Maryland Sports – The Sports Commission for the State of Maryland – is the go to resource for the sports events and sport tourism industry in Maryland. Our mission is to enhance Maryland’s economy, image and quality of life through the attraction, promotion, retention and development of regional, national and international sporting events. We have touched over 3,500 events since 2008 while generating over $1.5 billion in direct spending on Maryland’s economy.
Maryland Sports is positively impacting ALL of Maryland through sport tourism, and this would not be possible without our amazing TEAM Maryland partners. A few major events that have come to the Old Line State in the past few years are IRONMAN Maryland, several different NCAA qualifying rounds including Division I women’s and men’s lacrosse, baseball, women’s and men’s basketball, Bassmaster Elite, USSSA Eastern World Series and several others. Recently, Maryland Sports’ own Game Changer Ashley Harper Cottrell created, in partnership with the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the Maryland Sports Spelling Bee as a regional qualifying spelling bee. This Bee was created to serve 10 counties and the City of Annapolis because they did not have the opportunity to partake in spelling bees in their region. Our winner went on to compete at the national event in National Harbor, MD!
Maryland is the place for play in the Mid-Atlantic. With venues that host sports from lacrosse, basketball, soccer and beach volleyball to triathlons, martial arts, quidditch, cricket and more, we have opportunities for all to host their next event in Maryland. Home to National Governing Body US Lacrosse, as well as Events Rights Holders TOP of the BAY Lacrosse, HoganLax, Corrigan Sports Enterprises, Elite Tournaments and Aloha Tournaments, Maryland is the heart of it all. Maryland will be the home of the NCAA Division I Women’s Lacrosse Championship for the next four years, with a two-year appearance at Johns Hopkins University, moving to Towson University in 2021 and back to JHU in 2022. US Lacrosse will be hosting the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) Women’s World Cup in the summer of 2021 at Towson University. Maryland is unique in its own way that we have a sports commission that covers the entire state, as well as our TEAM Maryland initiative, which markets all of Maryland as an ideal sports destination throughout the state. We are blessed with great facilities, tremendous partners, excellent transportation access and outstanding logistics to host a wide breadth of sports here in Maryland.
Our TEAM Maryland partners are awesome. Don’t believe us? Bill Dowell, Vice President of USSSA Fastpitch has only positive things to say about our partners from Wicomico County Recreation, Parks & Tourism. “I've worked for and with recreation departments across the state and region for 35 years, been involved with three different softball associations for over 30 years and worked in the corporate world for 24 and I can honestly say that I've never been associated with such a professional and responsible group. Each of you, no matter how large or small of a role you played in the event, embraced the responsibility you were given, performed your job with the utmost integrity and genuinely seemed to have fun doing it, the latter of which is certainly most important.”
With the addition of the inaugural Maryland Sports Youth and Amateur Grant program this fiscal year, we are able to support more events statewide, more than ever before. Overall, we received 32 grant applications requesting over half a million dollars for 40 different events. These events represent the potential of over 50 million dollars in direct spending on Maryland’s economy.
Maryland Sports and our TEAM Maryland partners are proud leaders and contributors to #MDSportTourism and the #SportTourism at work! industry. Each year we continue to grow our contributions and our economic vitality through sports and we look forward to a remarkable fiscal year 2019 with all our current and new event partners from around the globe.
Find out more about TEAM Maryland at TEAMMaryland.us and Maryland’s Sports Commission at MarylandSports.us and follow us on any one of our social media outlets.
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