When Mike Myers’ father and five friends leased a muddy limestone lot from a Blount County judge for $1 a year more than 60 years ago, the plan was simple: build their sons a ballpark. Maryville College provided the first bleachers. Willocks Brothers donated block for dugouts. South Central Bell contributed retired telephone poles for the outfield fence. The county commission supplied lines, bases and umpires. Nothing more.
Six decades later, the same patch of ground in Eagleton Village houses six new turf baseball fields anchoring a $22.5 million renovation that local officials project will generate $3 million in annual tourism dollars. And the Eagleton Ballpark is just one piece of a sector that has become one of the county’s most consequential economic forces.
“Most people when I grew up couldn’t tell you how many zeros were in a million,” Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell said at the ballpark’s grand opening. “So now that we’re generating that kind of revenue on these ball fields, that’s just amazing.”
An Industry Hiding in Plain Sight
The Sports Events and Tourism Association in April released its 2026 State of the Industry Report defining a $274.5 billion sports tourism economy in the United States. The sector generates $111.2 billion in direct spending, supports 1.6 million jobs and produces $20.5 billion in state and local tax revenue. Of that national total, $149.1 billion comes from participatory sports tourism — the youth and amateur travel-team segment that increasingly fuels Blount County’s calendar.
“Where sports tourism is at its best is in great communities and great counties like a Blount County,” said John David, president and CEO of Sports ETA. “You’ve got a beautiful new baseball facility that gets built. You’ve got the ability to come in and host these great tournaments. But even better than that, at the same time, you’ve got a phenomenal facility for your local citizens.”
The county’s sports calendar now includes the Smoky Mountain Classic softball tournament in July, the Senior Smoky Mountain Classic, the Smoky Mountain Invitational swim meet, a growing slate of pickleball and K2 volleyball tournaments, disc golf events, ultimate Frisbee matches and — coming in August — an Epson Tour women’s professional golf qualifier bringing 140 competitors to Green Meadow Country Club. Eagleton adds tournament weekends from February through November to that slate.
The Eagleton Bet
Mayor Mitchell projects Eagleton alone will recoup its construction cost within two years through tourism dollars. Sports Facilities Management, the Clearwater, Florida-based operator running the complex, projects a more measured climb in its 20-year economic-impact forecast: roughly $6,873,881 in total economic impact in Year 1, exceeding $10 million by Year 4, $12 million by Year 9 and $15 million annually by Year 18 onward. In just the first five years, projected economic impact is more than $45 million.
Brian Baldwin, the Blount County finance director who led project development, said the partnership with Sports Facilities Companies was selected partly for its measurement capability.
“They have a big enough network that they can track all that,” Baldwin said. “They have relationships with hotels, motels, so they can start booking rooms, get rebates on rooms. They know how many people are getting rooms. So they can really start to track what the economic impact is.”
A Proof of Concept Nearly 60 Years Old
The county does not have to wait to see what a successful sports-tourism event looks like. For nearly six decades, the Smoky Mountain Classic has been demonstrating the model — bringing in 34 teams from 18 states as the premier regular-season men’s slow-pitch tournament in the country.
Joe Huff, executive director of the Parks & Recreation Commission, is preparing for his 44th Smoky. A previous economic-impact analysis pegged the tournament’s annual contribution at close to $1 million across a single weekend, with about 700 hotel room nights generated.
A separate Senior Smoky Mountain Classic, which Huff said represents the fastest-growing segment of slow-pitch softball, adds roughly 400 more room nights.
David called the youth-and-amateur engine a pipeline for everything else.
“Oftentimes, the first time a kid ever stays in a hotel, ever takes a flight, is to go participate in a tournament,” he said. “Sports tourism, in our opinion, is the pipeline for all future tourism.”
The Neighborhood Effect
That national story plays out at the neighborhood level along East Broadway, the stretch of Maryville locals have long called Eagleton Village. According to a 2017 The Daily Times feature, the community grew around a 1941 federal housing project built to house Alcoa’s wartime workforce of roughly 11,000. The Eagleton ball fields became its center.
Mitchell, who attended the elementary school that once sat between the old third base and outfield, said reinvestment is already visible along Knoxville Highway.
“You’re seeing a lot of business owners taking more pride in their buildings. A lot of work is being done on the buildings,” Mitchell said pointing to the development opportunity the ballpark project has sparked. “Even if you’re just having mediocre food, you could make a killing out here just selling sandwiches to people during the tournaments.”
Baldwin offered a more granular indicator from the park operators.
“They’re talking about the trash cans,” Baldwin said. “The trash cans are so full that they’re having to empty them multiple times a day. And what’s in those trash cans are McDonald’s, Domino’s, Richy Kreme donut boxes.”
What Comes Next
The next phase is already in early discussion. Mitchell has signaled interest in a soccer complex on Alcoa-owned property on the other side of the county. Huff favors a multi-purpose outdoor facility capable of accommodating soccer, lacrosse, flag football, rugby and other emerging sports, plus a multi-use indoor recreation center and eventually a competition swimming pool.
Bounds of Sports Facilities Companies confirmed early conversations with the Blount Partnership about additional venues, while cautioning that clustering decisions are situational.
The most common mistake in sports-tourism development, David added to the conversation, is poor consultation during facility design — a fence line three feet off, a field that cannot pivot between sports, a master plan that does not anticipate Phase 2 or Phase 3. The second most common, he said, is communities that build facilities before nearby hotel inventory is ready, allowing tax revenue to leak across county lines.
Mitchell, who said he did not see this coming 20 years ago when travel ball first began to reshape youth athletics, framed the broader benefit in fiscal terms.
“When you’re basically making a lot of funding for your government off of tourism dollars, it keeps you from having to raise taxes,” he said. “Local people aren’t paying for it. People coming in are for your infrastructure. They’re paying for your roads.”
That logic connects the new $22.5 million ballpark to the muddy lot Myers’ father and his friends carved out for their sons more than half a century ago. The difference is scale — and the recognition that what started as a gift to a neighborhood has become, quietly, an industry.
“Whoever did this, I give them credit,” Myers said at the grand opening, surveying the six new fields. “But they wouldn’t have been able to do it if my dad and his five buddies hadn’t built the original field.”
