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Winning Play

They don’t generate the glitz and global hype of Comic-Con International. But a growing slate of youth baseball, softball and soccer tournaments is having a noticeable economic impact in places like Poway and Santee, the two local cities with sports facilities operated by locally based Sportsplex USA.

“We were fortunate in that we held up better than lots of other industries during and after the recession,” said Bill Berghoff, president of the Santee-headquartered company. “The pace of the tournaments we’re getting has held up really well.”

Berghoff said the number of youth tournaments held at the company’s two local sites has grown steadily over the years, to more than 50 annually — averaging about one per week these days.

Experts say amateur sports tournaments — held at private and public facilities — continue to deliver significant economic ripple benefits in the United States, as sports-related travel remains relatively resistant to recessionary dips in overall consumer spending.

According to Florida-based consulting firm The Sports Facilities Advisory, 53 million traveling athletes nationwide participate in youth sporting events, creating an estimated $7 billion in annual economic impact. Visiting players, coaches and their families stay in hotels, gas up their cars, eat at restaurants and shop at local stores.

In Poway, where Sportsplex USA opened its first facility in 1994, city officials estimate that league games, tournaments, sports clinics and corporate events held at the facility draw 300,000 visitors to the venue annually. This has the potential to generate an economic impact of up to $3 million annually, as out-of-town participants shop, dine and book local hotel rooms.

“It’s a lot of people coming in for a weekend, including many people who otherwise would not see these fields and the other amenities that the city has to offer,” said Robin Bettin, Poway’s director of community services.

Helping Put Heads in Beds

At the 108-room Hampton Inn & Suites, which like Sportsplex is adjacent to Poway’s main industrial parks, tournaments at the sports center accounted for about 500 room nights during the past year, sales director Stephanie Rodgers said.

“Being in an industrial park, it definitely helps our business on weekends,” Rodgers said. “They have tournaments year-round, so it’s a nice impact.”

The proximity between Poway and Santee has allowed the facility and tournament organizers to bring in large regional and national events that might otherwise have gone elsewhere. The largest week-long tournaments can bring in as many as 150 teams from 40 states.

During a single peak tournament month like July, Berghoff said, the two sites can generate about 15,000 hotel room nights for the local region.

The city of Oceanside, which does not have a privately run sports facility, is among other local communities seeking a similar halo impact. Oceanside is working with private developers on a planned complex of sports fields — on a 465-acre, city-owned site known as El Corazon near a cluster of business parks — that could host large national and regional soccer and other athletic events.


In the Center of Santee

Santee officials estimate that events at Sportsplex USA, which opened in that city in 2010, have the potential to draw up to 1,000 visitors daily to the venue, which is in the heart of the city’s commercial district. As a city attraction, the facility is rivaled only by the 190-acre Santee Lakes Recreation Preserve, which generates 650,000 visitors annually.

“The fields are right there in the center of town, so anybody who goes there drives right by the Santee Trolley Square, and lots of people buy things there,” said Bill Maertz, Santee’s director of community services. He was referring to Santee’s largest retail center, owned by New York-based Kimco Realty Corp.

Among the popular restaurants in the neighborhood is Phil’s BBQ, one of five San Diego County locations operated by the San Diego-based company led by owner Phil Pace.

Phil’s director of sales, Chad Glidewell, said tournaments at the nearby sports facility have played a big role in drawing the large family-oriented customer base that the company anticipated when it opened the Santee restaurant in 2012.

“The Santee location has a big patio that seats around 60, and that gets a lot of use when the tournaments are in town,” Glidewell said. He added that Phil’s also sees an uptick in off-site event catering in Santee and Poway, tied to the tournaments.

A 2005 impact analysis commissioned by the city projected that a sports complex could generate $5.5 million annually in local expenditures and create demand for 80 new hotel rooms in Santee. The Sportsplex impact will figure prominently as the city works with developers to bring a movie theater, and in the longer term a mid-priced hotel, to the city’s main commercial district, said Pamela White, Santee’s senior economic development coordinator.

Santee officials reported that sales tax receipts at the city’s two largest shopping centers rose 12.2 percent from the year-earlier period in the third quarter of 2010, the first full quarter after the Sportsplex’s opening in summer 2010.


Outsourced Programs a Trend

A fourth-generation member of a family with long ties to the hospitality and recreation industries, Berghoff co-founded the company with his father, Paul, in 1994, starting with the Poway location. Both facilities — with baseball and softball fields and two indoor soccer arenas, on roughly 15 acres — were built by the cities and are operated by Sportsplex USA, which employs 25 at each site and foots all related operating costs.

City and company leaders note the arrangement brings revenue to the cities — 7 percent of proceeds from the parks’ $2.50-per-person admissions for adults. Since 2010, Berghoff said that has amounted to about $150,000 annually for the city of Santee and $120,000 for Poway.

More significantly, the arrangement means cost savings for the cities. Poway’s Bettin estimated that city would otherwise need to invest around $75,000 annually in full- and part-time salaries to oversee those programs, in addition to the $11,000 per acre that it would cost to maintain the fields.

She said the Sportsplex’s presence also frees up high-demand space at city parks and school fields, where several nonprofit organizations hold their own sports events.

Berghoff said his company is counting on more growth in a national trend toward privatization of amenities like recreation programs, as cities and states face continued budget constraints.

He likened the situation to what the privately run package shippers have done for consumer mailing services, as an alternative to the besieged U.S. Postal Service, at a time when online shoppers increasingly want their goods delivered quickly and cheaply.

“We’re sort of like the FedEx of sports and recreation,” Berghoff said.

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