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City says Family Sports Park generated about $9.6 million in visitor spending in 2024
Summary
City staff presented an economic impact report estimating roughly $9.6 million in direct visitor spending tied to tournaments and events at the Family Sports Park in 2024, with roughly 1.5 million visits and major weekend spikes driving hotel and restaurant use.
City parks staff on the committee reported that tournaments and events at the Family Sports Park generated an estimated $9,600,000 in visitor spending from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2024, and produced about 1,500,000 recorded visits to the park over the year.
The report, prepared for the parks department and presented by Patrick (parks staff), said tournament visitors who stay overnight spend much more on average than day visitors. "The estimated economic impact of the park on the community through last year was $9,600,000," Patrick said during the presentation.
The nut graf: The figure is an estimate based on a mix of rental records, tournament schedules, and a new location-analytics product (Placer AI) the city is using to measure visits and visitor origin. City staff said the data help quantify the local spending — hotel nights, meals, and retail visits — that tournament weekends bring to O'Fallon.
City staff told the committee the report combines tournament rental records from major users (Greater Midwest Baseball, U.S. Amateur/area softball promoters, Metro Alliance, Gateway Rush and St. Louis Scott Gallagher) with visitor-behavior estimates. Patrick said GMB baseball tournaments were estimated to produce about $1.7 million; the identified softball promoter roughly $2.4 million; and large soccer clubs produced estimates from about $900,000 up to $1.3 million for St. Louis Scott Gallagher across their events.
Staff described technique and caveats: the city continues to use a per-person-per-day spending assumption the tourism sector commonly applies (the presentation referenced $60 per overnight visitor and $10 per day visitor from prior local studies), and city staff said they will combine that with the tourism bureau's higher-per-visitor estimates when appropriate. "These are all estimates," Patrick said, explaining assumptions about roster sizes, typical companion counts and per-day spend.
The presentation also highlighted Placer AI findings the parks team began using in 2024: roughly 1,500,000 visits and 390,000 unique adult visitors, with an average visit of about 151 minutes. Several weekends produced very large three-day volumes; staff cited a June lacrosse weekend with roughly 60,000 visits and more than 30,000 unique visitors as the largest example.
Staff discussed regional comparisons and visitor origins: Placer AI-derived heat maps show visitors from many states and a concentration of regional hotel stays and restaurant visits after events. Patrick listed the restaurants most frequently visited after park activity (Raising Cane’s, Drake’s, Chick-fil-A, Culver’s, Texas Roadhouse among others) and advised the marketing and sponsorship effort could use that data to match park visitors to local businesses.
Questions from committee members focused on how the city derived the per-person spending assumptions and how the new analytics product works. Staff said Placer AI uses opt-in mobile location panels and census-based extrapolation; it tracks adults only and the vendor reports over 90% accuracy in validation studies. Patrick and other staff noted that the $9.6 million figure is an estimate, not a formal audit.
Ending: Staff said the parks department will continue to refine reporting and use the data to inform facility promotion, sponsorships and scheduling; they expect a busy 2025 tournament season with earlier March starts and multiple repeat tournament directors returning.
