Our mission reads: The Jacksonville-Onslow Sports Commission is committed to fostering economic development and quality of life through sports in Jacksonville and Onslow County, North Carolina. We are a non-profit sports tourism organization located in Eastern, North Carolina. One way we assess how we are doing in meeting that mission is through estimated economic impact and room nights each fiscal year.
We always want to know the impact that sports have on Onslow County so we attempt to track every sporting event that we are aware of, not just ours and/or the ones we support in various ways. Obviously, there were some extremely down years during the pandemic when almost all events were shut down but we are seeing the rise once again. Even during recessions over the years in our country’s history, many have pointed out that sports seem to be recession proof, especially youth sports.
In fiscal year 2022-23, we tracked 83 events in Onslow County and estimated that room nights from those events were 8,896. We estimated the economic impact from those events at $3,026,081. A chart of the last several years is below.
We continue to look for ways to improve existing events and host or create new events so that these numbers hopefully continue to increase. The future is bright for sports tourism in Onslow County.
M. Scott Smith, Executive Director