As a sports city, Orlando is on a heater.
No, seriously, somebody check the box score because our city is suddenly putting up numbers like prime Steph Curry in the fourth quarter.
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And the scary part?
We’re only in the first quarter of this thing.
Over the last several weeks, Orlando has delivered one sports headline after another that would have sounded utterly ridiculous 10 or 15 years ago.
The Jacksonville Jaguars officially announced they will play their entire 2027 NFL season at Camping World Stadium while their home stadium undergoes renovations.
The International Olympic Committee declared Orlando an Olympic city after awarding us a major portion of the 2028 Olympic Qualifying Series.
And now, the city’s increasingly serious effort to lure Major League Baseball to Central Florida is beginning to gain real momentum with political backing, billionaire interest and corporate support all growing by the day.
We are no longer a tourism town dabbling in sports.
We are a tourism town becoming a sports tourism juggernaut.
And if you think this is the peak, you haven’t been paying attention.
Because while everybody is celebrating the Jaguars, the Olympics and baseball dreams, city leaders at the Greater Orlando Sports Commission and Florida Citrus Sports are already aggressively chasing even more marquee events. The city is planning a major bid to land a future Army-Navy football game, while WrestleMania and the NBA All-Star Game are strongly considering a return trip to Orlando. It’s already been announced that March Madness is coming back to Orlando in 2028, and we’re also in the running as a host city for the 2031 Women’s World Cup.
For decades, Orlando was viewed as a nice “event city.” A great place for bowl games, youth tournaments and conventions. We hosted things. We accommodated things. We smiled politely while bigger markets got the prestige events and the major-league cachet.
Not anymore.
Now the NFL is coming here for an entire season.
And make no mistake about this: the Jaguars temporarily relocating to Orlando is an absolute game changer. We’re not talking about the Pro Bowl or some meaningless preseason game. We’re talking about meaningful NFL games — and hopefully even playoff games — in Orlando. National broadcasts. NFL owners. Corporate sponsors. Tailgates. RedZone highlights with Camping World Stadium in the background.
For one glorious season, Orlando becomes an NFL city.
And once people see what this city looks like with the NFL planted here full-time — even temporarily — perceptions change forever.
“This is historic,” Florida Citrus Sports CEO Steve Hogan said recently after the NFL owners approved the Jaguars move. “We’ve never seen a regular-season NFL game played in Orlando, and now we’re going to see a lot of them.”
Then came the Olympic announcement.
“Orlando is an Olympic city,” Greater Orlando Sports Commission CEO Jason Siegel declared after it was announced the city will host the final leg of the Olympic Qualifying Series leading into the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Read that sentence again slowly because it still feels surreal.
Orlando.
Olympic city.
That, my fellow Orlandoans, is global sports legitimacy.
More than 600 athletes from over 150 nations are expected to come through Orlando for Olympic qualifying events in sports such as flag football, skateboarding, BMX freestyle, beach volleyball and climbing. The IOC could have chosen dozens of international cities.
They chose Orlando.
And while the Jaguars and Olympics are grabbing headlines, don’t sleep on what’s happening with baseball.
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Because for the first time, the Orlando Dreamers movement actually feels real.
Not “Pat Williams giving another inspirational speech” real.
Actually real.
Visit Orlando — the region’s tourism juggernaut — is publicly behind the effort. Leading Orlando mayoral candidate Anna Eskamani has endorsed bringing MLB to Central Florida. Billionaire entrepreneur and UFL owner Mike Repole says he’s interested in investing. High-powered billionaire attorney John Morgan says he’s still willing to back the effort financially.
When billionaires and politicians start circling the same sports project, that’s usually when things stop being fantasy and start becoming possible.
“I just think about what it would be like if Orlando had a baseball team,” says Repole, who grew up in New York City. “Everybody in the Northeast and Midwest would plan vacations around when their baseball team is playing in Orlando. If the Cubs are playing down here, people from Chicago are going to say, ‘I’m going to go down to Disney for a few days, and at night we’ll go and watch the Cubs play.’ It would be the same way from Yankees and Mets fans in New York and all of the other cities throughout baseball.”
And honestly, why shouldn’t Orlando be in the mix for Major League Baseball?
This region is exploding.
The tourism numbers are absurd. Nearly 80 million visitors came to Central Florida last year. Epic Universe just opened. The population keeps booming. The corporate growth continues. Orlando is now one of the fastest-growing metro areas in America and already the largest market in the country without Major League Baseball or a permanent NFL team.
At some point, the sports world stops asking “Why Orlando?” and starts asking “Why not Orlando?”
Especially when this city has already proven it can host virtually anything.
Three bowl games.
The Florida Classic.
NCAA Tournament games.
Youth sports championships.
The U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.
International soccer matches.
Pro wrestling mega-events.
Cheerleading championships.
AAU tournaments.
If there’s a sporting event that requires hotels, infrastructure, restaurants, airports and entertainment, Orlando already has the blueprint.
That’s the part outsiders still don’t fully understand.
Orlando isn’t trying to become a sports city anymore.
It already is one.
The difference now is that the rest of the country — and the world — is finally starting to notice.
And perhaps the most impressive part of all this is how coordinated the vision has become. The Greater Orlando Sports Commission, Florida Citrus Sports, Visit Orlando, local government leaders and business power brokers are no longer operating independently. They’re finally rowing in the same direction. They see what cities like Las Vegas have done over the last decade and understand Orlando has many of the same ingredients — tourism, entertainment infrastructure, convention capacity, weather and national appeal.
Las Vegas became a sports capital almost overnight.
Orlando may be next.
“We’ve said for years that Orlando is building toward becoming a true global sports capital, and what we’re seeing is the result of that work coming together,” Siegel says. “None of this happens by accident. It takes a collaborative, strong support from our elected leaders, alignment with our hospitality and tourism partners and great working relationships with out venue operators and management teams.
“So when people talk about this being the golden age for Orlando sports, I think that’s fair — but I’d I’d like to also say we’re still in the early chapters of what this community can become.”
That’s why these next few years matter so much.
The Jaguars’ season in 2027 isn’t just about football. It’s an audition.
The Olympic qualifiers aren’t just about Olympic sports. It’s a statement.
The MLB push isn’t just about baseball. It’s about ambition.
For decades, Orlando has sold itself as the happiest place on Earth.
Now it’s becoming one of the fastest-rising sports places on Earth.
And based on the way things are trending …
We’ve only just begun.
Email me at [email protected]. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen.
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