In January 2026, Tallahassee, Florida will step into the global spotlight as it hosts the prestigious World Athletics Cross Country Championships, an elite international event that will bring together top distance runners from across the globe for a race unlike any other.

An economic impact study by The Sports Consultancy of the World Cross Country Championship, which took place in Denmark, 2019, showed a total economic impact of €4.3 million (~$4.99 million). International tourism and amateur participants visiting Tallahassee will increase revenue for businesses, providing an opportunity for a major boon over the short duration of the events.

The championships will take place at the acclaimed Apalachee Regional Park (ARP), owned and operated by Leon County Government, and widely recognized as one of the best cross-country venues in the world. With a track record that includes more than 75 major meets, including NCAA National Championships and USA Track & Field events, ARP is no stranger to
high-stakes competition.

“Tallahassee and Leon County were chosen because Apalachee Regional Park is a venue loved by athletes and coaches worldwide,” explains Taylor Wheaton, senior sports director at Visit Tallahassee, the department leading the charge in organizing the event. “Our team is ready to deliver cross-country’s biggest stage.”

This marks the first time the United States has hosted the World Athletics Cross Country Championships since 1992, making it a momentous opportunity not just for Tallahassee but for the entire nation. The event is expected to bring in athletes from over 60 countries and thousands of spectators, transforming Florida’s capital city into an international hub of sport and culture.

A Florida-Themed Challenge

What sets this championship apart is the creativity and storytelling embedded in the racecourse design. Far from a typical cross-country layout, the course will showcase a vibrant, playful tribute to Florida’s identity—from its theme parks to its wildlife and beaches.

“We designed the course to be both fun and challenging,” says Wheaton. “Athletes will tackle a rollercoaster ramp, run under a 14-foot pedestrian bridge inspired by Florida’s theme parks, and race through a beach zone complete with surfboards, lifeguard chairs, and palm trees. It’s a beach party for fans and a challenging obstacle for the competitors.”

The spectacle continues with a water pit that evokes Florida’s coastal character, and an “Alligator Alley” segment where runners will leap over tree logs carved into alligator shapes. The course culminates in a mud zone inspired by the Everglades, demanding the kind of grit and endurance that defines champions.

“No cross-country course is complete without mud,” Wheaton adds. “This section will really show what it takes to be a world champion.”

A Festival Atmosphere

More than just a race, the event is designed to be a fan festival, complete with food trucks, live music, interactive exhibits, and immersive experiences celebrating Florida’s culture and natural beauty.

“We are building a world championship community,” says Wheaton. “We’ve enlisted over 500 volunteers, and we’re partnering with local schools, businesses, and organizations. It’s a full community effort.”

The impact is expected to be substantial. With an influx of athletes, teams, media, and spectators, local hotels, restaurants, and businesses will enjoy a boost that will ripple through the regional economy.

“Visitors will fill our hotels, dine at our restaurants, and shop around town,” Wheaton says. “This surge in tourism strengthens our businesses and ensures our community benefits directly.”

A Lasting Legacy

Sustainability is also central to the planning. Organizers are prioritizing waste reduction and responsible event management, while investing in long-term enhancements to Apalachee Regional Park that will continue to benefit the local community well beyond the event.

“At the heart of our planning is sustainability,” notes Wheaton. “We’re dedicated to reducing waste, having responsible event management, and creating timeless upgrades for the Apalachee Regional Park that will live on for generations to enjoy.”

Backed by World Athletics, USA Track & Field, and an array of community sponsors, including Astro Travel, Publix, and Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic, the 2026 championships will serve as a defining moment for the region.

“The legacy of these championships will live on for generations,” says Leon County Administrator Vince Long. “This event will elevate the county’s profile, strengthen community pride, and position us as a future destination for world-class sporting events.”

On January 10, 2026, the world will race into Tallahassee, and the community will be more than ready to welcome it. ▪

When over 2,000 athletes gathered in Pasco County last December for the Florida Senior Games, a 10-day, Olympics-style event involving everything from pickleball and horseshoes to basketball and powerlifting, Angela Suggs was approached by an 85-year-old woman.

Suggs had just finished watching the woman deadlift 100 pounds.

“I am alive right now because I spent all year training for this,” the senior athlete said. 

As president and CEO of the Florida Sports Foundation (FSF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation responsible for the marketing and development of professional, amateur and leisure sporting opportunities within the state, Suggs was heartened.

“Super Bowls are great,” she said. “World Cups are fantastic. But witnessing thousands of people flood in from across the country to participate in and support events like these is what makes it for me.”

Suggs, a Tallahassee native, clearly has her head in the game. She is a “Florida A&M Rattler, through and through.” For almost 10 years, she served as a marketer and associate athletic director at the school, which won softball, tennis, baseball, cross country, and track and field championships during her tenure.  

She started her career in the sports industry at Joe Robbie Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium), where she engaged in club-level sales for the Florida Marlins, Miami Dolphins and the venue’s various entertainment offerings. But it’s with FSF that Suggs has found her stride. 

“When I joined the foundation in 2017, we were talking about Florida’s $57.4 billion yearly economic impact through sports,” Suggs said. “Today, our most recent study shows over a $70 billion annual impact. It’s really an exciting time.”

That study, conducted by Tourism Economics for fiscal years 2019–20 and 2020–21, revealed that the Florida sports economy produced a $145.6 billion impact in total sales. Over 978,200 jobs relating to sports were created, and sports tourism attracted over 28.1 million nonresident visitors to the Sunshine State, representing 14% of annual visitation.

 While it is home to 10 professional sports franchises and countless college athletics programs, it is Florida’s amateur and recreational sports activities, including golf, fishing and wildlife viewing, that account for an estimated $113.6 billion of the industry’s total economic impact.  

Amateur sports are a major component of FSF’s mission to create a thriving sports and sports tourism industry. That sector includes the Florida Senior Games and the Sunshine State Games, another Olympics-type competition for athletes of all ages that has hosted over 200,000 contestants since its inception in 1980. 

FSF also serves as the promotional arm for the 15 Major League Baseball teams that make up the Florida Spring Training Grapefruit League, which attracted more than 1.4 million spectators in 2023. 

In addition to promoting spring training events and games, Suggs said FSF is responsible for kicking off springtime baseball with the Governor’s Dinner, a tradition dating back to the 1940s. It entails numerous sponsorship opportunities and gives fans a chance to mingle with team executives and marquee players.

Suggs said she’s proud of FSF’s role in providing grants funded by the sale of specialty license plates to local communities working to attract new sporting events and tournaments to Florida. 

“If you’ve seen vehicles with professional sports plates — the Dolphins, Jaguars, Rays or the Bucs — they make up the millions of dollars we pour back into the community for grants,” Suggs said. “These grants aid in attracting events from amateur softball tournaments all the way up to Super Bowls and All-Star Games.” 

Suggs noted that Florida has hosted more Super Bowls than any other state in the country. Recently, it was announced that Miami will host the 2026 World Cup and that the College Football Playoff National Championship game will be returning to Florida for a third time.

That success stems from more than gorgeous weather and beaches. 

“It is our amazing partners throughout the state,” Suggs said. “We have 36 sports commissions throughout Florida, who are the boots on the ground in our communities, and not just our metro areas. People know what we have going on in greater Orlando and Miami, but do they know that, in St. Lucie County, we’re bringing in world baseball competitions that help people qualify for the Olympics? That the World Cross Country Championship is coming right here to Tallahassee?” 

Those successes, Suggs said, result from the efforts made by the commissions and sports tourism industry executives to build key relationships.

“I think of Ray Palmer over in Pensacola, who has been the face of sports in that community for close to 35 years,” Suggs said. “In Pensacola, they have hosted the SEC’s women’s soccer championships for the past 10 years. That means their connections are huge. And, it says something about the relationship we have with the NFL for them to choose Florida more than any other state for Super Bowls. It’s a testament to those relationships, as well as the experiences being created because we know the experience will have a huge impact on whether you want to come back.”

Suggs said it is her goal to grow the FSF by attracting more international events to Florida. She plans to engage the leaders of emerging sports such as Teqball, Slamball and E-sports. 

“We own the responsibility to produce and promote opportunities for our residents and visitors to play in Florida,” Suggs said. “It’s our mission, and it’s what we do every day. 

“For us, sports are purple. They unite red and blue and transcend all political lines and religious doctrines. Nothing else can bring us together like sports do.”

The tourism promotion agency Visit Panama City Beach is investing in sports parks and encouraging Bay County communities to supply complementary services.

Residents, businesses and visitors to the area all benefit from the investment in sports tourism and the infrastructure needed to make the events and tournaments possible.

Sports tourism in Panama City Beach took off when the first swimmers in the 1999 Ironman Triathlon hit the water.

“Ironman was — and still is today — our Super Bowl of sports, because it will bring in athletes from almost all 50 states and 60 countries around the world,” said Richard Sanders, vice president of sports marketing and special events at Visit Panama City Beach (VPCB). “It was the Ironman Triathlon that really put us on the map, and we’ve just grown from there.”

Today, Panama City Beach boasts the longest continuously running Ironman in North America and the only full Ironman in Florida.

“When we started, this thing took off real quick,” Sanders said. “The first year saw 4,000 room nights, and the place went crazy. In the second year, we did 10,000 room nights, and today we’re doing close to 150,000 room nights.”

Sanders has worked with VPCB for 25 years, first as a consultant and for the last 11 years as a full-time employee creating sports and special events for the community.

“As fast as sports tourism took off, we needed to plan for what the future should look like,” Sanders said.

In 2008, Sanders brought in a consultant who recommended an indoor sports facility and also identified a need for more athletic fields — with rectangular athletic fields as the priority.

This 10-year project opened in 2018 as the Publix Sports Park on Chip Seal Parkway. The park boasts 13 configurable fields, nine synthetic turf fields and two championship fields.

“My first week, in 2015, we started working on the Publix Complex,” said Chris O’Brien, the director of sports and special events at VPCB.

As of this writing, Sanders is transitioning to semi-retirement, handing off the future of sports and special events to O’Brien.

“When we did our research and our consultation, we looked at the pros and cons of different areas and surrounding counties,” Sanders said. “We had some inventory that could meet certain types of events, but we didn’t have the championship quality — venues or inventory — that was needed in our mission of bringing in business through sports.”

Frank Brown Park was the first sports complex in Panama City Beach.

Frank Brown Park is home to baseball, t-ball and soccer fields; basketball, volleyball and tennis courts; walking and biking trails; and a state-of-the-art children’s playground that encourages sensory play. The Panama City Beach Aquatic Center at the park includes a 50-meter Olympic pool; a separate 5,000-square-foot splash park and kid’s pool are available for family play.

“Frank Brown Park was built in 1978 by the city,” Sanders said. “They thought about the future of sports tourism and how that could fit into Panama City Beach and what we’re all about. There was a vision to take us forward.”

The population in the area has been growing over time. VPCB works in private-public partnerships to anticipate and meet the needs of the growing community.

“Just like when we did our report in 2008, they were doing the same thing back then,” Sanders explained. “They saw the need for the community to have additional facilities and made that investment to revamp Frank Brown Park. The way they capitalize on that investment and bring more heads in beds is with tournaments.”

Those tournaments, which attract teams from throughout the country, result in room nights and other types of spending of benefit to the community.

“Once the events do well, the coordinators book that same date the next year,” O’Brien said.

About 80% of events recur.

“We now have several years of established business at Frank Brown Park,” Sanders added. “The Publix Sports Park brings in new business that complements, but does not compete, with the successful business at Frank Brown Park.”

VPCB averages 40–45 events a year, while also hosting local leagues and practices by high school teams.

“Because the Publix Sports Park uses turf, we can keep it busy and not worry about wear and tear on grass,” O’Brien said. “We’ve made improvements recently including a netting system, sound system, photo areas and added streaming cameras so relatives can watch if they aren’t able to come in person.”

Now, VPCB is working with architects and sponsors to plan a flexible multipurpose indoor sports complex.

“We’re going to have over 100,000 square feet of indoor space,” O’Brien said. “It won’t just be like a gym — it’s going to have meeting and work spaces.”

The building also will be equipped with a hardened fiber optic connection for speed and security and will serve as an emergency shelter.

Esports is a new area of interest for VPCB. Electronic sports are soaring in popularity with video games like Dota 2, Call of Duty, League of Legends and more. Tournaments draw large crowds and award cash prizes totaling millions of dollars. Last year, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds boasted a prize pool of $4.5 million.

“This building will also be able to have concerts up to 2,500 people,” Sanders added.

Sanders believes in cooperating with surrounding cities, including Panama City, which is working to determine how best to replace the hurricane-ravaged Marina Civic Center. Sanders intends that the indoor facility on the beach complement the new civic center.

The new indoor complex is expected to open in December 2025 and will add to Panama City Beach’s already robust sports tourism industry.

According to O’Brien, direct and indirect spending related to sports tourism totaled $130 million last year.

“Even bigger cities don’t have what we have,” O’Brien said. “Our population grows from about 15,000 people to maybe 60,000 during the summer months. There’re 16,000 rooms in the hotels, and they fill up.”

“Hotels are being built because of the sports parks,” Sanders agreed. “When Pier Park was built, most activities moved to the west end. With the Publix Sports Park, we’re rejuvenating the east end again.”

Sanders’ years with VPCB are changing the narrative. No longer is it spring break; he says it is now spring season.

Florida communities that relied on spring break for tourism faced the challenges that come with youthful energy and first freedoms. Where other spring break tourism communities took 10 years to pivot toward other tourist activities, Panama City Beach recovered financially in only three years.

“Today, we can say that sports is in the DNA of what Panama City is all about,” Sanders said.

 

Had Visit Tallahassee entered a bid to host the World Cross Country Championships 15 years ago, it likely would have been laughed out of court.

To begin with, Florida’s heat and humidity do not make for optimal running conditions. Further, the state capital was inexperienced at hosting cross country championships. And, in the history of the world championship, runners had competed in the United States just twice.

What Tallahassee did have was a vision. Representatives from the Gulf Winds Track Club, Florida State University and the Leon County Parks and Recreation Department looked over a closed-out landfill turned park and saw the potential for a dedicated cross country venue.

Their vision was true.

Apalachee Regional Park quickly gained a stellar reputation among cross country programs in the region, state, country and finally, the world. In 2026, Tallahassee will be the first U.S. city to host the World Cross Country Championships in 34 years.

As of this year, Apalachee Regional Park will have hosted the Florida High School Athletic Association state cross country championship 13 consecutive times. In 2021, the park welcomed the first NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships to be held in Florida in 70 years. Last fall, the NAIA and JGCAA cross country national championships both took place at Apalachee Regional Park.

“At this point, we’ve hosted every biddable national championship for cross country,” said Ryan Zornes, the senior sports and sales director for Visit Tallahassee, Leon County’s tourism promotion department.

Not coincidentally, the park has undergone numerous improvements in recent years.

Zornes’ work centers around bringing athletic organizations to the area for meets, tournaments and championships, all with the goal of driving up tourism and bed tax revenue.

“We work in sales, but we don’t necessarily have a product to sell,” Zornes said. “We’re selling the destination, so ultimately for us, it’s about having strong partnerships within the community.”

These partnerships include restaurants, hotels and attractions. In addition, Visit Tallahassee relies on access to athletic facilities owned by the city, county and educational institutions.

From the outset, Zornes and his predecessor, director of parks and recreation Amanda Heidecker, planned to take Apalachee Regional Park to the national stage. Preparing for that eventuality began shortly after the park opened in 2009 with the widening of the cross country trail to meet NCAA requirements.

“In the 2010s, we saw some really big enhancements with some help with the parking cell, the solid waste facility and then some permanent fencing went up around the course that really helps us with crowd control,” Zornes said. “A really big thing that happened during that time was that we had fiber optic run throughout the course so that we could put these events on television or stream them or, when we have our mobile jumbotron out, people can watch them live on the scoreboard.”

The most recent phase of improvements was completed in 2021 with the construction of a multiuse operations center, permanent finish line and awards stage.

The improvements were expensive — the last phase alone cost the county roughly $3 million — but the return on investment in the form of visitation and economic impact has more than justified them.

“When we look back at what we were able to do in 2022 just off of our cross country meets, we had over $13 million in direct spending,” Zornes said. “This is money that is coming from outside of this community, and that generates over $20 million in economic impact.”

It is impossible to predict the dollars that the 2026 World Cross Country Championships will bring to the region, but for Zornes, the exposure will be priceless.

“There are going to be a ton of economic drivers that come with that kind of event, but ultimately, it’s really trying to solidify Tallahassee on the map as the capital of cross country,” Zornes said. “That’s something that we have taken as our mantra, and we want the world to know, not just the country, about how much we love cross country here.”

An athlete at any level experiences a special kind of exhilaration when he steps into a batter’s box, toes the starting line for a running race or takes his place on a soccer field with the opening kickoff moments away. Such moments are gravid with possibility.

This may be the day that the underdog prevails, a pitcher hurls a no-hitter or a back-of-the-pack runner makes a late charge and finishes first.

For spectators, sporting events present opportunities to watch competitors strive for excellence within prescribed boundaries and reasonable blocks of time; their appeal dates to the first Olympiad and beyond.

Communities within Northwest Florida, heavily dependent upon tourism, have taken steps to gather visitors by investing in sports venues, employing new technologies to enhance the spectator experience and strengthening the ties between teams and the fans who support them. – Steve Bornhoft, Executive Editor, 850 Business Magazine

It is one of the most spectacular settings in all of minor league baseball and a major component in the revitalization of Downtown Pensacola.

The Pensacola Blue Wahoos, a Double-A minor league affiliate of the Miami Marlins, play their home games at Admiral Fetterman Field, a 5,038-seat stadium that faces Pensacola Bay.

Jonathan Griffith, the president of Studer Family of Companies, an owner of the Wahoos, said baseball is central to what happens at the stadium, but the stadium is part of a larger mission.

“The ball club is more than the baseball,” Griffith said. “Improving the quality of life in our community is truly our mission.”

Quint Studer is an entrepreneur, businessman, author and visionary who came to Pensacola in the late 1990s and succeeded very well as the founder of a health care consulting company. He and his wife, Rishy, soon became known for their philanthropic efforts throughout their adopted community — supporting health care providers, nonprofits, research and scholarship programs, as well as making a $2.25 million donation to help build Pensacola’s Community Maritime Park.

That $54-million, city-owned project includes commercial buildings, a public park, an amphitheater and the $24 million Blue Wahoos stadium, where the team has played since 2012.

“Baseball was a way to get people to want to live here and work here, to have entertainment for the families here and to rejuvenate the downtown area,” Griffith said. “The goal was to improve the quality of life in our community. We had so many people leaving here for jobs in places like Atlanta and New Orleans, so the concept was: What can we have that will make you want to live in this town? What will make you want to come to Pensacola, and how do we get people to stay? The baseball team was kind of a tool for that.”

Griffith said that the Blue Wahoos franchise is profitable but stressed that the Studers, themselves, don’t make money from the franchise. “They’ve never taken a check from here,” he said. “They reinvest every dollar that they get from the ball club back into the community.”

The Blue Wahoos Stadium operates year-round and hosts over 250 events annually, including youth and community athletics, fundraisers for local nonprofits, school field trips and many types of social events, including parties, weddings and graduations. Some of its operations benefit local businesses, such as when the stadium hosts a wintertime Division 3 college baseball tournament.

“We have nine teams with an average of 40 players here for a week and a half,” Griffith said. “That’s a lot of beds. Taxes are being paid, food eaten. We’re not charging anything; we host them. But by them all coming down here, now they’re fans of our community, and the parents tell me they want to come back here for vacation. So we’re doing this for the community. This is not a thing that we do to make money. We account for about $200,000 a year just in hotel stays for the Blue Wahoos games, alone.”

The Wahoos’ stadium has 18 billboards for rent, as well as company and organization signage opportunities everywhere you look: on the scoreboards, the dugouts, the on-deck circles, the foul lines, even on bathroom mirrors, napkin dispensers and trash cans. But its theme nights are the Wahoos’ biggest draw. Whether it’s Grilled Cheese Day, Star Wars Night, World Oceans Night, Junk Food Day or School of Rock Night, the fans come en masse to enjoy the fun and the spectacle. And they even get to watch a baseball game.

The stadium employs roughly 40 full-time people and, throughout the year, another 400-500 part-timers.

“We’re a lot of people’s first job, and we’re a lot of people’s last job,” Griffith said. “We employ people with disabilities. One of our guys in a wheelchair never had a job until he got here. One of the things he told me is that we changed his life because he feels normal here. He gets to work; he gets to interact with fans. We have truly improved his quality of life by being able to have a job.”

For Griffith and all involved with the Wahoos, providing a superior customer experience is a top priority.

“Our big thing is training and customer service,” Griffith said. “We put so much effort into that — making sure that our customer service is top-notch. And not only do we say it, we measure it as well. We survey every single game before the seventh inning; it’s something every full-time manager has to do to make sure we’re on point.

“This past year, we had a net promoter score of 90.2. Our big goal is that when you come to a ballgame here, you might not know who won the game, but you will talk about the entertainment. That’s what we’re all about, that family entertainment. We do a lot of fun activities. We’re interactive to get fans involved in the game. The more you can get a family involved in the game, the more they feel part of the Wahoos.”

New promotions were on tap for the current season.

“On Doggone Tuesday, dogs will be allowed at the ballpark, and you also get a hotdog, chips and a drink. We’re also going to have a $25 soda and a $25 popcorn. The benefit is that you can use that cup and that popcorn bucket for the rest of the year and get free refills all year long. Somebody that’s loyal to us, season ticket holders that go to 50 games a year, we’re always looking how we can thank them and reward them.”

Some events at the ballpark are intended to cause fans to cheer for more than the Wahoos.

“We do a thing with Ascension Sacred Heart, which is the local hospital here,” Griffith said. “We call it Home Run for Life, where we celebrate, once a month, a miraculous thing that the hospital has done — a cancer patient who’s gone into remission or somebody who recovered from a car accident. They’re able to come here, and we bring the entire staff that worked with that patient, and we tell their story. They run around the bases and high-five all the players. It’s so impactful for that family and our fans. There’s not a dry eye in the ballpark when that happens.”

The team also hosts youngsters with terminal cancer.

“We try to find those people that we can help, to give them a bright day and not think about whatever troubles they are having,” Griffith said. “We have pictures of families who were here for the last great memory they had of their child’s life. Because we’re here, because Quint and Rishy made this investment in the community, they’re able to have that time with their child.”

For Griffith, the score of the game is always secondary.

“We’re about making those family memories. So, the Wahoos could lose the game, 20-0, or we could win a close game. But you don’t even care.”

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