UK sport tourism industry is attraction huge numbers of tourists and generating £2.3 billion per year thanks to sports enthusiastic foreign tourists.
According to the survey by VisitBritain almost 2 million tourists visited Britain to watch sports. These tourists are spending more than £1.3 billion in the process. 1.4 million tourists played some sort of amateur sport in Britain which generated another £1.3 billion for the tourism industry.
This takes the share of sport tourism in Britain to 14% of all tourism spending by foreign tourists making it one of the largest source of foreign tourists arrivals.
The survey also outlined Soccer as the main source of spending for Sport Tourism in Britain. Almost 1.2 million tourists came to watch English Premier League Clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool etc. In fact Manchester United and Liverpool FC has played major role in their respective city’s tourism.
Of total number of tourists came to watch soccer Around 267,000 were Irish, 95,000 Americans, 88,000 Germans, 86,000 Norwegians, 75,000 Spanish, 65,000 Italians, 55,000 Australians, 52,000 Dutch, 46,000 French and 39,000 Swedes.
After Soccer, Golf scored most with foreign tourists. Of these visitors 94,000 were from United States and there were 66,000 Germans, 44,000 French, 30,000 Spanish and 28,000 Irish.
The survey shows that the third most popular sport to attract foreign tourists is Horse Racing.
Most visitors who travel to England to watch sport are from Ireland, with 400,000. Despite the slowdown in foreign tourists arrivals in the near future, sport tourism industry has not been affected. In fact it is expected to grow for 2009 and 2010. World Class Sporting events is keeping England Tourism Industry strong.
VisitBritain www.visitbritain.com