways can help you experience like the event in a more authentic way and like make it more special for you. But there's a huge opportunity here because I think people want to go and feel part of a community. And like if you think about a sporting venue, like hard to argue, that's not one of the like central community points that is that is in a town or in a city.

SPEAKER_04 29:36

I think that's a great segue back to Daniel because uh Brandon used the word community. So Daniel, home fans is building experiences around fans, not just the events themselves. So, what changed in what travelers actually expect from sports trips to enable this move?

SPEAKER_03 29:54

I think there are two considerations there, and I'll break them down hopefully successently. But let's say that on one end, the large-scale high-profile events will always be attractive, as I mentioned before, and I'm not gonna repeat myself. So those are always, you know, a safe bet for anyone to be attracted in and making the decision to take part in a sports event. But the other one is the experience. I I think what how we've evolved is that it's not only about the ticket or the access anymore only. It's not only about that. It's it's about everything that adds value around the sporting event. And and that's how we build home fans around this premise, which is very, very basic in a very basic way, is what happens before, during, and after the game. I can go long and long about the event itself, that you know, many properties, rights holders, they do a lot of efforts and really, really, you know, what Brandon just shared with Liverpool, uh, I think of Mike in terms of what they did for their team for their team, is really what the clubs are really focusing on, being very personalized. But connecting with the local community before the game, during the game, you know, uh feeling the game together and then after the game, celebrating or being a bit bit sad, but you know, being together, everything around that human connection is what makes it different. It it may sound cheesy in a way, but that's exactly what's changing. People are looking for more than just getting a ticket, you know, being there 10 minutes before the game and accessing the game, experiencing the game, and then leaving. Because there's more around that, and they're looking for that added value sort of type of experience, if I may be redundant.

SPEAKER_04 31:25

Yeah, and then in terms of the full sports experience, then what are the different elements that they experience just beyond the match itself or the event itself? So I know that Brandon spoke about the food and the culture. What what are you seeing at home, fans, in terms of when you're building your itineraries? What are the things that are really exciting the fans beyond the event?

SPEAKER_03 31:46

To be very data-driven and uh, you know, paraphrasing Brandon, uh, in terms of our experiences or tours, 95% of our tours are day tours. That's the main element to consider. Uh, it used to be the other way around. It used to be more multi-day, the typical, you know, where you go for a weekend or you go for more days to stay, because they were based on the event. As we flip the coin, it's more like people are traveling for any reason and then they're taking part in the event. So 5% are multi-days. And within that, 95%, uh I would label it also as a package, but not a traditional package of, you know, uh travel package, which is flights and accommodation or or the tour. If it's within a day, three, four hours, it's a package of a local fan, and that's the essential. Uh, main reason why we are called home fans, you know, about the home fans. And then around it, you have an element of food, super important. Everything is with food. You know, in that case, I would include drinks, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, but something to connect and sort of uh put everything everyone together. What we label as the pre-match experience that for a North American friends could be the most similar, I think, to tailgating in the NFL, for instance. What you do before the match, you do a barbecue, you eat something, you gather with fans, and it's outside the stadium or in a place where they book it. So they they do it together. And depending on the geography, um, you know, because it it's also part of the service of the product, it includes safety elements like transportation, uh, you know, being sort of 100% secure that you're gonna access the stadium because, well, there are different barriers to entry, different logistical elements. But the experience is all about that fun part of putting them all together, uh sharing it with different fans, having a local fan lead that, and, you know, sort of connect with every single member of the group and with the locals.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Can I just jump

Derbies Groundhoppers And Stadium Myth

SPEAKER_01 33:30

in? I got one question I was gonna ask Daniel on this, Azaz, because now that we have him here on the podcast, this is a conversation you and I had, Azaz, about football that you are both within that subculture. And just for context, I'm a huge baseball fan. I was born in the UK, raised in Canada. My parents wanted me to have more of the American experience, so they got me cleats and a bat, and I would play baseball growing up. I've coached my son's team for 10 years, and I genuinely love baseball. And so one of the things I've done with my son is travel around to stadiums, and that's obviously a very common thing for baseball fans. But as I came to understand, that I was obviously consistent amongst most of the major league sports, and specifically with football, there's this term that I came to understand called groundhoppers that people that actually travel from uh they travel for the love of the game to visit different sports venues around the world to check off. And one of the things that they're very keen to do is also to go to derbies, which you mentioned before, and I thought it was funny you used the term derby in the context of hockey. Ice hockey is um most people call it, but us Canadians just call it hockey. There's no other there's no other forum. And um, but you you talked about the two New York teams facing off against each other, which in football terminology is a derby. You have two local teams, rivals. And I wanted to go to you on this, uh Daniel, because I wanted you to give us a little bit more about the personas of the type of people within the football community just to explain that subculture of and I know one of the big reasons that people travel to South America, obviously where you're from, you know, one of the big derbies is the Boca Juniors. And so and and and and having yes, exactly. Again, again the super classical, but the community around that and the culture of that experience is far more interesting than I would say most sports stadiums in the US, for example. So that I know that's a big driver for people to go to South America to experience these. So tell us a little bit about some of the derbies, like obviously there's Celtics Rangers, um, but what about the personas of football travelers and a little bit more about the subculture?

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, yeah. So within the the sports or that I the football traveler, let's say, the the ground hoppers are the core, I would say, for the ones that they they tend to tick off their bucket list. I would label it like that. So they hop from ground to ground and they have their goal and they need to attend all these different grounds or different types of games. That's now, I would say, it's very, very niche in a sense compared to the sort of broader customer personas that we have at home fans, but they're very loyal and very consistent with the offering that we have, up to the point that we've opened up several destinations based on their feedback. So I remember last year we opened up Cairo. You know, Cairo, very difficult to access tickets, very complicated logistics, very, very well known as super underground, feisty type of derby. Uh, but yeah, definitely super classico. I would say based on our data, is the most popular game on the world in terms of football. Uh, it's our specialty, it's our bread and butter. Uh, we know we knew that since the beginning, and we focused a lot of effort uh after COVID when we first started with the marketplace. And and definitely up to the up to date, it's the most number one game that we offer. But paraphrasing what I said before, it happens once, twice a year. And if you're thinking about, you know, where what's the most popular ground destination within our platform is Boca Juniors, so La Bombonera is a stadium, and it happens only once. This year is gonna happen in November. It's sold out since last year because, well, a lot of people are planning ahead around that. Uh but I would say that any Boca game is not at the same level, it's the same as uh NFL playoff or regular game, is not the same as a Super Bowl, but 80% of the structure of the feel is there. So actually, what we're pushing more towards is not only focus on the derbies, they're super interesting, and I can name a few, but any game can be as interesting as the superclassico, obviously considering a bit of the difference. And that's a bit of the message that we're delivering. It's all about the experience, not necessarily who you're against. Now, talking about the derbies, uh in in South America, Superclassico number one, Flamingo Fluminense, is super, super popular as well. That's in Rio de Janeiro. Um, I would say those two are the ones that encompass the most in South America. In in Europe, super interesting that the Belgrade derby, I've actually attended that derby myself, very feisty, super, super demanded, all firm, all firm because of the rivalry, but also due to the fact that it's super difficult even for locals to access tickets. And that's another thing that we can talk about afterwards about tickets, you know, getting tickets. Derby della Madonnina in Italy, super, super demanded as well. El Classico is lost a bit of the way this this weekend, for instance, but it's also quite interesting. And obviously, the ones in the Premier League, we just had uh foreign groups in Manchester United Liverpool that is not per se a derby, but it's like the derby for them, you know? And yeah, it is, it is, you know, it's in different things.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Based on the events of this weekend, I think we can classify that as a derby because it was pretty spicy outside the stadium.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, it is. I've been myself. I used to live in Manchester actually, so I went to some of those, and yeah, it is it is spicy. But I would say here in in the UK, old firm is unparalleled in terms of their rivalry. Uh, it's like you have to feel it. I attended twice at the Rangers End. And and I would say North London derby as well is quite good. If you ask me which one is my favorite, I've attended some. I would say one that really, really stood out and it's deep in my heart is the Sevilla Derby between Sevilla and Betis, or and the other way around. It's super, it's not as feisty as perhaps you you can label it from the Wild Red Derby, etc., but it's extremely passionate. This whole city revolves around it and the rivalry, you just feel it. They're super passionate, and it's a beautiful city to to attend as well. So uh, you know, it's it's the mix of everything, and I could just go along and on and on, but I I will stop there trying to answer your question. And derbies are definitely the best hook, you know, to bring people and start discovering the sport.

SPEAKER_04 39:19

I would just add to that too, in in football soccer culture, particularly, there is a lot of aura around the stadium as well. So, for example, in Milan, the San Ciro, like for people in a in and around, particularly the age of where they're starting to get the income or the disposable income where they can start to tick these bucket lists off, you definitely have this nostalgia element where they want to go to these grounds that they watched growing up where it was a little bit less accessible. There certainly weren't companies around, but even travel hadn't moved to that point. You know, at that point you were probably taking one family holiday a year, and now human beings are doing four, five, seven trips a year, only mostly more smaller ones. So there's an example again of how these grounds start to get this mystique around it. Sansiro being one, Camp Now being another one. My own, I support Liverpool and Field is another one. So being around supporters clubs in North America, you definitely see these fans anchoring their yearly trips around a certain stadium visit as well. Now, from the perspective of how those supporters are accessing tickets, they don't really care what game it is. Of course, they would rather it be Manchester United, Manchester City. But the truth is any team, and I'm not going to mention a team because that makes it sound like disrespectful, like which, or they'll take this game, they'll take that game. Now, the truth is they're actually going to see the stadium, they're going to taste the local food, they want to be part of the culture, they want to sing the songs. So, so as well as the derbies, these stadiums start to take this mythical being themselves. And there are examples of those in North America too. I've seen it with Fenway, I've seen it in with Chicago and the Wrigley. Yeah, exactly. Wrigley. Yeah. So they exist as well. The problem is there's obviously so many new ones, particularly in North America and now in the UK, that then you almost have to build that back up. But in Europe, particularly in South America, there's these generational stadiums that people want to visit, and they love the fact when they get there and it's a little bit older and rickety and bricks are missing, and it doesn't need to be perfect. I think that's part of the charm.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

It's like visiting an old cathedral, right? Like it's just it's beautiful. And you've said Anfield, so I'm gonna use my opportunity here. Yeah, it's if you have never been to Anfield, it does not matter who Liverpool is playing, just go. And you will leave, you will leave a changed person. Like it was, and I, you know, I'm I'm in North America, so I'm gonna get some shade for saying this. There is not an NFL experience that touches the Premier League at Anfield. There's just not. And if you're like, oh, I don't believe you, go and then come back and call me and say, okay, that was right, you're right. It's the songs, it's the people, it's the community, and like it's just such an awesome way for people to experience a destination.

SPEAKER_04 42:17

I watched Jürgen Klopp's last game two years ago at Anfield, and I was in between one Canadian and one Australian. Neither of them had a particular link to football. Like they were they were passive followers, and the way I saw those two people moved, it's it's unbelievable. And one of them was in tears, and I'm not gonna shout out which of the two it was, because uh if I share this, they'll both probably listen and wouldn't appreciate me outing them.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

But one of them You can tell us it was you, it's okay.

SPEAKER_04 42:49

You can admit he's a crier, he's a crier. I I actually don't even mind admitting it. There's way too many examples of me starting starting from seven years old, where uh Liverpool lost a game and I asked my mom to hurt me, which we don't need to go into. But um, I think the interesting thing is though, whenever you get those spine-tingling experiences, then you want more of them, but then you want others as well. So people want to get back to Anfield, but as well as getting back to Anfield, now they're starting to add to their bucket list and saying, Well, I do want to go to bombonera and and see any boca game, and then they want to it's it's a pretty slippery slope from the context of you just want more and more of it.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

It's a slippery slope on like the the level of the experience, too. Um when you get that elevated experience, maybe you're with home fans or you get like more access, you can't go backwards. Like once you've sat in the best seats, you're not going up to the upper bowl, right? And it just it becomes this like chase almost, and it's just a fascinating way to experience

Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_00 43:56

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SPEAKER_02 43:56

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SPEAKER_01 45:50

And now, back

How Expedia Markets Sports Travelers

SPEAKER_01 45:52

to the show. Well, let's bring it back to the US, especially for half of our listeners who are in the U.S. that are now saying that what about what did you just say about NFL football, Brandon? It's the holy grail. Yeah. So but I have two specific questions for Brandon because he's also going to have a unique perspective on both of these. When I was asking Daniel about the types of personas in marketing, we obviously use that terminology when we're trying to market and figure out what are the motivations to drive that consumer behavior. And one of the things that, Daniel, you're familiar with in Azaz as well, that I uncovered working with a sports tourism brand. I was doing some advisory work, and one of the things we realized is that when people travel in groups for sporting events, often it's time it's because they don't actually have other people to travel with. And so they travel for the love of the game or the love of a team. And sometimes they have a love of a team and they don't have a tribe that they can travel with. They want to tap into another tribe that is always already going. And so that's a unique opportunity for them to experience a trip that they wouldn't have been able to take otherwise because they don't have a friendship base. They're, you know, they're in their 40s or 50s. They love Man United and they want to join a trip with other Man United fans. And that's one of the cool things about home fans. So this idea you love the team or you love the game, and how do you market to those people and understand their motivations? So my question for Brandon along the same lines, Expedia, massive global brand, mega marketing behind your business. When you think about marketing to sports fans, so there's a two-part question here. The first thing is when you look at the persona of a sports fan, how do you message? How do you market to them? How do you define those personas of what is a sports traveler? And the second question that is the product marketing question is what destinations in 2026 are you specifically focusing on marketing? What cities in the US, what venues do you think are going to have the biggest benefit of sports tourism that you are making the effort to connect the you're interested in this, then here's the perfect opportunity for you.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Yeah, it's great, fascinating question. So I'll I'll tackle the persona one first. So I think that we have to acknowledge that people's travel for sports is not just about the event itself, but there's a lot of dopamine in the planning process. And so what we see is these travelers are booking far out. Now, we're all aware, right? Sports tournament, you don't know what's going to happen in the final rounds, right? It's elimination. If you're thinking about that as one use case, there is a bigger, even broader use case for this like planned travel, right? So like uh Miami Formula One race, it doesn't move dates. Date, there's date equity, regular season games, you can plan well in advance. What we're seeing right now is there's a significant demand that's building outside of 180 days. And so these aren't people taking last minute trips. These are people who are identifying event and experience they want, and then they're building an entire trip around it. So with that lead window, what we're seeing these travelers do is really bundle everything and say, okay, I'm gonna use one source, one site to book all of my travel, and then I'm gonna like base off of where I'm staying. So we're seeing people bundle flights, accommodation activities, and then they're planning like the other days of the trip, almost building their itinerary. And they're using tools, they're using Claude, right? They're using our own, you know, AI tools, trip planning tools with Expedia, using ChatGPT probably, but they're coming to these sites to book because they can book it all in one place, and they're generally booking further out than we've seen. So we're starting to market to them earlier and we're starting to make more significant kind of inroads for them. So I touched a second ago on like Unpack our travel trends study that was released last fall. One of them was around regional sports events. And we, you know, we hit on with sumo and and the banana balls, savanna bananas, and many other events, but it's really enabling people to have awareness of them. So if you're going for a specific sports event, you're obviously going to know what it is and you're gonna base the entire trip around that date. If you're taking a leisure trip, there's also an opportunity to market to these travelers and to give them an experience that they couldn't get in that, you know, in their home city or their home country. Um, on this on the second question, remind me just a little bit of like what exactly you like you hit on, and I'm I'm happy to do so.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Well, just yeah, perfect. So given that this conversation is happening kind of midway in 2026, obviously we're getting close to halfway through the year, depending on when people are listening to this, and I don't want to timestamp it too much, but because you can speak about even 2027 given people are planning ahead. But what I'm keen to know is the venues, the cities, that when you are marketing, clearly we have the World Cup. Um that's obviously the probably the biggest sporting event happening in the US, Canada, and Mexico this year. Um yeah, what I was keen for you to highlight for our listeners what are the events, what are the venues, what are the big uh go-to uh events that you're marketing for 2026?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

And it's it's so it's such it's a great question because there's gonna be, you know, like the leaders in the clubhouse right now are gonna be your mid-market cities who now have a huge event. So Kansas City, Monterey, uh Philadelphia, probably closer to a major city than a mid-market. But you see a lot of these mid-market cities becoming very viable travel destinations. And I am gonna, um here's my hot take. I believe that going to a travel or going to a sports event in a mid-market city like a San Antonio in Indianapolis, a Kansas City, is better than going to an event in a major city like a New York or Chicago. And I say that sitting in Chicago. And I think that's true because the entire town transforms. The entire town. I'll use an example. I'm about 200 miles from Indianapolis. If you've been to Indianapolis in the month of May, the month that we're recording this podcast in, it is a, it's a religious experience. That entire town is grouped around the largest single-day sporting event in the world, which is the Indianapolis 500. You have 300,000 people that come into town. You drive down Speedway, Indiana, which is in Indianapolis. It's like an incorporated town, every patio, every porch decorated. And how do you not like get into the spirit into the moment when you see that? So we're gonna continue to see some of these cities like benefit from the World Cup. I think we're also gonna see the opportunity for other like look-alike cities to say, hey, like Kansas City, they spent, you know, a lot of money on infrastructure and you know, lobbying to essentially get this event. What does that look like for me as someone in San Antonio or in, you know, Phoenix does an excellent job getting big events into Phoenix. So it's it's gonna continue to try to trend towards mid-market cities having huge opportunities. And then the largest cities are obviously gonna continue to be big players as well. It's not that the experience in Chicago and New York is any worse. It's just there's more going on, right? So it depends. Do you want to be immersed or do you want to go to somewhere where like you can jump off into a different experience? And there's so much opportunity for the traveler to like choose that destination and choose their own adventure.

SPEAKER_04 52:34

I couldn't agree more on that, by the way, because I'm sitting in Toronto, and if you contrast Toronto and Vancouver right now, Vancouver has the edge on World Cup hype. I have to say that I live here, but I know how it's all going down in Vancouver and the surrounding areas. And yeah, we've just finished the like the Raptors just had their painful playoff loss on Sunday. We've also got the Blue Jays coming off an amazing season last year, also painful, but at the same time, there's an excitement around that. And in Toronto, we just generally have concerts coming through almost daily, and we're getting better getting ready for the big concert time of the year as well. However, in Vancouver, it's all about the World Cup. And I think from that perspective, Brandon just really hit the nail on the head of it's it's do you want to be immersed in the World Cup or whatever the event is, and that's all you see? Or do you want to go to a place where you're gonna get your dose of that event? Or but you can also plug out of that and try something else as well.

HomeFans Personas And Travel Corridors

SPEAKER_04 53:37

I think that really segues into what I wanted to ask Dan next, which is from what home fans is seeing, are fans traveling more for regular games, or is it marquee events, or is there a difference? Like what's your data telling you uh specifically from that side?

SPEAKER_03 53:54

So marquee events like Derby's in our case, because 80% of our inventory is football, although we're uh diversifying more and more, and that's the idea. Um uh the marquee events are usually if they're really hard to access, the groundhoppers are the number one uh sort of customer base. If they're not that hard, it's all about the experience. So those are the sports fans. In terms of the of the other sort of 70% is a level beforehand, it's not necessarily about the Derby or the marquee event. It's more about where are they traveling to. In our case, our main customer base, at least directly, is the Westerners, Westerner travelers, so North Americans, Western Europeans, Australia, Oceania, and they'd have these corridors. So for instance, the US, in our case, or North America, if I could level them like that, has a very direct corridor between North America and Latin America as a destination, or North America and Western Europe. Within Europe, the UK, for instance, which is our number one source customer base, they tend to go very more like towards Eastern Europe, Western Europe, to Eastern Europe, and Latin America. So it all depends on what their plans are in Latin America particularly, which was where we started as a destination, because when we started, it was COVID times, you know, in Europe, as I probably you heard about it, it was super hard to get out of the country even and not only uh go to the country, so Latin America was more open and it helped, you know, to kick start this um, you know, the this marketplace sort of uh square one, uh, you know, uh cold star effect, which is you need to create supply to bring demand. And we found the supply in Latin America and we brought the demand. So Latin America right now for us is super defining in the data that a lot of people travel to Brazil. It's our highest one in terms of volume, but there's a specialty around Argentina, for instance, because of what we just discussed. And Argentina is more a mix of the groundhoppers and the sports fans with the regular travelers, and in Brazil, I would say it's more about regular travelers with the sports fans. In Europe, and if you level it to the US, there's a definite, definite interest in the Premier League, uh, especially you know the top six, Rexham, because of what we just mentioned. And then in Spain, Real Madrid and Barcelona are always big for them, and Italy, because there's a lot of connections between the people that travel and also who owns the clubs. You know, in Italy, there's a lot of American-owned clubs, so they tend to do a lot and visit that as well. And but many are you know very influenced by what they see, what they find, and and what media tells them and what they you know are inspired with in that sense.

Monetization And The Small Event Edge

SPEAKER_04 56:30

And with that in mind, I just want to change direction a little bit and really talk about business and monetization. We have this industry listening to this who obviously now wants to tap in and and really get on board with this huge scale demand as well. So I'm gonna start with with Brandon. Where is the biggest revenue opportunity in sports travel right now? Is it the flights and accommodation? Is it the experiences? How would you from Expedia answer that question?

SPEAKER_00 56:57

It's definitely not one category. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna answer it in a maybe surprising way. I think the biggest revenue opportunity today in sports, and I mean incremental revenue, is not on the big events. It's in the small and the medium-sized events. And I say that because if you're a revenue manager at a hotel and you don't know the World Cups come into your city, I don't know how long you're gonna be in seat. The edge you have to find are these micro events, and you've got to be able to stitch it together into an experience. So it's flights, it's accommodations, and it's experiences. It's all three. It's the size of the event that creates the incremental opportunity. And generally, the smaller the event, the bigger the incremental opportunity because you are gonna be the person that finds the edge. And with Expedia Group, we enable our partners to do this. We have a partnership with Predict HQ. Predict HQ is a company from the West Coast in San Francisco. They are an events data company. They are magnificent at understanding travel trends and in-city trends. And they have a platform that Uber Domino's, Expedia, many, many different companies use. We enable our partners to see in real time some of these smaller events um coming to maturation and actually there being a demand opportunity. So when we think about flights, accommodations, and experiences, we think about the growth of all of those categories versus just one. Here's a here's a stat for you. Right now, the average sports trip is costing about $1,500. So this is, you know, serious money, right? And I think a lot of us would say, well, it doesn't seem too high. Like, that's the that's a mean, right? If there is certainly a, you know, an opportunity for these to be three, four, five, ten thousand dollar trips, and we do see that with an average of 1,500, what it's telling me is that people are staying longer and they're really, you know, leaning into this part this notion of like, it's not just the event, it's the entire experience, both at the sporting event itself and then in the city. So as we think about their revenue opportunity, it's about finding that edge amongst the small and medium-sized events and positioning yourself as the expert and positioning yourself as the place where a person can come and understand everything that they would need to know to experience that event and get the most out of it. Um, we know we talked about this concept of like groundhoppers, which is a new term for me. I bet they're the happiest people in the world. Like, like, what is better than just traveling around different stadiums? And I think that that concept of groundhopping can be extrapolated as someone who, you know, is just traveling to a city for the first time, going to a sporting event. It's a magnificent experience. Depending on who you travel with, it's going to shape your trip. And so that's why we focus on not just a flight, not just accommodation, not just like the experience, but really all three things as a package. And by the way, when you do package those things up as a consumer, you do save money. So it is a smart business venture for you as an individual. And then for our partners, there's a lot of incentives as well. People who book packages stay longer. I think they stay about 30% longer than people who don't. So there's an opportunity on really all sides of the sports marketplace.

SPEAKER_04 59:53

Daniel, just piggybacking off that, so Brandon talked a lot about experiences there. But experiences, they're actually harder to scale than inventory. So, how do you guys that for home fans balance the authenticity of an experience with actually growing your business?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's always an ongoing conversation, but I would say it falls down to supply. Supply is our most important element, and it's all about finding the home fan, you know, the local fan. And we have our ways, it's very human, it's very one-to-one. And we've experienced a lot of flywheels, very interesting network effects within the marketplace, so that customers become travelers. I actually attended um early this season again here in London, so because I'm starting to also discover like minor London clubs. Sorry for saying that. But I went to Charlton Athletic and met the host. She was with her son and some nephews. And she explained to us that she decided to become a host because she went to Rome and had the most wonderful Ice Roma experience with Valerio, and she got inspired and started to do it. So the flywheel effect is how to really, really find the right supply. Because, in our opinion, and it's a humble opinion, obviously somebody can contradict it, access to tickets, whilst there's different levels, is not the major barrier to entry for us in our product. We secure them, we do it in the most guaranteed way, sometimes through directly through the suppliers, sometimes directly with clubs or official sellers. Um, but let's say that the most important element around the scalability of this model is that we need to find the right people all across the world. But fortunately, the network effects have made it easier for us to scale further. And we wouldn't trade it off. You know, we wouldn't say, okay, let's be faster and just get a ticket and let's do it like that. We're not a ticketing platform. We are an experienced company, and at the center, the local fund or the home fund needs to be there and needs to be verified, better, scanned, and all that stuff. So that it's a wonderful, secure and guaranteed experience.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:57

Brandon, what makes a great partnership between a travel platform, a sports property, and experienced providers?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

It's a really, really solid question because I think that people believe it's going to be like this acrimonious relationship where like everyone's trying to extract their own value. I think with sports and with travel, like the pie, we've seen the pie just continue to expand. So it's around like what are the mutual goals that you're trying to achieve, right? Which isn't like a novel answer, but when you can line up behind what is the vision of bringing these three things together, more than just like an obvious revenue opportunity, but how does a how does a traveler experience these three things as one? That's when you can create synergies and really unlock true value. So we've seen this partnership ourselves. You know, we partnership, we have a partnership with uh both Liverpool and Arsenal. We've sponsored, you know, concert venues uh and events like Jazz Fest in New Orleans before. What we try and do is really align with what is gonna be the best traveler experience. How do we line up our different entities and properties behind that vision and execute in a way where a traveler is gonna come back and continue to be hooked on this sports experience that we've seen uh continue to grow?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:06

So would you say we are moving towards more of a bundled sports experience on your platform?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Absolutely. So you know, you can book World Cup tickets uh on it on our our summer of soccer page. You can really do this all in one place. And I think there is an element of exploration that travelers are seeking when they're going to a new event. And I think because of the way Expedia is, Expedia Group is structured, with the breadth of supply that we have, people can really find anything that they're looking for on our platform, which is a little bit different than if you're going to a direct site and maybe there's a limited footprint in that city. So we see a lot of people starting with our global platform and understanding they can book hotels, short-term accommodations, um, airfare, as well as event tickets. And when you can do that all in one place and it becomes the end-to-end experience, then the traveler gets to focus on the flourishes of the trip. They've got the fundamentals under underfoot, right? Then they get to look into where's that croissant spa that they want to go to in Paris, or where's that nightclub that they want to take, you know, their wife, or where's the shopping center that they want to visit with their children and go to like this cool toy store that, you know, in Toronto or in Chicago, wherever that may be. And so when you can allow people to focus on quick exploration, quick signals that tell them they're gonna have a great trip, you enable them to plan a more full experience. And so we've really leaned into the platform concept and the bundling concept, which is why you can find like event tickets on our site now. It's gotta be a one-stop shop that's gonna enable travel, have a great experience both in trip, and then as they're planning the trip, it's gonna afford them the time to really plan the things that are gonna be um delighters.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

Yeah, it's so interesting, Brandon. Obviously, and hearing from both of you, I think Azaz, this has to be the start of something beautiful in terms of uh creating a series just on sports travel. And I would encourage anyone listening to this to post your comments and come back to us with questions because I'm learning a lot and I feel like we're only still scratching the surface, Azaz. I'm sure you feel the same way because you know, we've talked about uh soccer football travel, we've talked about some of the US travel, some of the big events this year. We've touched on some other events like F1 or tennis or golf, but there's so much to be said on this topic of sports tourism. There's a couple of things I wanted to make sure we do cover while we have everyone

Emerging Trends Endurance And Discovery

SPEAKER_01 1:05:23

together. And one of the things I'm always looking for is, you know, emerging opportunities. Obviously, the concept of our show is trends, and we're also trying to separate the signal from the noise because people are hearing about sports tourism and then trying to unpack what is most meaningful for them, for their business, opportunities for them to advance their career. So those are always the things that are top of mind for me. And one of the things I'm keen to ask both of you, since we've covered some of the big topics, when you think about sports, the the, I guess, the emerging opportunities for sports travel, what would you each say? We will go uh Daniel and then Brandon. Uh, what's one trend in sports travel that you think is just Getting started.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

In our own universe, because we started with football, now we're diversifying. I would say is the participating sports, particularly endurance. We're seeing a lot of demand and interest in taking part in marathons, the high rocks thing, you know, all of this where the traveler actively participates and it's for wellness. Uh yeah, it's it's definitely the London marathon just happened two weekends ago, and there's a massive influx of different people. Actually, my sister-in-law came here, you know, from Mexico just to do it. So definitely our data tells us that endurance is the one that we're seeing with a very, very important spot.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

That's great. And I certainly, as Oz and I have seen this with various group tour brands that are now introducing running as part of their itineraries. And people are more active than ever, more focused on their health and well-being, people are living longer. So that's why I always find it fascinating when you tap into something and you realize there's an opportunity to really grow in this category. And Brandon, what would you say? What's a what's a trend in sports travel that is still early?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:56

I think it is going to a city and then finding the sport. Uh, and it's a little bit of a backwards answer. But I think it's you see people go to a sporting event and then become passionate about it. And I think there's a couple sports that do that uniquely. I think you know, football or soccer is one of them. I think racing does that uniquely because there is such a community event. We talked a little bit both on and off mic about like the kits and the jerseys. And like when you're at an event and you see someone next to you and they have the same jersey, there is no like awkward small talk. It's a high five, it's a hey, where are you from? Like, let's grab a beer, let's, you know, let's go have fun. And I think we what I I was tempted to say youth sports, because youth sports and the travel behind it has has exploded. A lot of youth sports leagues have been either sold to private equity firms or have uh just you know matured themselves and become really revenue-driving entities. One of the big avenues of that is is travel. I think that that's going to continue to persist. I think the thing that I really want to highlight is like when people go to a city, they're very willing to find something that they have not yet experienced, like a high lie or a sport that, you know, like sumo wrestling that maybe you, you know, you've just not really experienced before. Cheese rolling, you know, there's on there's many different things that you can go do when you're in a destination that has a lot of opportunities. So it's making those visible. But I think we're gonna continue to see smaller and tertiary sports grow in importance as the access to these increase, right? You know, like you've got like websites like Reddit, and you've got like these deepened communities where you can find people who are like you and you get it introduced to you know a sport in a city, and then that that interest is peaked.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:38

Well, actually, I'm gonna share one thing very quickly, which is when I lived in Australia, we had read in the Lonely Planet Guidebook that one of the things you should do when living in Melbourne is go to the MCG, the Melbourne Cricket Ground. My wife and I went to the MCG, we saw the Melbourne Demons play, we watched Aussie Rules football for the first time, and I was totally hooked because what I didn't understand, having only watched it on TV, is how magnificent the game is to watch from elevation and to see it from left to right played on a full field. You get the wrong sense of the game when you it's because it just looks it looks like sheer madness on television when people are just kicking and pushing and fighting to get a ball. It's like, is this rugby? What is this sport? But when you see the beauty of it played with these incredibly tall, fit athletes kicking the ball back and forth, and you see the rhythm of the game. We became huge Melbourne Demons fans. We went to multiple games. I still barrack for the demons, as it's referred to, and I still do tipping where I still kind of bet on them because everyone I worked with at Lonely Planet, we would do it every week and we would tip on our teams. And I still watch Aussie Rules football. And so that's a to your exact point, Brandon. I just went on a kind of whim and discovered a whole new sport that I'm now passionate about and can't wait to get back. When I travel back to Australia, I always try and make sure I'm gonna be able to catch a game. So Dan. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:55

Can I ask you a question about that? So like how do you watch it now? Do you like I assume that you want it's streaming or yeah, I stream it. Yes. Yeah. And like if you think about 10 years ago, like that just didn't exist. Like if you wanted to watch it, you were paying mega bucks. You were probably going to a bar. And I think that that access is what's really unlocking this travel opportunity because people are just, they're falling in love and they're like, I gotta experience it in person.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:19

Yeah, for sure. No, thank you for that. I'm gonna pass it to Azaz for one last question for each of you, Brandon and Daniel. And please know this is definitely part one of what I think needs to be a standalone series on sports travel. You guys have shared so much, and I really appreciate you guys making the time for this. But Azaz, let's uh finish off with our two incredible guests

How Big Sports Travel Can Get

SPEAKER_01 1:10:38

here.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:38

So, firstly to Brandon, how big can this category get over the next five years?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:43

It's gonna get big. It's gonna, it'll start with a T. So Skift, which is a industry publication I really trust, they published by 2032 $1.3 trillion in uh travel spending for sports. I think we'll continue to see sports uh accelerate faster than le than traditional leisure growth. I think it's it's because it cuts across so many things. So we talked about the endurance sports and the participation, talked about the regional sports and people like experiencing something brand new in a city, and then we talk about these tentpole moments like the World Cup where people, you know, playing an entire summer. I was talking with someone this morning and very randomly they shared with me that they were going on to eight different cities. And I said, that's an incredible itinerary. And I just think there's so much opportunity to travel for sports, whether you're playing in it, you're watching someone you know play in it, or you're experiencing a professional or collegiate sport, uh, or even, you know, like a minor league soccer game like or a football game like you experienced uh in in London, Dan. There's just so many opportunities to do it, and it's such a great experience to feel that community, that psychological connection that you feel that you want to like be, you know, you want to experience over and over again is going to continue to drive the acceleration of travel with sports tourism.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:55

Awesome. Thank you. And Daniel, last word to you. Um would love to hear your perspective on the long-term growth potential of sports tourism.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:04

Definitely. In in our case, uh uh experiences will will grow massively alongside. We think the key element is continuing with the authentic element, but diversifying into other sports. And we've already sort of identified different subverticals. One is obviously the team sports like football that can easily be replicated to AFL, as you just mentioned, then, or rugby or cricket, et cetera, et cetera. The other ones are the new categories that are more like you know, endurance participating sports, and definitely with the growth of the motor sports, the sport and entertainment, the sporttainment element that we see around the world, there will always be massive demand around that, and led particularly by F1 globally, but obviously depending on the geographies, uh, different ones. Another element which we've been fortunate to experience is that depending on the geography, there's obviously different clusters for sports as a destination. So, for instance, the US is the next market we're gonna tap into. And this is a spoiler alert, we haven't done it properly, but we will do it after the World Cup. It's part of our growth plan. Uh great, great data and insights from Brandon, for instance, with the you know, mid-sized cities versus the typical New York, Miami, LA, et cetera, et cetera. So I'll take note on that. But if you look at, you know, how how we have it uh across the continent. So in some cases, like in Japan, for instance, baseball is huge, as is in the US. In others, basketball, for instance, Eastern Europe or or southern Europe, basketball is massive up to the point that is more or bigger than football. In some others, of course, it's football. So it depends on where on where we find it. And and there are different sporting capitals of the world that will give you that access to multi-sort of sports offering. And if you think about very close by, obviously London, obviously Paris, they just uh hosted the Olympics. But if I go to a city like Madrid, Madrid, you know, is uh is a big city for us, and they're just gonna start hosting an F F1 race. The Masters 1000 just happens in their winning. You know, you have every single month, even like just not just Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid, they're playing tonight against Arsenal for instance the semifinal uh leg of the Champions League. So there are other cities that are starting to sort of amass different opportunities and offerings for sport, and this is where we're also tapping into because a lot of people are starting to get more interested.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24

Cool. And Brandon, uh, as we say farewell to our listeners, I want to make sure that anyone that's been inspired from this can find out more information as either a traveler or a travel advisor about what Expedia is doing in the sports tourism space or to be able to connect with you directly. So thank you again for being here. Where would you suggest that people connect with you or the team?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:43

Yeah, so we have a we have a partners website, uh, it's partners.expedia group.com, and you can go there to see all of our research trends. Uh, you can also reach out directly. I'm on LinkedIn. Um feel free to shoot me a note, happy to connect. Love sports, love travel, love tourism, so I can bring all these three all these three things together. Generally a pretty good day for me. So I appreciate you guys having me on. And you know, if this does become a series, I'll keep my calendar open and just in case you want to invite me back. But uh there is just so much opportunity. And I it was great, you know, Dan, hearing your perspective. And I'll look forward to you uh making some in a rows in the U.S. And if you need any tips about you know navigating your way around Indianapolis during the ND500, I'm your guy. Uh but yeah, thank you very much for having me. And we can uh bring back some more data when you guys choose to have this conversation again.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:28

We'll definitely have you back. Immensely appreciate you joining us, Brandon. Super valuable, much appreciated. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:33

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:33

And Daniel, obviously, I want to make sure that everyone listening to this is able to connect with you as well to be able to learn more about home fans and be able to reach out to you as an expert in this space.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:42

Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Sas. It's been a pleasure, Brandon. A pleasure as well. I've just sent you a connection request on LinkedIn, so hopefully we can continue the conversation. Yes, we can everyone can find me on LinkedIn. Happy to answer any any questions you have. Uh homefans.com is our website or platform. Um we probably didn't mention it, but it's a marketplace for authentic sports experiences. How that's how we label it. And there you can find different listings around local led immersive experiences in sport, the largest one in the world. I can say it. No, you know, in that sense. Um uh and uh follow us on our socials. We do a lot of things with content creators as well. Uh every single weekend, basically, we take different content creators to different parts of the world. So, for instance, this weekend there was somebody in Tokyo, another one in Sevilla, uh, another one in Latin America, and that content is super important, highly valuable, but also very inspiring. And it showcases how the experience looks like and feels like. So that's the most important thing. It's not about showing how you access the gate and sit at your sort of seat, but it's actually what happens before, during, and after that encompasses what the local led authentic experience is. So thank you very much for the invitation. Looking forward to continuing this discussion. And, you know, anyone can send me anything for uh growth opportunities. I'm actually in charge of all the partnerships at home fans. So happy to, you know, continue the conversation in in other channels.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:09

Thank you very much. You're most welcome. I'm sure you'll have many people reach out to you. And I know Azaz and I are cheering you on and for your U.S. launch in particular. We just wish you every success with that in 26. It's a perfect opportunity, as you mentioned, in the World Cup. And so we um yeah, we're big fans of yours and really appreciate you making the time for this. This has been incredibly illuminating and definitely just the beginning. So, Daniel, thank you again for being here.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:31

Thank you. Humbled for that. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:33

And Azaz, so here we go.

Takeaways Human Connection And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 1:17:35

First sports tourism episode in the books. Tell me your wrap-up thoughts. And obviously, I want to make sure that all of our listeners can connect with you after this, even if they just want to buy a replica jersey.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:46

So, yeah, I think I think my biggest overarching thought is that this is this has to be a whole series and a whole conversation that needs to go even deeper than we were able to go today. Um, I think that there's different elements of it. I love the two guests that we had today, and I think it really opens up a conversation that's we this this whole sub-genre of travel needs its own space to actually talk. And I know that there are conferences and there are events where it brings people together, but what I haven't yet seen, having done, particularly in North America, I've been on the event landscape such as as of you Dan for years, and I've never really seen the space where this particular, I'm not gonna call it a niche, this particular sector of travel really gets to breathe and explore amongst other parts of travel. And you know, there's always there is definite benefit in having events and and conversations that are specific towards a sector. However, I do think that the best happens when things are all in the same blending pot as well. So um I'm excited for sports tourism to just continue to evolve. And um, I think that conversation with Expedia was awesome because we've all heard of them and we probably have used them, and it really brings their expertise in. But to your point, we are massive fans of home fans, Daniel, and particularly both of us have our roots in. We both worked at G Adventures, for example. So we have a huge passion for companies that are working with the local community, empowering the local community, making sure that the tourism dollars stay in the local community, and nobody does that better than home fans. Not only are you the best at what you do, but the fact that you have that element to it as well where it's super local means you're very close to both of our hearts as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:41

Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:43

Yeah, very well said as us. And and so one thing we absolutely did hit on, but this you also highlighted the opportunities for continuing the conversation. We definitely talked about cult cultural immersion, which obviously is a big focus for both of us. And so connecting to local teams and local fans and supporting local communities. We touched on a little bit of wellness there, obviously, with Daniel's comments about marathon and running. I think endurance events is obviously a big focus area, but one area we didn't talk about at all was luxury travel and VIP packages, these hospitality suites. I think as you most of you know, we had Peekaboo Street, uh, which is a famous American Olympic athlete that she's created these trips with the Crest Club. There's six different trips that you can go on and you can have access to these elite athletes and be able to experience World Cup races around the world. So very much sports tourism, but very luxury, very high-end, which is another segment of the market that is still seeing significant growth. So that's definitely a topic we have to touch on when we regroup on this. But you started off this conversation uh really nicely, Azaz, by talking about the intersection of three huge shifts. And I just want to go back and revisit that as we close, because when I came to this conversation, the three huge shifts that I was looking to discuss was entertainment, travel, and identity. And the identity is that what you highlighted so well by wearing your jersey and connecting to local cultures and being part of a tribe. And so I think one of the things that should be a big takeaway for all of our listeners is that travelers today are seeking something more than just a nice view. They're really seeking the opportunity to participate. And it's not about just going somewhere, they're they're going somewhere to cheer, to be involved, to have a sense of belonging. And that is what's really unique about sports tourism. And I think that also reflects broader society today. You know, we're lonelier than ever, we've more connected than ever, but we're also feel so isolated. And that's only accelerating as we embrace artificial intelligence in our lives, in our in our work roles. We want to have human connection, and that's one of the reasons I'm so bullish on the travel industry and love doing this podcast. But Azaz, this has been a fantastic experience for me to co-host this episode with you. So as we close off, let's make sure that all of our listeners can find you, connect with you, and reach out for opportunities to collaborate.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:57

Yeah, I think the easiest way from a business side is LinkedIn. Um, if you folks want to see my jersey collection, then we can link that in the show notes too. But really, if we're talking specifically around this topic, and you know, one of my biggest passion, the thing I'm talking about the most, are all my keynotes at the moment are on social commerce. I think the intersection of discovery and conversion has never been tighter on the platform where attention exists, distribution is free, so brands need to be on there. And now for the first time, there is a serious pathway from discovering something and booking it, and yet we haven't even got into the trend that's taken over from China and other parts of the world, which is actually live shopping on these platforms, and we will be able to sell experiences, travel on these platforms too. So if someone isn't on that perspective at the moment where they seriously believe the number one place you should be focusing on, and that's not to say that your email marketing strategy shouldn't be tight and other parts shouldn't be tight. But if you're not social first in 2026, then you're kind of doing yourself a disservice. So if you want to talk about that, if you want my thoughts on that, then yeah, LinkedIn is the best place to start. Um and yeah, you can always find people on the internet these days.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:22

Fantastic. Well, thanks again for being such an important part of this, for helping to put this incredible uh show together, both with our panelists and with the office the pr the production effort to uh to get ready for this. So thank you again. Obviously, I value our friendship highly, and um um I see you know you continuing to shine in the industry. So I wish you all continued success as well as Oz, and hopefully we'll be back on the air together in no time. Absolutely. Thanks, everyone. And thanks to all of our listeners for joining us on this special sports tourism episode as part of season seven of the Travel Trends Podcast. We do post clips and highlights on our social channels so you can check those out so you can see and listen to all these amazing speakers. The video itself is on our YouTube channel, but if you want to see clips, you can find them on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Travel Trends Podcast. And then please make sure you are subscribed on the streaming platform of your choice to be notified when new episodes go live. And you can find out about our newsletter at Traveltrendspodcast.com. Thanks again to all of our listeners. We really appreciate your support and joining us, and we look forward to continuing the conversations on sports tourism. Send me an email, Dan at Traveltrendspodcast.com. If you have suggestions or ideas for future topics, guests, and how we should continue this series, and of course, comment on any of our social channels as you see this activity. Thank you again, and until next week, safe travels.