Celebrating 35 Years of GO Sports

For 35 years, the Greater Orlando Sports Commission (GO Sports) has helped shape Orlando’s identity as one of America’s great sports destinations. But our story has never simply been about the events we recruit. It is about what those events mean to the people and the community we serve.   

GO Sports was established in 1992 with an ambitious mission: bring the 1994 FIFA World Cup to Orlando. That moment demonstrated what could happen when our business community, elected leaders, tourism industry and sports organizations shared a vision and worked together to pursue it.   

Thirty-five years later, that spirit of collaboration remains our greatest competitive advantage.   

Today, GO Sports represents the City of Orlando and Lake, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties and the great State of Florida, working across an extraordinary sports ecosystem of more than 80 Central Florida venues and countless professional, collegiate, amateur and youth organizations.    

Together, we have welcomed NCAA championships, Olympic qualifiers, international soccer, WrestleMania, the Special Olympics USA Games, the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Marathon, FIFA Club World Cup and some of the largest youth and amateur sporting events in the world.   

Those events generate significant visitation, economic impact, and global exposure for Central Florida. But their true legacy cannot be measured only by hotel rooms, attendance figures, or economic impact alone.   

It lives in the athlete who remembers competing in Orlando. The family that turns a tournament into a vacation. The child sitting in the stands who sees an Olympian compete and begins to dream differently about what is possible. And it lives in the millions of visitors who experience our community, and our hospitality, through sports.   

That is increasingly how we define success. The next chapter may be our most exciting yet. Orlando will welcome the 2027 FIVB Women’s Volleyball World Championship and, in 2028, the Olympic Q-Series - the final qualification stop for four sports on the road to the LA28 Summer Olympic Games.    

The world comes to Orlando to play. Our job is to make sure the experience, and the impact, last long after the final whistle.