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Disney’s sporting venture

Dis­ney is renowned for inno­va­tion. The com­pa­ny didn’t just invent theme parks as we know them, it also helped devel­op much of the tech­nol­o­gy need­ed to thrill and enter­tain. But less well known is that Dis­ney is a pio­neer in sport.

The sports com­plex was designed by the same wiz­ards who build Disney’s state-of-the-art theme park rides

Wide World of Sports

Strid­ing through the giant gates of the Wide World of Sports in Orlan­do, Flori­da, it soon becomes appar­ent that this is no ordi­nary sports com­plex. Its tall yel­low tow­ers and spot­less­ly clean sweep­ing arch­ways resem­ble those found in Mediter­ranean towns, and give vis­i­tors a regal feel­ing of arrival. Its wrought-iron rail­ings form the shape of base­ball bats and inside the ball­park club­house even the light fix­tures resem­ble ballplay­ers.

The same atten­tion to detail is found through­out the com­plex which is no mean feat giv­en its sprawl­ing size. The 250 acres com­prise facil­i­ties for host­ing more than 70 sports. There’s an 11,500-seat base­ball park, four mul­ti-sports fields, a track and field com­plex, a six-field soft­ball com­plex, ten ten­nis courts and two indoor are­nas, with the flag­ship venue big enough to accom­mo­date twelve vol­ley­ball courts.

Disney's sporting venture

Roc­co Baldeli of the Boston Red Sox at ESPN Wide World of Sports Cham­pi­on Sta­di­um

It is run by Walt Dis­ney World Resort’s sports divi­sion and was the brain­child of its major­i­ty own­er, the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny. The sports com­plex was designed by the same wiz­ards who build Disney’s state-of-the-art theme park rides. Per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, its pur­pose was to entice guests to near­by Dis­ney World, the world’s most-vis­it­ed theme park com­plex that fea­tures four theme parks, an enter­tain­ment and shop­ping com­plex, two water parks and more than 25 hotels.

What makes the Wide World of Sports tru­ly unique is the vast major­i­ty of the events staged there are for youth and ama­teur teams and com­peti­tors. Cru­cial to this strat­e­gy has been the Ama­teur Ath­let­ic Union (AAU), the largest ama­teur sports organ­i­sa­tion in the Unit­ed States.

Amateur Athletic Union

The AAU announced its sup­port for the Wide World of Sports sev­er­al years before the com­plex opened in March 1997 and even relo­cat­ed its head­quar­ters to Dis­ney World. It com­mit­ted to stag­ing more than 35 nation­al events annu­al­ly at the venue and it hosts 26 nation­al bas­ket­ball events there each year as well as oth­ers in base­ball, gym­nas­tics, fast­pitch soft­ball, track and field, and wrestling.

The top coach­es and col­lege scouts from America’s Nation­al Col­le­giate Ath­let­ic Asso­ci­a­tion come to the AAU nation­al cham­pi­onships to recruit the best high school tal­ent before each sea­son begins, and the same goes for oth­er sports.

“We offer a wide vari­ety of youth events for ath­letes of all ages and skill lev­els,” says Mari­beth Bisienere, senior vice pres­i­dent of the Wide World of Sports. “They range from the Dis­ney Soc­cer Show­case, fea­tur­ing the top high school boys and girls soc­cer play­ers in the nation, to the Pop Warn­er Super Bowl and the AAU Vol­ley­ball Nation­al Cham­pi­onships, to Dis­ney High School Spring Train­ing, which is open to any high school team, such as soc­cer, lacrosse, field hock­ey or golf, look­ing to train and com­pete out­doors here dur­ing the spring.”

Attract­ing extra guests to Dis­ney World was one of the key rea­sons for the cre­ation of the Wide World of Sports. Accord­ing to Dis­ney offi­cials, research shows the major­i­ty of the more than 150,000 ath­letes, coach­es and fans, who come to the Wide World of Sports annu­al­ly, would not have come to Walt Dis­ney World Resort if it were not for the sports com­plex.

The com­peti­tors tend to vis­it the near­by theme parks in between match­es in a tour­na­ment or after the games have fin­ished, so it is good syn­er­gy for Disney’s busi­ness. As the ath­letes tend to be young, they inevitably come with their fam­i­ly mem­bers, which brings even more busi­ness Disney’s way. It wel­comes them with open arms and even cre­ates bespoke pack­ages for com­peti­tors, so for exam­ple they can get dis­count­ed park tick­ets valid after 2pm which is use­ful if they have been train­ing in the morn­ing.

ESPN

ESPN Wide World of Sports Wel­come Cen­ter

Many of the big Dis­ney endurance races are clev­er­ly sched­uled to coin­cide with the slow­est times of the year for Dis­ney. In Jan­u­ary and Novem­ber it hosts marathons through its theme parks, but with more than 100 sports events staged annu­al­ly at the Wide World of Sports, they also take place at busier times.

In Decem­ber, there’s the Soc­cer Show­case, the biggest youth foot­ball tour­na­ment in the US, which fea­tures more than 500 teams from over 20 coun­tries. “Per­haps the biggest growth sports at our com­plex are soc­cer, endurance races, vol­ley­ball, and cheer and dance,” says Ms Bisienere.

The Wide World of Sports has a pres­ti­gious patron­age and the list of young ath­letes, who com­pet­ed there and went on to reach the top of their games, reads like a roll-call of sports stars.

They include Wim­ble­don cham­pi­on Ser­e­na Williams, Lley­ton Hewitt and Pete Sam­pras, and from bas­ket­ball NBA stars O.J. Mayo and Shane Larkin. Amer­i­can soc­cer star Fred­dy Adu played in the Soc­cer Show­case when he was 12. How­ev­er, aspir­ing to these lofty heights is only one of the hooks which lure kids to the com­plex.

The Wide World of Sports has host­ed prac­tice events for teams in the three pri­ma­ry Amer­i­can pro­fes­sion­al sports leagues and in Feb­ru­ary every year the Atlanta Braves Major League base­ball team holds its spring train­ing there.

Sports stars who have trained or vis­it­ed include Lionel Mes­si, Ricar­do Kaká, Tiger Woods, Muham­mad Ali, Bil­lie Jean King, Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Jor­dan and Justin Gatlin.

ESPN

The US-based glob­al cable and satel­lite TV chan­nel ESPN, which is part owned by Dis­ney, broad­casts from the Wide World of Sports.

“Nowhere else can ath­letes, coach­es and fans feel like they have made it on to ESPN than at our sports com­plex,” says Ms Bisienere. “We are laser-focused on bring­ing the ESPN expe­ri­ence to life at our sports com­plex through var­i­ous aspects of ESPN, includ­ing ESPN broad­casts of the events at our sports com­plex – there were more than 140 live shows and games from our com­plex in 2014 – ESPN expe­ri­ences for our guests, inter­ac­tion with ESPN on-air tal­ent and ESPN tech­nol­o­gy.”

The ESPN brand is dis­played on dig­i­tal boards and jum­botron screens around the facil­i­ty which show clips of the match­es there. Com­peti­tors can even end up on tele­vi­sion out­side the com­plex as the action is streamed to both the ESPN3 web­site and a ded­i­cat­ed chan­nel which is avail­able in more than 27,000 Dis­ney hotel rooms near­by. This alone is believed to reach at least ten mil­lion peo­ple annu­al­ly.

The next major devel­op­ment at the Wide World of Sports is the arrival in May of the Invic­tus Games, the mul­ti-sport event, found­ed by Prince Har­ry, for wound­ed, injured or sick armed ser­vices per­son­nel.