The $100 Billion Race to Build the World’s Next Sports Mecca
The days of defining a sports capital simply by the number of championships its teams win are long gone. Today, cities used to competing for Fortune 500 headquarters and conventions are in a high-stakes competition to turn sports into an economic and cultural platform that can reinvent the economy and attract new visitors.
To broaden the fan experience beyond just the games, municipalities, team owners and private developers are scrambling to build mixed-use developments around stadiums and arenas. These districts could attract more than $100 billion in investments over the next 15 years, the Klutch Sports Group, in partnership with the Royal Bank of Canada, concluded in a
“The real way that sports works is as an advertisement to bring people there regularly,” says Victor Matheson, a professor of sports economics at College of the Holy Cross. “If you’re trying to generate tourism, in general, by hosting big sporting events that get you that advertising, you’ve got to have something to offer people as well.”
Becoming a sports mecca in the 21st century requires not just sports infrastructure and broader tourism capacity but attractions beyond the field to keep folks coming back.
“Even as tens of billions of dollars of capital flow into sports investments, the industry faces headwinds that could potentially derail future returns for new investors,” the Klutch report says. “For example, many major professional sports leagues’ media rights agreements globally have been recently renegotiated and are less likely to achieve the same fee increases necessary to support similar team enterprise value accretion that has occurred over the past 20 years.”
Here are six cities vying to be the sports and entertainment capital of the world:
Las Vegas
With no major professional sports teams a decade ago, Sin City is arguably this category’s fastest riser. The NHL expanded there in 2017 with the Golden Knights, and the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces relocated from San Antonio in 2018. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved in 2020 and subsequently rose from 19th to ninth in Sportico’s league franchise valuation table. MLB’s Athletics are slated to arrive soon, and the NBA is likely to follow.
In addition to its usual high-profile fights, Vegas will be home to two Super Bowls, a CFP National Championship Game and an NCAA March Madness Final Four this decade.
“These premier events give you an opportunity to price discriminate,” Matheson says. “You basically turn Vegas into a really expensive town for a week during F1 and then you turn it back into a cheap gambling town the next week, so it’s kind of a way to change the settings on your city for a short period of time.”
With a whopping 150,000 hotel rooms, sports gambling in its DNA and Sphere as an elite, innovative cultural experience, Vegas was established as a tourism and entertainment destination.
Riyadh
With massive financial backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Riyadh is a case study for whether government spending can buy global sports relevance.
It can certainly buy disruption. In 2021, Saudi Arabia launched LIV Golf and poached several top PGA Tour golfers including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson. The next year, Al-Nassr signed Cristiano Ronaldo, the world’s most-followed person on Instagram, to a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, paving the way for other superstars to follow. Riyadh is adding an ATP Masters 1000 event in 2028, which will force changes to the men’s tennis calendar. It will also host the FIFA World Cup in 2034.
As the country pours money into tourism megaprojects, obstacles remain. Geopolitical instability and war in the Middle East have led many organizations to pull sporting events from the region this year. The WTA Finals, for instance, has moved on after being played in Riyadh in 2024 and 2025.
There are ongoing discussions of “sportswashing” from human rights groups as well. Lastly, the financials may need to become more sustainable — after this year, PIF will stop funding LIV Golf after putting billions of dollars into the property.
Miami
Miami is at the center of luxury brands, music and sports. It is an Art Basel flagship location, and its cruise ship business drives international tourism.
Soccer has elevated Miami’s sports status during the 2020s. The city hosted matches for both the Club World Cup in 2025 and the FIFA World Cup in 2026 at the Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium.
This year marked the opening of Miami Freedom Park, a $1 billion mixed-use development including a new stadium for MLS’ Inter Miami CF. The club’s revenues nearly quadrupled from $55 million in 2022 to $215 million in 2025, thanks to Lionel Messi’s arrival in 2023.
“It’ll be really interesting to see if Miami is considered any sort of soccer hotbed once Messi goes into retirement,” Matheson said. “[But] they are certainly striking and taking the moment.”
Melbourne
Often overlooked because of time zone differences and geographic distance, Australia is a sports-obsessed country, winning the fourth most gold medals at the 2024 Olympic Games with a population under 28 million.
U.S. leagues have taken interest in Melbourne despite the logistical challenges of flying across the globe. The NBA played preseason games there in 2025, and the NFL will play an opening week regular season game there in September.
The city can hang from an infrastructure perspective. Melbourne Park hosts the Australian Open — the world’s most attended tennis tournament — and the adjacent Melbourne Cricket Ground, with a capacity of roughly 100,000, hosts the AFL Grand Final and the Boxing Day Test cricket match.
“Melbourne has a well-deserved reputation for being a sports-mad city,” Matheson said. “There’s no better place to put a sporting event on the planet.”
Paris
Paris overwhelms with its density of annual sporting events, from the Tour de France finish to Europe’s most lucrative horse race. It is also the only city hosting multiple top-tier tennis tournaments: Roland Garros and the Rolex Paris Masters.
In 2024, Paris became the second city ever to host a third Summer Olympic Games, and it will see another wave of tourism in 2030 when the Winter Olympics visit the French Alps.
Paris Saint-Germain, worth $5 billion, has become a soccer powerhouse since Qatar Sports Investments’ takeover in 2011. Earlier this decade, the team amassed three superstars in Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar — but has actually done better since jettisoning their high salaries, winning the UEFA Champions League in 2025 and 2026.
Fashion also sits at the crossover of sports and entertainment, and Paris is its global hub, with athletes such as French basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama and NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander converging on Fashion Week to show off their style.
Los Angeles
Roughly 50 million visitors pass through L.A. every year, including 6.5 million international tourists.
The sports teams’ financials speak for themselves. The Dodgers generated $1 billion in gross revenues last year. Lakers owner Mark Walter is selling the team for more than $12 billion. Los Angeles’ franchises in the five major U.S. men’s sports leagues are worth a combined $57 billion, just a shade behind New York’s $59 billion and more than twice any other city.
Any list of entertainment capitals has to include Hollywood, and while Los Angeles has been a sports capital for decades, the arrow is still pointing upward. It gained two NFL teams in the past 10 years, which play in SoFi Arena, the envy of the stadium industry. The Clippers also have a state-of-the-art basketball arena in the Intuit Dome. Angel City FC, the NWSL’s highest-valued team, began play in 2022.
Between 2022 and 2027, L.A. will have played host to two Super Bowls, NBA and MLB All-Star Games, a Final Four, the Laver Cup, WrestleMania, men’s and women’s golf majors, and the FIFA World Cup. Los Angeles’ run as the sports host of the decade will culminate in 2028 with the Summer Olympics.
This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter‘s September 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.
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