Expedia Group Puts $537M of Summer Sports Spending on the Map — and Most of It Lands Outside the Host City

Event compression is easy to see in a rate calendar and hard to price. New research from Expedia Group and PredictHQ tries to size it, and the most useful finding for operators is that the money does not stay in the host city.

The study combines Expedia Group first-party travel intent data with PredictHQ's event data, collected in July 2026. It covers 18 major US basketball, baseball, tennis, golf and hockey events over the summer, plus related championship celebrations.

The headline numbers

• More than 4 million attendees forecast across the 18 events.
• More than $537 million in projected visitor spending.
• Of that, roughly $259 million on accommodation and $233 million on hospitality.

New York dominated. Four events in the city drew more than 3.1 million attendees and a projected $304 million in visitor spending. Widen to the region and include the Southampton golf event, and the figure passes $423 million. The single highest-value event analysed was the New York tennis tournament: 1.1 million attendees and roughly $252 million in projected spend. The Southampton golf event was projected at about $120 million, the Pennsylvania golf championship at $57 million.

A separate study released earlier this year put the summer's major soccer tournament at more than $8.1 billion in traveller spend across North American host cities between June and August 2026.

The spillover is the story

Travel intent rose sharply in counties well away from the venues. Solano County, California was up 180% year-over-year. Montgomery County, Texas rose about 95%, and Contra Costa County, California about 90%. Expedia Group attributes the Texas growth to a major basketball finals series and wider summer sport across the state, and the California growth to a halo effect around the Bay Area, where Santa Clara hosted six soccer matches.

The pattern points to visitors staying and spending in neighbouring destinations rather than only in host cities — which is where a property 40 minutes from a stadium either captures the overflow or does not.

Inbound and booking windows

Canada was the largest inbound market by travel intent volume, up 20%, followed by Brazil (+475%), Mexico (+65%), the UK (+55%) and Japan (+35%). The fastest growth came from Türkiye (+505%), Brazil (+475%) and Argentina (+365%).

On timing: in 2025, 56% of Expedia Group hotel bookings near major events were made more than 30 days before check-in, with travellers booking an average of 62 days ahead.

"Major sporting events are no longer just two-hour spectacles, they're powerful engines for event tourism," said Brandon Ehrhardt, vice president of marketing at Expedia Group, adding that over the past three years major sporting events drove booking growth on Expedia Group averaging 160% per event.

"Everyone knows a major sporting event will drive demand," said Campbell Brown, CEO and co-founder of PredictHQ. "The hard part is predicting exactly where, when and by how much."

Expedia Group notes that hotel partners can reach PredictHQ-powered event-demand data through Rev+ in Partner Central — a reminder that the distribution of this insight is itself a partner-channel product.