One of my favorite places to connect with my sports industry peers is the NASC webpage. It is a diamond in the rough. It is a results-focused and carefully designed webpage with you in mind. It is easy to get around. The content, features and member services are all laid out for you to click and investigate what you need, at your own time and pace.

My two favorite resources are the Event Database and the Economic Impact Template. The Event Database has every open sporting event from basketball to wrestling for you to search, research, match and bid on to bring groups to your destination. The Economic Impact Template is a tool to use that helps you predict the best possible results of the event prior to bidding. It gives you spending estimates and patterns of behavior specific to that unique event. The data will help you in your bid presentation and preparation. It is a tool that gives you a rough approximation of the economic impact that will help you in the long run for planning and going after certain events. It has also been updated and improved so it’s even better than before. These ballpark figures hopefully give you the data you need for approval and funding too.

So the next time you are thinking of searching for a lead, or how to connect with that rights holder or just want a place for some help, remember to click on www.sportscommissions.org. I am confident that you will be glad you did.

About the Guest Contributor Dave O’Lenick, CMP, CHME, CTA, Fort Worth CVB
After spending twenty years on the hotel side, Dave has shifted his career over to the CVB side to work with the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau. He is marketing Fort Worth as a premiere sports destination for sporting events, tournaments, trade shows and special sports seminars. This is a new position at the Bureau dedicated to sports related events and a new initiative the FWCVB feels strongly about. Dave is partnering closely with rights holders, sports facilities and hotels to bring more regional and national events to Fort Worth because Fort Worth certainly has “Game” and continues to host notable and well recognized sporting events. He is currently working on his CSEE (Certified Sports Event Executive).  Dave’s wife Deann is a Speech Pathologist who is working on her PH.D. His daughter Lucy is studying for her Master’s Degree at the University of Florida in Sports Training and son Freddie will be off to college next year for a Music-Marketing degree. Dave enjoys golf, his new Bowflex, reading biographies, and motivational books and is a proud member of NASC.