Narelle Gosstray! You and your team the Aussie Hearts just finished third in the Sunshine Showdown women’s baseball tournament!
What are you going to do now?
One, two, three . . .
They’re going to Disney World.
“That’s why we come,” Gosstray said.
That iconic question is hardly an issue for Gosstray or tens of thousands of other amateur athletes who compete at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in games as varied as soccer, paintball, gymnastics, jump rope, basketball, inline hockey, dodgeball and track and field.
The 240-acre complex, which includes a 9,500-seat baseball stadium, a 5,000-seat field house and dozens of athletic fields and courts, approaches its 10th anniversary next spring secure — under virtually any measure — as one of the top amateur sports venues in the world.
But its value to Disney goes far beyond its own gate. Even if it were to lose money, its measure of worth includes what it does to help fill Disney World’s four theme parks and 22 hotels. The parks and the sports complex feed off each other.
Teams want to compete there, partly because of Disney World. That makes a national youth or adult sports tournament far more attractive than one held in, say, Lansing, Mich. And athletes’ families are more likely to come along, particularly those in youth sports.
Package deal
For some tournaments, athletes are required to buy packages that include Disney hotels and theme-park tickets. Other tournaments arranged by outside sports leagues often have ties to outside hotels, and no Disney requirements.
But in the end, for the most part, they’re all going to Disney World.
“Our business model would not be near as successful if we weren’t here at the No. 1 vacation destination,” said Reggie Williams, vice president of Disney’s Wide World of Sports. “The phenomenal equity that Disney has with kids carries over to our kids with passion for sports.”
Williams and other Disney officials won’t release attendance or revenue numbers. But they insisted that, at least in recent years, the complex is easily outperforming even their “most optimistic” projections.
That was not always the case. Six years ago, in a lawsuit trial, Disney officials testified that the complex was planned for four purposes: promote Walt Disney World; fill a few hotel rooms; attract some sponsorships; and enhance Disney World’s image as a sports destination. But the officials testified that total attendance to the sports complex, including athletes, their families and friends, plus baseball fans who went to professional games at the baseball stadium, was between 1 million and 1.2 million in 1999. “We’re not getting anywhere near enough spectators in to see these events,” Al Weiss, then president of Walt Disney World, testified during the trial.
Officials today acknowledge that the complex draws more than 180 events in more than 30 sports each year. In June 2005, the company announced the arrival of the complex’s 1 millionth athlete. That means Wide World of Sports averaged about 120,000 athletes per year since it opened in March 1997. Michael Millay, director of sports events, said the current projected annual attendance is “north of there” and growing rapidly.
Disney tapped an emerging market: sports tourism, he said.
“You have more people participating in some sort of youth sports activities. And you’re also seeing a trend of people traveling more than they did in the early days, whether it’s to find competition or to find that special experience,” Millay said. “They’re traveling farther. And I think they’re traveling younger. So you’re seeing that trend, which is correlating into a larger sports tourism pie.”
Dozens of tournaments
Bobby Dodd, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, a multisports federation that partnered with Disney to sponsor Wide World of Sports competitions, said Disney tapped a pent-up market. Youth and other amateur athletes were ready to travel long before cities and facilities were ready for them, he said.
The AAU, now headquartered on Disney property in Lake Buena Vista, hosts 30 to 35 tournaments a year, drawing 30,000 to 35,000 athletes and 125,000 people total to the complex, Dodd said.
“When Disney decided to build their sports complex and so many cities decided to create sports commissions, there already was a lot of movement in youth sports,” Dodd said. “I think it’s been here all along.”
Disney also creates more reasons for people to travel to sports competitions.
Many of the competitions held at Wide World of Sports are events that Disney lured, either through long-term contracts with groups such as the AAU, or through bids for individual tournaments. But that’s not enough. So Disney and some of its partners also create a lot of new sporting events to fill niches — and to fill weekends. Millay said about a third of the events held at Wide World of Sports are Disney-created.
Regardless, people come. The Disney Soccer Showcase, he said, didn’t exist seven years ago but now is the country’s top youth soccer tournament.
The Sunshine Showdown women’s baseball tournament was also Disney-created. That was just fine with Gosstray and the rest of the Aussie Hearts.
The Aussie Hearts brought two teams from Australia, one of 14-and-under girls, and one of adult women, to compete in different brackets.
“Coming to Disney gives an awful lot of girls an opportunity to play on an international forum,” Gosstray said.
Adding the Disney angle made it an easy sell, she said.
“We all grew up ourselves just loving Disney. And we all love baseball,” said Gosstray, who has twice been named to Australia’s national women’s baseball team. “So when we found out that there was a tournament at Disney that combined baseball and getting the opportunity to stay and play in this magnificent venue, we all had to come.”
Disney World hotel reservations and theme-park tickets were part of the package they were required to buy in order to enter the three-day Sunshine Showdown. The Aussie Hearts’ packages, covering everything from uniforms to airfare, with a stopover in California, ran up to $5,000 a person. Gosstray said that was fair, about the same as she paid in 1997 when her Australian touring team came to America — and there was no theme-park visit on that trip.
Boon for Osceola
According to Williams, about half the teams that come to Wide World of Sports stay off Disney property. Some of the competition moves off property, too. This fall a softball tournament sponsored by the USSSA, a Kissimmee-based multisport federation, drew 450 teams. They took over all 13 fields at Wide World of Sports plus another 15 to 17 fields across Central Florida.
Under USSSA arrangements, the participants all stayed in Osceola County hotels, said USSSA Executive Director Don DeDonatis.
USSSA books six weekends a year at Wide World of Sports, bringing in more than 40,000 athletes, he said. The softball tournament alone drew 10,000 players and 30,000 people total.
“It isn’t just the team coming. It’s families, girlfriends, wives, kids,” DeDonatis said. “If you put that same tournament in Lansing, Mich., we can still draw pretty good, but we might not have the same following. The wife might want to stay at home with the kids.”
Williams, himself a former NFL player, insisted that Wide World of Sports’ success is due to the success of the sports. The Disney name and facilities not only attract people, but add to the allure for each athlete. In youth sports circles, “We’re going to Disney World!” now means playing against teams from around the country, for some sort of championship, he said.
“It is all about the athlete. They drive our business model,” Williams said. “In many cases, unless they’re going on to play college sports, it becomes the pinnacle of their sports career.”
