ABSTRACT
Sports facilities tourism is located in a multi-dimensional reference frame of sport, architecture and tourism, but also has links to urban development, destination branding and marketing. Whereas sport tourism, “the active, passive or nostalgic engagement with sports and sports-related activities while travelling away from one’s normal place of residence” (Smith, MacLeod & Robertson, 2010, p. 165), has been getting attention in literature for many years, the features of sport facilities tourism, with the aim of experiencing the architectural and symbolic dimension of those venues rather than the performative one, are not comprehensively explored in research and practice. However, various factors suggest an engagement with sport facilities tourism: more and more cities hosting major sport events select signature architects to design the sport infrastructure that has to be built for the events. The enormous investment into those structures urges us also to think about marketing the venues for purposes other than sport events and sport use. Thanks to the spectacular architecture, target groups aside from sport participants and spectators may be attracted to “post-experience” the space during off-event times so that a new form of architectural tourism may evolve.
