ABSTRACT
The growing use of sport events as an economic development tool is paralleled by the growth of the events industry. Recent estimates indicate that event tourism is the fastest growing element of the leisure travel market, and that consequent roomnight demand has now surpassed that for business conventions (Shifflet & Bhatia, 1999). Although this figure includes cultural events along with sport events, other data suggest that sport events are, perhaps, the largest component of event tourism (Getz, 1998). Sport events are also one of the most widely studied elements of sport tourism (Chalip, 2001; Gibson, 1998).
