SportHost Victoria - Hosting Venues and Facilities for Local and International Sporting Events

SportHost Victoria, a Sport Tourism Partnership, is a collection of key sport and tourism industry leaders located (or with offices) in the Greater Victoria area. After the 1994 Commonwealth Games, the SportHost Victoria concept evolved as the sport community, the travel industry, and recreation facility operators met to discuss the need for an all-encompassing entity. The goal was to create a Greater Victoria organization that could work towards increasing the quality and quantity of sporting events and activities hosted by Victoria.

The objective of SportHost Victoria is to position Victoria solidly in the national and international sport tourism market as an optimal environment for hosting first class events. The services provided by SportHost Victoria assist promoters and sport organizations in accessing facilities, funding, accommodations, marketing, sponsorship, media relations and bid support.

SportHost has played a key role in securing and/or assisting major sport events including the CARHA Pacific Cup Hockey Tournament, the Times Colonist 10K, the Victoria Open Golf Tournament, the Victoria Open Tennis Championships, the Victoria International Track Classic and the Royal Victoria Marathon. These annual events alone bring over ten thousand athletes and guests to Victoria and create an estimated economic impact of over $5 million. Major International events brought to Victoria have included the World Cup Soccer U-20 Zone qualifying matches, the Women's U-19 Soccer World Cup, the World Military Sailing Championships, the 2005 World Curling Championship, the World Cup of Track Cycling and we look forward to hosting the 2006 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, the first World Martial Arts Games, the 2007 U 20 World Cup of Soccer and the 2007 world BMX Cycling Championships.

History

In March 1998, representatives of interested organizations met and identified the need and support for the formation of a Sport Tourism Commission for Greater Victoria. It was agreed that Victoria needed an organization to coordinate and facilitate activities for the sport community, facility managers, and the tourism industry, with a mission to attract sport related events, meetings and conferences to Greater Victoria.

The University of Victoria’s School of Business conducted a feasibility study and the results were shared with community leaders who immediately identified the opportunity to gain support funding by establishing the Greater Victoria Sport Tourism Partnership.

Founding partners included Tourism Victoria, PacificSport Canadian Sport Centre, City of Victoria, University of Victoria, Royal Roads University and the Government of Canada. Members from the corporate community and other Greater Victoria municipalities soon joined the founding partners.

In May 2000 Hugh MacDonald was recruited to lead the partnership as its Executive Director. The partnership was registered as a non-profit society and carries on doing business under the brand SportHost Victoria.