If You Build It … Myrtle Beach’s Growing Sports Tourism

Swoop along over the beach itself: the celebrated Grand Strand. That’s where it all began, in the first years of the 20th century. That stretch of oceanfront is what drew visitors from across the country eager to partake of the sun, the sand and the waves. And it’s what built all those high-rise hotels you see below you, along with the restaurants and bars and amusement facilities. Then, as you hover farther inland, take in the interlacing greenery of the nearly 100 golf courses in the area. Following the construction of Pine Lakes Country Club in 1927, the game took root here and courses sprouted at a steady rate, earning Myrtle Beach the title Golf Capital of the World while driving the local economy for the past several decades. Now, finally, look down from the sky at the latest piece of the puzzle, a startling array of new green spaces that have sprung up throughout the region. Unlike the rolling, curving topography of all those golf courses, these are flat, geometrically configured layouts—playing fields for baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse. Behold a bird’s-eye view of Myrtle Beach’s deep investment in what has come to be known as sports tourism.

Mike Anderson, executive director of sports tourism for the city of Myrtle Beach, says city leaders saw the need to diversify about 15 years ago. Youth sports in particular offered an opportunity for increased revenue, as each young player coming to town for a weekend- or week-long tournament would be bringing with him or her a parent or two, siblings, maybe even grandparents. In addition, those events—around which families can build what have been dubbed “tournacations”—promised a way to bolster tourism during the “shoulder seasons” of late fall and early spring, when far fewer visitors come for the beach or the golf courses.

It’s a smart play. Nationwide, according to a report on HBO’s Real Sports, U.S. families spent $9 billion on sports tourism in 2016. Still, while Myrtle Beach’s location made it geographically friendly for many families unable or unwilling to travel to more established sports centers in Florida or California, attracting a significant share of that burgeoning business would require a whole range of new facilities. You can’t play soccer on a putting green. Or basketball on the sand dunes.

Cut to Kevin Costner standing in a cornfield. Or maybe in a sandy stretch of wax myrtle. Seriously, while folks in the area have taken to rolling their eyes at the all-too-easy and far-too-familiar Field of Dreams allusion, the phrase “If you build it, they will come” has been proven spectacularly true over the past decade in Myrtle Beach.

To attract youth-sports tournaments and their attendant tourist dollars, Myrtle Beach has spent millions over the past 15 years on a wide range of new and updated facilities. On a vast swath of land once occupied by the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, which closed in 1993, the Grand Park Athletic Complex now stands, offering seven 300-foot multipurpose fields and two 200-foot youth fields. All feature artificial-turf surfaces and lights and are designed to accommodate baseball, softball, lacrosse, soccer and football. Grand Park, which also houses Crabtree Memorial Gymnasium, as well as a roller-hockey rink, is adjacent to the Market Common shopping complex, a movie-set-handsome village-like layout offering enough upscale stores and restaurants to keep a family entertained and fed during tournament weeks.

The centrally located Ned Donkle Field Complex, meanwhile, offers another seven natural-grass diamonds, as well as batting cages, concession stands and even press boxes. And just last year Myrtle Beach completed a $5.5 million renovation of its high school football stadium and track.

The city’s commitment to promoting sports tourism has also brought in private investment. In 2006, recognizing that a good thing was blooming in the area, the Baltimore-based Ripken Experience partnered with local developers to open the company’s second baseball facility (after the original, founded by Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr., in Aberdeen, Md.). Baseball facility is a rather tepid term for the $23 million complex that now features nine lighted, artificial-turf ball fields—five for youth and softball and four full-sized layouts—all meticulously modeled on famous big league parks of the past, including Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds and Crosley Field, complete with signature elevated warning track. There are also 17 batting cages and 12 bullpen mounds. A ride around the 50-acre layout in a golf cart is a giddy treat for any fan of the game.

The Ripken Experience has been something of a home run for the city as well. In ’17, 680 high school and college teams came to Myrtle Beach for spring training, booking more than 12,000 hotel rooms, while almost 500 more teams (with coaches and families in tow) participated in week-long summer tournaments, generating an economic impact for the year of more than $28 million for Myrtle Beach.

To accommodate indoor sports, and thus further expand the calendar for “tournacation” action in the area, in March 2015 the city opened the Myrtle Beach Sports Center, a $14 million, 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility. With 72,000 square feet of column-free floor space, the center houses eight basketball courts and 16 volleyball courts and can also host wrestling, gymnastics, table tennis, the baffling paddle sport of pickle ball, and even cheerleading contests. With team rooms, moveable bleachers, a private mezzanine for elevated viewing, and an indoor/outdoor café, as well as a full staff of officials and attendants, the Sports Center offers a true turnkey experience for any event.

“We’ve been coming to the Sports Center since Day 1,” says John Whitley, president of the National Travel Basketball Association, whose 650 teams (boys and girls, in age groups from third grade through high school) converge over the summer in Myrtle Beach for a national tournament. “It’s been amazing for us. For our coaches and families there’s a real wow-factor for the facilities and the area.”

That Wow has been echoed in the payback received by the host city. And not just from basketball. With hundreds of teams in all sports and thousands of young athletes and their families coming to town for competitions each year, the investment in facilities has more than paid off, driving business for hotels, restaurants, amusement facilities and, indeed, just about every business in town.

As Kimberly Fuller-English, manager at Great Clips salon just off the Highway 17 Bypass (and owner of a local travel service) puts it, “On any given day you can look up and there’s a bus pulling in and suddenly you’re doing 30 haircuts.”

Those can add up. In ’16, according to the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, Myrtle Beach collected $3.8 million in fees and taxes paid by visitors arriving for sports events, and for the year, sports tourism had a $186 million economic impact within the city limits.

And, as that Helicopter Adventures tour will show you, the investment in sports tourism has spread in the area beyond those city limits. Just up the Grand Strand is the city of North Myrtle Beach, birthplace of Wheel of Fortune letter-spinner Vanna White and a town whose own fortunes have long been tied to the tourist trade. Some six or seven years ago, in the wake of the national recession, the city started looking for ways to strengthen its economy.

“They looked at a number of options, but kept coming back to sports tourism,” says Matt Gibbons, the superintendent of sports tourism and athletics for North Myrtle Beach, a town that, at the time, had just three baseball fields and one gym.

After a search and assessment of needs, the city acquired 163 acres of rolling, wooded land less than three miles from the beach and began construction of what would be the North Myrtle Beach Park & Sports Complex. Funded with a $15 million bond that raised taxes (“which took a lot of courage on the part of our city council,” says Gibbons), but which will sunset in 2019, the complex took a year and a half to complete. Working with local architect Derrick Mozingo, planners visited several other parks and sports facilities in the region. “We told them all that we were coming to steal their best ideas,” says Gibbons with a laugh. “They totally understood.”

The park opened in March 2013, making a big splash the following month when it played host to the World Cup of Quidditch. Some 80 collegiate teams, as well as a squad from Australia and three from Canada, swooped in with their broomsticks for four days of competition in the muggle version of the wizarding sport featured in the Harry Potter novels and films. While the success of the new facility would obviously depend on attracting more conventional sports, the Quidditch Cup proved to be, well, an enchanting event that garnered the park a great deal of attention right off the bat and, as Gibbons points out, “showed what North Myrtle Beach had to offer.”

What the park has to offer today is a lineup of facilities that includes four youth baseball/collegiate softball fields, two high school/collegiate baseball diamonds, eight regulation soccer/lacrosse/Ultimate Frisbee fields and eight batting tunnels. Those facilities are booked solid throughout the calendar—from spring training sessions for college baseball, softball and Ultimate Frisbee to a 50-team youth-lacrosse tournament in November.

In March, the Saltwater Highland Games will be held at the Sports Complex (after two years at Grand Park in Myrtle Beach), with athletes tossing cabers and heavy weights instead of baseballs. The event will also include an attempt to break the Guinness world record for the largest gathering of people wearing kilts. (The current standard is 1,700.) In addition, Games organizers are joining with Coastal Carolina University to host an intercollegiate Quidditch tournament, bringing the brooms back to town once again.

“I told my boss that if we had twice the facilities, I could have booked them all as well,” says Gibbons, who adds that, already—even as sports tourism in ’17 brought a $26 million economic impact to North Myrtle Beach—“expansion is the key.”

The city’s incumbent mayor, Marilyn Hatley, was reelected in November and immediately declared that she had several things planned for the city, foremost among them a continued push for sports tourism.

“I’m working with a group of investors right now that we hope will be able to announce a big sports tourism complex real soon,” Hatley told the press just after the election. “We’re very close to pulling it all together, and if it happens then it’s going to be one of the greatest things for North Myrtle Beach.”

Already the vote is in, and it is clear that sports tourism itself has been one of the greatest things for the whole region.

This article is part of the @MyrtleBeach Lifestyle series. If you’d like to get a FREE copy of our magazine mailed to you click here!