Innovators & Influencers: how Visit Indy elevated the U.S. Olympic swimming trials to a new level

Innovators & Influencers — a destination marketing organization (DMO) or convention and visitors bureau (CVB) deserving of a spotlight and applause. This special edition of Innovators & Influencers tells the story of how Visit Indy made a big splash by hosting the first-ever 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in a football stadium. 
 

Video by Jeremy Kasik, videographer
 

Indianapolis, Indiana, was a well-established sports tourism hotspot long before adding the Olympic trials to its resume. NCAA Final Fours, the Indianapolis 500, and the famous Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, to name just a few — the destination is no stranger to hosting large sporting events.

Although spearheaded by the Indiana Sports Corp, Jeff Robinson, CDME, Managing Director of Marketing at Visit Indy, said that collaboration with hundreds of volunteers from the local community played a significant role in elevating this event to never-before-seen heights.

Creativity was key in tackling the challenges that came with a new type of event, such as:

• Constructing two Olympic-sized swimming pools inside Lucas Oil Stadium, with a feasible plan for draining and disassembling them after the event
• Establishing a proper audio/visual setup to ensure a seamless and exciting viewer experience
• Drawing in and selling tickets to a crowd of people who are most likely not yet fans of swimming
• Making the event unique with an interactive and walkable fan experience

The DMO partnered with gold medalist Lilly King to win the request for proposal (RFP), which ultimately amped up the local community to rally behind the event and become some of swimming’s biggest cheerleaders. By keeping the locals involved and excited from start to finish — the DMO drew in tourism dollars to the tune of over 100 million dollars in economic impact and a record-breaking attendance of over 285,000 people.

“Asking someone who has never gone to a swim meet to buy a ticket and carve time out of their schedule to watch this type of an event was a unique challenge — and we proved that we could do it,” said Robinson. “Don't limit yourself to what you know you can do … By bringing creative ideas forward, we can help elevate events and bring more people into the sport. There are people who are going to be swim fans in a way that they never were before. A lot of us might tune in every four years to watch some swimming, or even start engaging with the sport outside of the Olympics.”