‘The Silicon Valley of sport’: Indiana Sports Corp unveils 2050 vision
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIn 1979, the city of Indianapolis created the nation’s first sports corporation. Now, as the city’s calendar is filled with sporting events, sports leaders are looking ahead and sharing goals for the future.
“45 years later, we’ve claimed sports as our strategy,” Julie Roe Lach, Horizon League Commissioner, told Inside INdiana Business. “We want to be this epicenter or this ecosystem of major sports, so we need to do more than just events.”
Last week, the Indiana Sports Corp unveiled 2050 Vision—a five-pronged approach to continue to attract big time events and also create global centers for sports tech, academia, business leadership and women’s sports.
“For us to stay ahead and to be thinking broader and bolder, we needed to rethink the sports strategy,” Indiana Sports Corp President Patrick Talty said. “How do we continue to unleash Indiana’s potential through sport? It’s really about thinking of those five pillars…[and how] we capitalize on all of those, plus the events, to make Indiana back on top of all the competition.”
The 2050 Vision is the result of more than two years of discussions and interviews around the state and nation about the next chapter of a sports strategy that has put Indianapolis and Indiana on the map.
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“We want to be the place where students go to be educated in all things sport…and really [have] the Silicon Valley of sport right here,” Roe Lach said.
Neelay Bhatt, CEO of Next Practice Partners, helped lead the development of the 2050 Vision.
“This is the time for us to again lead the way,” Bhatt said. “I think [the future] is going to go with both newer formats for events, looking at esports [and] the intersection of hybrid sports with in-person and virtual. [We’re] looking at the expansion of events beyond just sporting events to technology, to academia, to innovation and women’s sports right here in Indiana.”
Talty says the competition is getting stiffer every year for events, and 2050 Vision invites everybody, including businesses and universities, to be part of the strategy.
“Events are still our keystone; it’s going to be the thing that we always go after…[but] we’re going to move from this economic impact, where we’re always seen by heads on beds, to economic development—how do we get people to visit, but then how do we get them to stay?” Talty said. “The success is everyone coming together, which is what we do best here in Indiana.”