Perfect Game Brings Sports Tourism and Economic Impact to Partners
Six high-level amateur baseball events scheduled for Southern U.S. in one month
Posted On: October 7, 2024 By :The McDonald’s All-American basketball game annually showcases the best high school basketball players in the country. However, the baseball equivalent to that event takes place over the course of a month each year in Florida.
Perfect Game has established itself as a go-to for both college coaches and professional baseball scouts when it comes to seeing the best amateur talent the sport has to offer. The company is in its busiest part of the year, with six tournaments scheduled between September 26 and October 21 in various destinations including West Palm Beach, Jupiter and Fort Myers. Perfect Game on Monday announced that one of its events, the World Wood Bat Association championship, will be pushed back one week because of hurricane activity.
This mega month of event planning is nothing new to Taylor McCollough, vice president of operations at Perfect Game USA, who has been with PG for 22 years.
“(A big) piece of it is picking locations that have the facilities that teams desire to play at,” he continued. “Most all of these events are at spring training complexes of Major League Baseball teams or turf complexes. The destination, not only the beaches and the attractions of Florida, but also top-notch facilities in those communities, draw people.”
The Perfect Revenue Generator
The laundry list of MLB stars who have come through the Perfect Game system is long. Several of the game’s current top pitchers played in showcase events, including Gerrit Cole, Lucas Giolito, Hunter Greene, Lance McCullers and Spencer Strider.
The WWBA (World Wood Bat Association) World Championship in Jupiter is one of Perfect Game’s longest standing events, dating to 1999. The Underclass event in Fort Myers the week prior has been going on since the early 2000s.
The month kicked off with the 2024 WWBA Sophomore World Championship, which took place September 26–30 in Fort Myers at JetBlue Park and other MLB spring training facilities. The same venues hosted the 2024 WWBA Underclass World Championship from October 3–7.
The Palm Beaches are up next, as the destination hosts three major Perfect Game events including the WWBA Freshman World Championship and both the 13U and 14U WWBA World Championships at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches.
The crown jewel event for Perfect Game — the 26th Annual WWBA World Championship — is scheduled for October 17–21 at the Roger Dean Complex in Jupiter. It’s the top scouting attraction in all of amateur baseball each year, with almost every top prospect in the country attending, along with 700-plus MLB scouts and college coaches.
“It’s a team effort to manage all of this,” McCollough said. “We have a great staff of 30 that’s located in Florida that helps on the ground with it and then we also bring in our national staff from around the country to help with the scheduling, the team communication, the hotel piece, the sponsors and the corporate side. We host a lot of corporate meetings during that time down there as well. So there’s a lot going on for us.”
Angel Natal, who has been the senior director of community development at Perfect Game since 2020, says no event would be possible without local partners.
“These events are in legacy communities — we’ve been doing business for more than 20 years in Fort Myers and Lee County and West Palm Beach,” Natal said. “These events happen thanks to the Lee County Sports Development Office, as well as the Palm Beach County Sports Commission. The benefit of being in legacy communities beyond 20 years is they know what restaurants to go to and what activities to go to, far beyond the performance space.”
The events in Palm Beach alone draw 292 teams with 18,784 attendees. It’s one of the largest room generators not only for Palm Beach County but all Florida on an annual basis. The Perfect Game events bring in over an estimated $4 million in direct hotel revenue and more than $14 million in direct visitor spending in Palm Beach.
“The economic and hotel impact is second to none,” said Jeff Mielke, executive director of the Lee County Sports Development Office. “Perfect Game makes an incredible impact for us, not only in September and October, but the rest of the year as well. They bring us a lot of events in the summertime when it’s really key for us to fill our hotels.”
All Hands on Deck
Perfect Game needs quite a bit of staffing to put on numerous events in Florida year-round, so much so that the company recently moved its corporate office to Sanford, Florida, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Over the course of the month, Perfect Game will have 100 staff members on each side of the state.
“The events give so many of our staff across the country that travel in a chance to see the fruits of their labor all year long at that signature event,” said Natal. “And so not only is it good for our customers to come in, but it also gives our staff a chance to say, ‘Wow, I hosted one of these qualifiers and that’s my team from my region.’ So there’s a little bit of ownership from that side as well. It’s pretty cool to see your colleagues that are out there working every weekend in rural communities say, ‘Hey, that’s my team right there that qualified for the biggest and best event in the country.’”
The WWBA World Championship has grown over the years, as the event has now become a Wednesday through Monday occurrence instead of over a traditional weekend schedule. Teams come across the country and the world as Perfect Game will host between 600–700 college coaches and scouts in back-to-back weeks. Everyone from SEC and ACC baseball coaches to MLB scouts and scouting directors of all levels will attend.
“It’s hard to describe without actually seeing it,” McCollough said of the Jupiter event. “There are 300 golf carts flying around, with the atmosphere of all of the tents set up and major vendors like Rawlings and others. The buzz of who’s playing where. It’s top-notch competition on top notch fields. These are professionally manicured fields that a lot of these kids have never played on before.”
Several big-name former MLBers will be on hand as well including Mo Vaughn, Trevor Hoffman, Ryan Klesko, Alfonso Soriano, Charlie Manuel and others. Earlier this year, Perfect Game announced its investor group, which includes 21 former and active major league players.
Natal says the relationships that Perfect Game has cultivated with host destinations are invaluable.
“It’s critically important to communicate with our destination partners before the event, during the event, and then in the post event reconciliation,” Natal said. “I couldn’t begin to tell you the random text messages we send them at 10 p.m. with requests. We’ve created a structure with our new partners at Event Connect that shares simple data like the number of teams and where they came from. It’s a template that we provide to the destinations and it makes everything run smoothly.”
“The people in Florida are willing to help out any way they can,” McCollough added. “Everybody works together and they’re all in it for their communities, but they’re also in it for the state and to bring events to the state of Florida.”
Posted in: Baseball, Youth Sports