From $86.5m retail to repeat visits: How to turn a football fan into a tourist for life -Dr Tandoh

Dr Kweku Adedayo Tandoh is the Chief Operating Officer, Africa Table Tennis Federation (ATTF), in a sport tourism session at Akwaaba 2026, he told African governments to stop asking if they can host sporting festival but to start asking what hosting leaves behind. Citing AFCON 2023’s 1.2 million fans, $1.5 billion value and 97 percent destination boost for Côte d’Ivoire, and Cape Town’s five billion rand from seven events, he argued the stadium isn’t the economy — the visitor economy is. His fix: treat events as adverts, package them with culture and tours, and run a five-pillar strategy of bid, build, package, market, legacy, so the final whistle marks the start, not the end, of tourism value. ‘WALE OLAPADE reports:

At the 22nd Akwaaba African Travel Market in Lagos, Dr Kweku Adedayo Tandoh, Chief Operating Officer, Africa Table Tennis Federation, challenged African governments to rethink why they host sporting events. His presentation, titled: “Hosting of Sporting Events and Its Impact on Tourism: Turning sporting events into engines of tourism, economic development and destination branding,” argued that the continent has focused too much on the ability to host and too little on the ability to convert.

For Tandoh, sport and tourism are natural allies that Africa has not fully connected. Sport, he explained, moves athletes, officials, coaches, media, sponsors and spectators. Tourism exists because those visitors require accommodation, transport, food, entertainment, shopping and experiences. When that movement is properly managed, the spending, exposure and infrastructure it creates can generate jobs, business and destination value. The strategic question therefore is not simply whether a country can host an event, but how it can turn that event into a tourism and economic development platform.

He described this conversion as a chain that runs from event to legacy. An event attracts attention, that attention brings visitors in the form of athletes, officials, fans and media, those visitors spend on hotels, food, transport and retail, that spending creates business for SMEs and jobs for workers, the broadcast and storytelling around the event build the destination brand, and that brand ultimately creates repeat visits and investment long after the final whistle.

A common mistake, Tandoh noted, is to think the stadium is the economy. In reality, the stadium is only one part of a much larger tourism ecosystem. The true beneficiaries sit in the visitor economy. Hotels gain occupancy and room nights, airlines and transport operators gain passenger demand and mobility, restaurants gain meals and hospitality revenue, retail and artisans gain shopping for local products, tour operators gain excursions and experiences, and media and digital platforms gain content, advertising and storytelling.

He pointed to the multiplier effect to explain how this works. A visitor spends in the destination, a business such as a hotel or restaurant receives revenue, that revenue generates income for workers and contracts for suppliers, and that income circulates further into the local economy as additional spending and tax activity.

Perhaps his sharpest insight was that the event itself becomes the advertisement. Broadcast can put a host destination before millions of people. Storytelling brings culture, food, people and places into the narrative. Viewers and visitors can then be converted into future tourists. As he put it, sport can make a potential visitor say, “I want to visit that country.” But that conversion must be deliberate. Governments and operators must package the event with culture, heritage, entertainment, shopping, nature and business so that the person who came for the competition becomes a tourist who experiences the destination and later a returning visitor who comes back for leisure, business or culture.

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He also urged destinations to use events strategically to extend the tourism season, scheduling suitable competitions when demand is weaker to fill rooms, restaurants and attractions. Legacy, he warned, must be planned from the start. The key principle, in his words, is to avoid white elephants. Facilities should serve residents, sport, tourism and business after the event. That means thinking about four pillars: access through airports, roads and public transport; venues including stadiums, arenas and training sites; digital infrastructure for connectivity, ticketing and media; and hospitality through hotels, food and visitor services. When done well, sport plus tourism creates a wider employment ecosystem covering event management, hospitality and catering, transport and logistics, security, broadcasting and digital media, tour operations, marketing and sponsorship, retail and entertainment. Every major event, he insisted, should include a local skills, SME and youth participation plan.

Tandoh grounded his framework in recent African evidence from 2016 to 2026. He cited Côte d’Ivoire’s hosting of AFCON 2023, where more than 1.2 million spectators filled stadiums, 17 percent of attendees were international, retail and tourism revenue reached 86.5 million dollars and overall economic value was estimated at 1.5 billion dollars. Surveys showed 97 percent of fans said AFCON helped promote Côte d’Ivoire as a tourist destination and 98 percent said hosting had a positive effect on the country’s image, with domestic travel also playing a major role.

He also pointed to South Africa as an example of a recurring ecosystem rather than a one-off mega event. Seven sporting events in Cape Town in 2022/23 generated over five billion rand, Cape Town Formula E contributed 2.13 billion rand, the Rugby Sevens World Cup drew over 105,000 in attendance, and the Comrades Marathon in KwaZulu-Natal had an impact of 550 million rand. More than 29,000 people travelled specifically for sport in the first half of 2023, contributing about 600 million rand, while Cape Town reported more than 1.3 million people attending or participating in its top 40 events in 2023. The lesson, he said, is that a year-round event portfolio can sustain hotels, restaurants, transport, retail and attractions, making sports tourism a destination management tool, not simply an event management function.

To make this work, he proposed a five-pillar sports tourism strategy: bid by targeting the right events that fit the tourism calendar and destination strengths, build by investing in sustainable assets, package by connecting sport to tourism, market by telling the destination story, and legacy by measuring long-term value.

He stressed that success should move beyond attendance and measure tourism through visitors, length of stay, hotel occupancy and spend; economic impact through jobs, SME revenue, tax activity and investment; destination impact through media reach, digital engagement, brand awareness and future bookings; and sport impact through participation, facility use, officials trained and future events. The key question, he said, is what did the event leave behind.

He was also candid about risks. Hosting is not automatically profitable. Cost overruns require independent budgeting and procurement controls, underused facilities require post-event business and use plans, traffic and congestion require integrated transport planning, security requires risk-based planning and coordination, environmental effects require waste, energy and mobility measures, and short-term gains require a tourism legacy plan and destination marketing.

He closed with a call to change mindset, a line that drew applause at Eko Hotels and Suites. Move from saying “We are hosting a sporting event” to saying “We are using the event to sell our destination,” and then ask how much tourism, economic and social value was created. In his words, the final whistle should not mark the end of the benefits of a sporting event. It should mark the beginning of its tourism and economic legacy.

For Akwaaba 2026, which placed sports tourism at its centre to leverage AFCON 2027 as a catalyst for intra-African tourism, with over 100 African tour operators from West and East Africa converging in Lagos to build joint packages for fans travelling to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, Tandoh’s analysis offered a timely blueprint: stop treating sporting events as isolated competitions and start treating them as gateways to African destinations where wildlife, coast, culture and cities become part of the journey from spectator to tourist and back again.

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