Contents
- International sports tourism statistics: Italy’s sports-holiday travel
- Rugby World Cup visitor volumes and stays
- International sports tourism statistics: visitor spending and economic impact
- Rugby World Cup 2019 inbound travel behavior
- International sports tourism statistics: attendance and visitor experience
- Sources
International sports tourism statistics: Italy’s sports-holiday travel
Sports tourism can mean a trip whose main purpose is sport, or travel prompted by attending a major event. Italy’s 2024 figures offer a national example of the first kind: 556,000 international travellers chose Italy for a sporting holiday. They generated almost 2 million overnight stays and spent €338 million. Compared with 2023, overnight stays rose 8.7% and expenditure rose 3.3%, according to ENIT, which attributes these figures to Bank of Italy data.
Those totals describe different things. The traveller count is a number of people, the overnight-stay figure counts nights, and expenditure is a monetary total. The larger increase in overnight stays than in spending does not, by itself, explain how individual trips changed; the source does not provide the trip-level detail needed to establish a cause. Source: ENIT, “Tourism and sport in a new local area development model”.
A separate ENIT passage, attributed to ISTAT, puts sporting holidays at 4.6% of Italian residents’ holidays in 2023. The share was 5.4% when considering only holidays taken in Italy, and 6.5% for short breaks. These figures concern Italian residents and domestic holiday choices; they are not shares of international travel to Italy. They help show that sports-oriented travel is also present within Italy’s resident holiday market, but their denominator differs from the inbound traveller count above. Source: ENIT, “Tourism and sport in a new local area development model”.
Rugby World Cup visitor volumes and stays
Major tournaments provide a second lens on international sports tourism. Rugby World Cup France 2023 attracted 425,000 international visitors, 72% of whom came from Europe. They stayed an average of 10 days in France. World Rugby also reports that international fans booked 4.2 million overnight stays in the host country. The visitor count, average stay, and total nights together describe both the reach of the event and the scale of accommodation use, while remaining specific to this tournament and its international visitors. Source: World Rugby, “France the true winner of impactful Rugby World Cup 2023”.
For Japan’s 2019 tournament, World Rugby reported 242,000 international fans from 178 nations, with an average stay of 17 days. The EY report’s estimate for inbound visitors was also approximately 242,000, based on overseas ticket purchasers and average accompanying visitors. The EY report gives a different average length of stay: 16 nights. These are not necessarily conflicting measures: one public summary states days, while the report chart states nights, and the sources may also use different definitions or rounding. The figures should be retained with their original units rather than silently treated as identical. Sources: World Rugby, “RWC 2019 delivers record economic, social and sporting outcomes for Japan”; EY, The Economic Impact of Rugby World Cup 2019.
The France and Japan event totals are useful case studies, not a controlled comparison of destinations. The events took place in different years and countries, and the supplied reports do not establish that their visitor estimates use identical methods. Their most useful common point is that international event travel can entail stays measured in many days, with substantial overnight volume.
International sports tourism statistics: visitor spending and economic impact
For France 2023, international visitors spent an average of €170 per day, compared with €80 for fans from France. International fans’ 4.2 million overnight stays represented €219 million for the accommodation sector. These figures describe spending and accommodation value associated with the event; they should not be read as a complete per-person trip budget or as the total economic impact. Source: World Rugby, “France the true winner of impactful Rugby World Cup 2023”.
World Rugby reports that France 2023 generated €1.8 billion in total spend and delivered a net input of €871 million for France’s economy. Its methodology footnote separately identifies €690 million in direct, €143 million in indirect, and €38 million in induced impact from economic spend by international visitors and organisations. These categories sum to €871 million. The footnote’s defined scope matters: the direct, indirect, and induced figures are tied to that visitor-and-organisation spending, while the broader reported total spend is a different measure. Source: World Rugby, “France the true winner of impactful Rugby World Cup 2023”.
For Japan 2019, World Rugby’s public summary says international visitors spent £2.3 billion in Japan and gives an average of £286 per international visitor per night. The public summary presents the totals in pounds. The EY report provides a separate inbound visitor measure in yen: average consumption of ¥686,117 per visitor. It also reports that visitors stayed an average of 16 nights, compared with 6 nights for inbound foreign visitors in 2018, or approximately 2.7 times as long. These measures should not be combined into a single spending estimate: the currencies and reported units differ, and the daily or nightly average is distinct from total consumption per visitor. Sources: World Rugby, “RWC 2019 delivers record economic, social and sporting outcomes for Japan”; EY, The Economic Impact of Rugby World Cup 2019.
Rugby World Cup 2019 inbound travel behavior
The EY report adds detail about how inbound visitors moved through Japan. Approximately 25% of their lodging nights involved cities outside the host cities. Inbound visitors purchased 28% of tickets sold—approximately 490,000 of roughly 1.72 million, excluding cancelled matches as the report states. Among surveyed inbound visitors, 76% entered Japan in Tokyo. Together, these observations show that event-related travel included movement beyond match locations, while Tokyo was the principal recorded entry point in the survey. Source: EY, The Economic Impact of Rugby World Cup 2019.
The report also distinguishes willingness to return from stronger stated intent. World Rugby’s public summary says 90% of fans said they would return to Japan. In the EY report’s inbound visitor survey, 75% selected the specific response “absolutely want to come again.” The latter is a defined response category, not the full share expressing any positive return intention. More than 60% of fans were visiting Japan for the first time, according to the World Rugby summary. These are tournament-related fan or visitor findings, not estimates for all tourists to Japan. Sources: World Rugby, “RWC 2019 delivers record economic, social and sporting outcomes for Japan”; EY, The Economic Impact of Rugby World Cup 2019.
International sports tourism statistics: attendance and visitor experience
Visitor totals sit alongside attendance and survey measures. In France 2023, one million people attended at least one of the 48 matches; 59% were French. Among surveyed spectators, 98% were satisfied with their stay in France and 82% wished to return. These percentages concern the surveyed spectators, while the million-person figure counts match attendees. Satisfaction and stated intention are useful experience indicators, but they do not measure later return visits. Source: World Rugby, “France the true winner of impactful Rugby World Cup 2023”.
Japan 2019 recorded 1.83 million tickets sold and a 99% attendance-to-capacity rate across 45 matches. A record 1.13 million fans attended one or more of the 16 official fanzones. World Rugby also reports that 80% of surveyed fans described their experience as exceptional. Tickets sold, attendance relative to capacity, fanzone attendance, and survey responses are separate measures: they capture event scale and fan experience from different angles. Source: World Rugby, “RWC 2019 delivers record economic, social and sporting outcomes for Japan”.
These cases show why international sports tourism statistics are most useful when each number travels with its definition. A visitor count is not an attendance count; overnight stays are not unique travellers; economic impact is not interchangeable with total spending; and survey intentions are not observed repeat trips. Kept in scope, the figures describe sports-holiday travel in Italy and the tourism footprint of two Rugby World Cups without turning event-specific evidence into a universal estimate.