The Integration of Technology into the Sport Tourism Experience: From Real Competition to Surreal Experiences

Event spectating being the core motive for the passive sport tourism form has departed from the traditional live attendance to a more holistic sport participative experience. Increasingly, passive sport tourists play a crucial role into forming the received experience when interacting with crucial components of the event, athletes and peripheral services. There seems to be an effort from sport event owners and protagonists to engage visitors to an enriched spectating response based on technology and sport specific infrastructure that takes competition to a new leisure dimension. The present study focuses on the dimensions of this development as met throughout the corporate sport events suppliers, venues and organizers to produce understanding on the role of technology in the event visiting enrichment. The analysis engaging industry’s technological expressions as well as sport venue cases where technology becomes the most competitive element, highlights and forecasts alterations to be met in the passive sport tourism experience overall. Data analytics and social media interaction become the initiating point for product formulation guiding sport and venue partners to design experiences derived from visitors expressed preferences through technological means. In addition, the use of social networks seems to increase the sport tourism markets as well as to reach market segments that would be difficult to identify, leading to the further development of passive sport tourism in total. Sport events and venues are accepting a new role as an extended technological and commercial stage where business, sport, tourism, technology and marketing partners are met to upgrade the spectating experience, though raising questions over the intrinsic value of sport competition.