Abstract

Sporting venues are important tourist attractions. As Gammon (2010) notes in his discussion of sports stadia, sporting venues have ‘grown in importance, from … often aesthetically indifferent utilitarian structure(s) into … iconic symbol(s) of place, team, sport and/or event’ (p. 116). Research about sporting venues has typically focused on venue tours, including explorations of tours and authenticity (Gammon & Fear, 2005), constructions of tour narratives (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2010; Ramshaw et al ., 2013) and tours of sport-specific venues, primarily in European football (Brochado et al ., 2021; Edensor et al ., 2021). The relationship between tourism and sporting venues has also been explored in terms of visitor intention and destination branding (Panagopoulos et al ., 2025), online reviews of venue tours (Darko et al ., 2023; Ramos et al ., 2023), creation and confirmation of place attachment and fan identities through sporting venues (Weng, 2022; Wright, 2013), the role of sporting venues in urban redevelopment initiatives (Friedman, 2013; Ramshaw & Gammon, 2022), virtual tours of sporting venues (Tobar & Moraes, 2021), and sporting venues as sacred spaces and symbols of place (Ellis, 2019).