If you spend any time in Metro Detroit, you know we love our sports. It seems that everything involving sports seems to catch on here – from the well-known like Hockey and Baseball to the oddballs like Fowling and Feather Bowling. If we can compete at it, Detroiters either do it or watch it.
That’s starting to show on the travel scene. Hotels.com analyzed the 25 most popular sports cities based on total tickets purchased in 2014 according to leading ticket search engine SeatGeek. Using a weighted scale, Hotels.com and SeatGeek rated each city in the categories of: sports popularity (based on number of tickets sold); average ticket price; destination popularity (based on the 2014 Hotels.com Hotel Price Index™); and average hotel price paid (also based on the HPI®).
Detroit, which many consider the best sports town in the United States, ranked second for sports travel as it continues to become a more popular domestic destination (see our post on Detroit being a top travel destination in 2015 here). The Motor City was only edged out by Washington, D.C.
In Detroit, the average ticket price is $62 and the average hotel room runs $119, both of which are very favorable when compared to other cities.
“You might think it’s always difficult to score an affordable ticket to see winning teams play, but you’d be surprised,” said Connor Gregoire, an analyst at SeatGeek. “The top five cities in the rankings have all seen their baseball clubs qualify for the postseason in the last two years and are home to numerous other successful professional and college teams, but none are even among the top 10 most expensive cities by average ticket price.”
The most expensive city for sports travel shouldn’t surprise you. It was New York, where consumers paid an average of $124 for a ticket and $271 for a hotel room in 2014 for a total of $395. Miami and Boston also experienced average combined ticket and hotel prices over $300.
The top ten after Washington D.C. and Detroit are Los Angeles, Tampa, St. Louis, Phoenix, Denver, San Francisco, Augusta (Georgia), and Chicago.
