In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024, Chesterfield County hosted 160 sporting events. Thirty-one of them were at River City Sportsplex on Genito Road, and those thirty-one accounted for $56.7 million of the county's $79.3 million in sports tourism visitor spending. One Midlothian-area facility produced roughly seventy percent of the county's sports tourism impact.
This post explains what the Sportsplex is, how a bankrupt private venture became a county asset, what the county's own tourism report actually says and where its figures disagree with each other, what the $9.2 million field expansion and the new park inside the complex added, and what any of it means for a business on Midlothian Turnpike.
At a glance
What it is: a 115-acre, 16-field outdoor sports complex at 13030 Genito Road, Midlothian, owned and operated by Chesterfield County.
The FY24 numbers: 31 events, $56.7 million in economic impact and $2.1 million in local tax revenue from the Sportsplex alone.
Who turns up: 104,000 out-of-town attendees and 85,000 local ones. The report puts the out-of-town share at 58 percent, though its own two counts work out to 55.
What was added: a $9.2 million expansion took the complex from 12 fields to 16, celebrated November 27, 2024. The Park, a 6.5-acre park inside the complex, opened June 11, 2026.
Who runs the county's sports business: J.C. Poma, announced April 14, 2023 as Chesterfield's first Executive Director of Sports, Visitation and Entertainment, starting May 1, 2023.
From bankrupt private venture to county asset
The complex opened in 2009 as SportsQuest, a private development. Chesterfield put $4.3 million into it in 2010 in exchange for a lease on eight lighted fields. SportsQuest went bankrupt in 2012 and Shaw Industries Group bought the facility at auction.
On October 26, 2016 the county announced it would buy the 115-acre, 12-field property outright for $5.5 million. That is the county's position today: Chesterfield owns the fields that carry most of its sports tourism.
What the FY24 report says
The figures below are from the county's FY24 Annual Tourism and Visitation Report, covering the year ended June 30, 2024. They are the newest figures we can read in full. An FY26 report was published on August 17, 2026, but it is posted only as a flipbook embed, so its numbers are not quoted here.
Measure | FY23 | FY24 |
|---|---|---|
Sporting events countywide | 83 | 160 |
Of those, at River City Sportsplex | 26 | 31 |
Sports tourism visitor spending, countywide | $48.2 million | $79.3 million |
Sports tourism local tax revenue, countywide | $1.8 million | $2.5 million |
River City Sportsplex economic impact | not broken out | $56.7 million |
River City Sportsplex local tax revenue | not broken out | $2.1 million |
The countywide context those sports figures sit inside, all FY24:
Measure | FY24 figure | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
Total visitors | 1.9 million | everyone the county counts as a visitor |
Tourists | 1.5 million | the subset who travelled more than 51 miles |
Total visitor spending | $970 million | all visitor spending |
Tourism spending | $770 million | the tourism subset of that spending |
Hotel properties | 51 | countywide |
Hotel rooms | 4,278 | countywide |
Occupancy | 67 percent | countywide average |
Average daily rate | $103 | countywide average |
In the pipeline | 17 hotels, 2,144 rooms | announced, not open |
Sportsplex attendees were credited with 235,000 regional room nights in FY24.
Where the report's own figures disagree
Anyone quoting these numbers should know that several of them come in pairs, because the report measures more than one thing and does not always say which is which. Worth naming rather than papering over:
1.9 million visitors against 1.5 million tourists. Not a contradiction: the second is the subset who travelled more than 51 miles. Say which one you mean.
$970 million against $770 million in spending. Same structure. The larger figure is all visitor spending; the smaller is the tourism portion.
An out-of-town share of 58 percent against attendee counts that give 55. The report states 58 percent, and 104,000 out of a 189,000 total is 55.0 percent. We print the report's label and the counts side by side rather than choosing.
Two different room-night totals. The report carries more than one, and neither is labelled clearly enough to say what it counts. We are not printing either.
The FY24 report still describes 12 fields even though the four new ones were celebrated in November 2024, inside FY25. The field count and the FY24 impact figures belong to different moments.
The $9.2 million expansion
On February 22, 2024 the county selected The Landtek Group to build four more fields, taking the complex from 12 to 16. The new fields were celebrated on November 27, 2024.
How much more business four fields buy depends on which account you read. Richmond BizSense reported in February 2024 that the expansion would accommodate 48 more teams; WWBT reported 40 in November. J.C. Poma's own arithmetic, given to WWBT at the celebration, was this: "That impact that four more fields has means they can bring 40 more teams. You start doing that math. 40 more teams times 15 athletes times two parents." There is also a gap between reports that the fields were playable in October 2024 and the November 27 celebration.
Poma put the underlying logic more bluntly to BizSense in September 2024: "When heads are in beds in Chesterfield, they spend more money in Chesterfield." Neil Luther, the county's Director of Parks and Recreation, described the division of labour between his department and Poma's in the same story: "He's sales and marketing and we're product development. It's a great relationship."
The Park, which is inside the Sportsplex
The Park is not a separate site. It is a 6.5-acre park within the 115-acre complex, with a splash pad, a playground, trails and fitness zones, funded from the 2022 bond referendum. It broke ground in March 2025 and opened on Thursday, June 11, 2026.
For a business on the corridor, that detail matters more than it sounds. A family with one child playing two games six hours apart used to leave the site between them. A splash pad and a playground change where that gap gets spent, and not always in the county's favour: somewhere to wait on site is also somewhere that is not a restaurant.
How the county funds this
The 2022 bond referendum earmarked $17.2 million for Sportsplex projects, which is where both the field expansion and The Park draw from.
A Tourism Improvement District, established by the Board of Supervisors with the backing of local hoteliers and announced May 3, 2023. It applies a 2 percent assessment to lodging establishments with 41 or more rooms, took effect July 1, 2023, and runs for ten years.
The county's 8 percent transient occupancy tax, which sits underneath the district assessment.
What we are deliberately not claiming: that the Sports, Visitation and Entertainment department is funded out of lodging tax. A September 2024 county release ties surplus lodging tax to field renovations, not to the department's budget, and we found nothing establishing how the department itself is paid for.
What it means for a Midlothian business
The useful way to read the FY24 numbers is per weekend rather than per year. Thirty-one events drew 104,000 out-of-town attendees, which averages out to something over 3,000 per event, arriving in family groups, on a schedule published weeks ahead, with hours of dead time between games. J.C. Poma's own arithmetic for what each new field adds, given at the November 2024 celebration, gets to a similar order of magnitude from the other direction: 40 more teams, 15 athletes each, two parents apiece, or about 1,200 additional out-of-town people.
That is a different customer from a commuter or a resident. They do not know the corridor, they are looking for somewhere close, and they are deciding in the car. Three practical footholds already exist: Play Chesterfield and Experience Chesterfield both carry event and visitor-facing listings, Chesterfield Restaurant Week is an existing countywide promotion, and tournament calendars run through Parks and Recreation, which is how a business finds out which weekends are worth staffing up for.
What to watch
The FY26 report. Published August 17, 2026 as a flipbook. Its figures will supersede everything in the FY24 table above, and they are worth reading by hand.
Whether the event count holds. Countywide sporting events nearly doubled between FY23 and FY24, from 83 to 160. Whether that was a step change or a single strong year is the question the next report answers.
The hotel pipeline. 17 hotels and 2,144 rooms were in the pipeline in FY24, against 4,278 existing rooms. Room supply is what converts a tournament into overnight spending.
The Tourism Improvement District's ten-year clock, which began July 1, 2023.
Read more
FY24 Annual Tourism and Visitation Report, Chesterfield County, the source of every figure in the tables above · the annual report page, which now serves the FY26 edition
More fields to open at Sportsplex this fall, as Chesterfield tourism dept. enters year two, Richmond BizSense, September 16, 2024, with the Poma and Luther quotes
Chesterfield picks contractor to build new $9M fields at River City Sportsplex, Richmond BizSense, February 22, 2024 · the November 2024 celebration, WWBT
Chesterfield Officially Opens The Park at River City Sportsplex, Chesterfield County, June 12, 2026 · A park within a park, March 14, 2025, on what was being built
With backing from local hoteliers, Chesterfield establishes dedicated funding source for tourism, Chesterfield County, May 3, 2023, on the Tourism Improvement District
Chesterfield County to Purchase River City Sportsplex, WTVR, October 26, 2016
Play Chesterfield and Experience Chesterfield, the county's two visitor-facing sites
All dollar and attendance figures are from Chesterfield County's FY24 Annual Tourism and Visitation Report, for the year ended June 30, 2024, and are labelled FY24 throughout because a newer report exists that we could not read. The roughly seventy percent share is arithmetic on two figures in that report, $56.7 million against $79.3 million, not a figure the county publishes. The FY26 report's publication date of August 17, 2026 is taken from the flipbook listing rather than from the report itself, and the ordinance adoption date for the Tourism Improvement District is not pinned by any source we found, so only the announcement date is given. The expansion contract, the quotes and the 2016 purchase announcement are from the sources linked above. We were unable to establish how the Sports, Visitation and Entertainment department is funded, or what the Board of Supervisors voted on November 16, 2016, and have not guessed at either.
Last updated September 17, 2026.