Building a Sports Tourism Destination in Virginia Beach

Client Challenge

Virginia Beach, an independent city of roughly 460,000 at the center of the 1.8-million-person Hampton Roads region, recognized that its beachfront drew summer visitors but that its sports facilities were leaking tournament activity, and the associated hotel nights and spending, to neighboring Chesapeake and Norfolk. The city wanted to understand where it stood as a regional and national sports tourism destination, which new venues could capture year-round tournament demand, how those venues should be operated and, as its facilities matured, where to reinvest limited capital for the strongest return. Answering those questions over time called for a sustained, independent research partner rather than a single study.

Approach

Victus Advisors worked with Virginia Beach across a connected series of engagements from 2016 through 2024. The partnership opened with a sports tourism venue inventory and market assessment that benchmarked the city against competitor markets and mapped its strengths and gaps, followed by a feasibility study for a new indoor sports center that analyzed demand, evaluated sites and recommended a roughly 175,000-square-foot venue near the Convention Center with convenient access to hotels and retail. Victus then sized the specific opportunity for an indoor track and field facility, and once the city advanced its indoor sports center, evaluated competing private operators through a scored, stakeholder-referenced selection process. As the program matured, Victus delivered an updated market and facilities opportunity study for the Convention & Visitors Bureau, a reinvestment study prioritizing return on investment across four existing city facilities against an $18.5 million capital plan, and a financial and economic feasibility study for a tournament-caliber baseball complex in the Princess Anne Corridor.

Benefits to Client

The partnership gave Virginia Beach an evidence-based roadmap that it executed over the better part of a decade, anchored by the Virginia Beach Sports Center that grew out of the early feasibility work. By 2023, sports tourism drew nearly 560,000 visitors and generated roughly 147,100 hotel room nights and $138.7 million in direct spending, with the Sports Center alone accounting for about 42% of those visitors and nearly 60,900 room nights. The later studies equipped the city to keep building on that momentum, pinpointing the field, ice and pool gaps still limiting tournament capture, ranking reinvestment options across existing venues by return on investment, and testing the demand, operating model and impact case for a new tournament baseball complex, giving Virginia Beach a clear basis for prioritizing its next sports tourism investments.