Cancelling March Madness exposes opportunities for a more sustainable sports tourism economy

Abstract

One of the earliest signals of the severity of the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and other countries was the swift cancelation of many highly prominent amateur and professional sporting events and seasons like the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, known as “March Madness.” The loss of March Madness is treated as a moment of creative tension, when disruptions can facilitate reflection and lead to positive change. We discuss the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental effects of shuttering the tournament and suggest that an understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 offers an opportunity to bring about an alternative, more sustainable sports tourism economy. The cancellation of March Madness resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in tourism revenue for local economies and deprived traveler-fans of pilgrimages to arenas, important socio-cultural gathering spaces for American basketball fans. However, it also prevented the emission of a sizable quantity of greenhouse gasses based on our carbon footprint calculated from the previous year’s tournament. Ultimately, from the disruptive closing down of sport and event tourism, a post-pandemic sports tourism landscape should emerge that takes more seriously the triple-bottom line notion of balancing a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions with the creation and maintenance of resilient local economies all while both acknowledging the important role sport plays in society and keeping tourism actors healthy.

摘要

美国及其他国家新冠肺炎扩散严重性的早期标志之一就是迅速取消了诸多重要的业余和职业体育赛事, 如全国大学体育联合会一级男子篮球联赛, 即有名的”疯狂三月”(March Madness)。 取消该赛事创造了一种紧张态势, 且可促使人们反思并产生积极的改变。本研究讨论了取消联赛产生的经济、社会文化和环境效应, 并提出一种新的理解, 即新冠肺炎为另类的和更具可持续性的体育旅游经济提供了机遇。取消联赛不但使本地损失数百万美元的旅游收入, 而且也剥夺了旅行爱好者们的赛场朝圣, 因为赛场是美国篮球迷们的社会文化集聚空间。而且根据我们对上一年联赛的碳足迹计算, 取消联赛还防止了大量温室气体排放。最后, 体育与事件旅游的中断性关闭会引致后疫情体育旅游格局(landscape), 此格局下的三重底线理念须被认真对待, 包括：平衡温室气体排放的减少与创造和维持有弹性的地方经济, 承认体育在社会中发挥重要作用, 以及保持旅游行动者们的健康。

Keywords:

• Sustainable tourism
• COVID-19
• coronavirus
• sport
• local economies
• carbon footprint

关键词:

• 可持续性旅游
• 新冠肺炎
• 冠状病毒
• 体育
• 地方经济
• 碳足迹

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. A. Cooper

J. A. Cooper is a master’s graduand in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research interests center on place-based group identity, sports geography, the US South, sustainability, tourism, and fusing critical cultural geography with quantitative GIS methods.

Derek H. Alderman

Derek H. Alderman is Professor of Geography and Betty Lynn Hendrickson Professor of Social Science at the University of Tennessee. He is the co-founder and one of the co-coordinators of Tourism RESET, a multidisciplinary research and public outreach initiative devoted to analyzing the social and spatial injustices in tourism. Alderman’s work addresses, in particular, travel and heritage tourism as an arena for critical race studies and reparative memory-work.