Adaptive Sports Continues Worldwide Growth

The 2028 Paralympic Summer Games in Los Angeles will be pivotal for the International Paralympic Committee in building awareness of the sports and athletes who compete, said Craig Spence, the IPC’s chief brand and communications officer, at the annual Adapted Sport Leadership & Business Symposium (LABS).

Spence, for who Paris was his seventh Paralympic Games, was part of a panel on highlighting language when describing adaptive sports during its recent rise in attention and with LA28 on the horizon.

“Paralympic sport is high performance sport,” Spence said. “There are very few people in the world who can run the 100 meters in under 11 seconds. In the Paralympics, we have multiple athletes who can do that.”

Spence has been part of the IPC’s work in branding and marketing athletes with intentional language in the Paralympic Games. One example is “why say participating? You go to the Paralympics after years of training to compete,” he said.

The growth of Paralympic sport has been explosive; Spence said the IPC social media channels this year has registered around 1.5 billion views and is working with international federations on increasing coverage of Para athletes in between Games cycles.

Toyota is a key part of the Paralympic marketing landscape and the Toyota Mobility Foundation recently signed an agreement with the International Paralympic Committee on programs aimed to develop sports for persons with disabilities. Dedra DeLilli, the vice president of marketing communications for Toyota North America, said during the LABS event that Toyota has contributed nearly $6 million since 2021 to the Paralympic movement.

“Mobility is part of who we and what the Olympic and Paralympic partnership has done for us is delivering on our objective,” she said. “It’s been easy to continue supporting the Paralympic movement and Paralympic athletes particularly because it’s been one of the most successful efforts we’ve had in brand metrics.”

“We’re celebrating our athletes a whole lot more,” added Christina Schwab, the Team USA women’s wheelchair basketball coach in Paris. “We’re seeing our athletes get so much more media attention, so much more sponsorship. It’s a big shift in the Paralympic movement and it’s overdue.”

The conference also showcased other ways adaptive sports is changing the sports industry. Emily Jagos, innovation apparel design director at Adidas, described the year-plus process in designing wheelchair basketball kits after working with Adaptive Sports Northwest, an organization in Portland.

“It was really important to immerse ourselves in the community and take the approach of listen, learn and observe,” Jagos said. “Across the board, integration into the communities that we’re designing with and for and a sense of co-creation has been really important.”

This year’s event marked the fifth anniversary for LABS since it began during the pandemic in 2020. The 2023 Adapted Sports Industry Economic Impact Study, reflecting 2022 events, totaled $139.1 million, demonstrating an increase of 78 percent over the previous report.

The impact on adaptive sports for destinations was also discussed with Turnstone and Visit Fort Wayne as a case study. The 2024 National Wheelchair Basketball Association Women’s and Military Division Wheelchair Basketball National Championships were held in the destination earlier this year. An international event this year at Turnstone also resulted in 3,000 room nights.

“That snowball effect does take effect,” said Stasha Carrasquillo, Turnstone Center chief marketing technology officer. “Working with Visit Fort Wayne on some bids for tournaments, we’ve sometimes had to go outside our own facility for some multi-sport events. That gives us the chance to take an event to another venue and once we figure out the accessibility piece, the venues see it’s not so hard (to host events).”

The success of Turnstone has led to increased interest on adaptive sports as well.

“There’s other venues reaching out to Turnstone on how to make their venues more accessible,” Nicolle Campbell, director of sales for Visit Fort Wayne. “It’s opened up their eyes to additional sports that they can support and bring in.”

Progress Sought in Collegiate Space

Oluwaferanmi Okanlami called for equitable access on the collegiate level during the event. Okanlami is the director of student accessibility and accommodation services at the University of Michigan, where he oversees the adaptive sports & fitness program. He was a track and field athlete at Stanford and earned his MD from the University of Michigan before matching into Orthopedic Surgery at Yale. At the beginning of his third year he experienced a spinal cord injury.

“That is one thing we don’t have in a widespread way … as a disabled student-athlete, you don’t have the options that a non-disabled student-athlete has,” Okanlami said, adding “that doesn’t mean the NCAA couldn’t stand up, speak up and lead to provide more access to adaptive sports regardless of whether you’re a Paralympic athlete or if you’re varsity level.”

Three collegiate national championships had adaptive sports activations as part of a project between the NCAA Office of Inclusion and United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The USOPC, NCAA and National Wheelchair Basketball Association presented a Team USA vs. College All-Star Game during halftime of the Division I Women’s championship game in Cleveland. Collegiate wheelchair tennis had a presence at the NCAA Division I championships and the national collegiate wheelchair championships in the 100-meter races were part of the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

“We want to get to the point that it’s not just an exhibition,” Okanlami said. “By supporting para athletes in the collegiate space, institutions are able to show that they care for all students.”