The eighth EPIC Cup soccer tournament will bring in thousands of players, parents and referees to Oxford, starting April 26. According to Marina Young from Enjoy Oxford, this large influx of visitors will benefit restaurants, hotels and other local businesses.
This weekend, 154 girls soccer teams will be competing in the tournament at local parks. Next weekend over 121 boys teams will compete along with a newly established junior division with 40 U7 and U8 teams.
Brett Dickson, one of the tournament coordinators from CincySC, estimates that the tournament will bring in over 10,000 people across the two weekends.
The tournament is hosted by CincySC, who also host a number of other futsal tournaments in the Cincinnati area throughout the year. Futsal is an indoor variation of soccer with walls and smaller teams.
Visitors to Oxford for the tournament are encouraged to visit sponsoring businesses through a scavenger hunt promotion.
“Our idea with the EPIC Scavenger Hunt is to get people out into the Oxford community buying food, drinks and souvenirs,” Dickson said.
Cincinnati-based soccer clubs make up roughly 75% of the teams competing according to Dickson. However, he said the tournament does fill up Oxford hotels and some outside of the city with long-traveling teams.
The city itself also profits from hosting the event, according to Dustin VanWinkle, the recreation supervisor for sports and Oxford’s Parks and Recreation department.
The city receives fees for field reservation and construction, along with concession stand sales and fees from outside vendors that attend the tournament. VanWinkle says the revenue generated goes straight to the city’s general fund.
According to VanWinkle, the department brought in $25,000 from last year’s tournament. He anticipates bringing in a similar amount this year, but it is dependent on factors like number of fields needed, weather and other fees.
Seth Cropenbaker, an economic development specialist for the city, said he is working to find ways to maintain a steady economy in Oxford when Miami University is out of session.
Cropenbaker said that 49% of jobs in Oxford are Miami University-related positions and 30% more are service industry jobs.
“You can see through those demographics that 79% of jobs are directly related to the presence of undergraduate students,” Cropenbaker said. “So when we have those downtimes with fewer students in town, they feel the loss of both employees and customers.”
Cropenbaker said that youth sports tournaments can help replace this loss of customers during off-seasons when tourism and the student population are low. The city has access to six baseball/softball fields, two basketball gyms and a variety of spaces for different-sized soccer fields.
“We can lean into what we do best,” Cropenbaker said. “Outdoor recreation with small-town charm and bigger community amenities.”
Dickson says he hopes to get more local businesses involved with the tournament in the future.
“Russel Lewis [a tournament coordinator from CincySC] and I really just went door to door asking businesses if they wanted to be a part of it,” Dickson said. “But we’d love if more businesses said ‘this a really big event in Oxford and we want to support it.’”
