SB927 establishes the Virginia Sports Tourism Grant Program within the Virginia Tourism Authority to provide grants aimed at developing and attracting sports tourism activities to Virginia. The program is designed to support competitively bid youth, collegiate, and other sporting events that draw most participants from outside the Commonwealth and are hosted at Virginia venues or similar facilities. Grants may be awarded only to in-state sports tourism activity sponsors such as convention and visitors bureaus, chambers of commerce, sports commissions, nonprofit sports support organizations, political subdivisions, and related public entities.
The bill requires applicants to enter into performance agreements with the Authority that spell out how grant funds will be used, what reporting is required, and what repayment obligations apply if performance conditions are not met. The Authority must create guidelines and objective criteria for awarding grants, and those guidelines must include a mandatory matching-funds requirement equal to the amount of any grant awarded. The bill also requires annual reporting by November 1 on grant awards and expenditures, including total grants awarded, and directs that the report be prepared alongside existing tourism-related reporting requirements.
In addition to creating the program, the bill directs the Virginia Tourism Authority to convene a work group of venue operators and tourism stakeholders to develop recommended grant guidelines. That work group must identify criteria for eligible major events, eligible sponsors, performance metrics, match requirements, and eligible uses of grant funds, and it must report its recommendations to the money committees by October 31, 2025. The bill therefore both creates the program and sets up a process for refining how it will operate before full implementation.
The bill’s impact on state law is to add a new section to the Code of Virginia establishing a state grant program focused on sports tourism, with oversight, reporting, and repayment mechanisms tied to performance. It gives the Virginia Tourism Authority new administrative responsibilities and creates a new funding channel for local and regional entities that recruit sporting events to Virginia. Because the guidelines are exempt from the Administrative Process Act’s standard rulemaking requirements, the Authority will have flexibility in designing the program, but also a duty to publish criteria and report on awards.
The overall sentiment around the bill appears strongly favorable. It advanced through both chambers with large bipartisan majorities, including unanimous committee reports and a 90-7 House vote, suggesting broad support for using state incentives to attract tourism and economic activity. The main point of potential contention is not whether to create the program, but how the grant criteria, performance metrics, and matching-fund requirements should be structured, since those details were left to the Authority and the work group to develop.
SB927 adds a new statutory section to the Code of Virginia creating the Virginia Sports Tourism Grant Program and assigning the Virginia Tourism Authority responsibility for awarding grants, setting criteria, and reporting annually on awards and expenditures. It affects state law by authorizing a new grant-making program for in-state sponsors of competitively bid sports events, requiring performance agreements and repayment provisions, and mandating a dollar-for-dollar local or private match for grant eligibility. The bill also directs a stakeholder work group to recommend implementation guidelines, shaping how local governments, tourism organizations, sports commissions, and venue operators may access state support.
The bill appears to have enjoyed broad bipartisan support throughout the legislative process. It was reported from committee with unanimous votes, passed the Senate overwhelmingly, and passed the House by a wide margin before the Senate agreed to the House substitute. The voting history suggests general agreement that sports tourism can be an economic development tool for the Commonwealth. There is no evidence of organized opposition in the available record, though the use of state grant funds and the details of program design likely prompted some scrutiny and amendment work.
The main areas of potential contention are program design and fiscal safeguards rather than the concept of sports tourism support itself. The bill requires a mandatory supplemental funding match equal to the grant amount, which may be a concern for smaller localities or organizations with limited fundraising capacity. Another possible point of debate is the performance agreement and repayment structure, which imposes accountability requirements on grant recipients. The bill also exempts guideline development from the Administrative Process Act, giving the Authority more flexibility but reducing formal public rulemaking protections, and it leaves key eligibility and performance standards to a later work group and agency process.