McKinney, Texas, has grown into one of North Texas’s most welcoming sports destinations, and it’s done so the way the city does most things, thoughtfully, and with an eye on hospitality. Just 30 miles north of Dallas, McKinney pairs well-regarded venues with a sales and services team that genuinely enjoys helping organizers bring their events to life. Whether you’re hosting a national championship, a niche tournament with a passionate following, or something a little less traditional, Visit McKinney is excited to see how your tournament or event can fit within our city.
With 20-plus traditional sporting venues, 80 miles of hike and bike trails, and almost 3,000 acres of parks and open spaces across the city, McKinney offers the scale to host marquee events while keeping the friendly, walkable character that visitors remember. The city has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing in the country, and that growth has brought a thoughtful wave of new hotels, attractions, and infrastructure designed to support visitors and residents alike.
For sports planners, that combination of established venues and ongoing investment makes McKinney a destination that’s worth a closer look. The city you visit today is part of a longer story, and the public-private partnerships at work here mean each new addition strengthens the experience for the events that call McKinney home.
McKinney also benefits from being part of one of the most accessible sports markets in the country. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex draws nearly four million residents within a 30-minute drive of McKinney and close to 10 million within roughly an hour, putting your event within reach of one of the largest spectator and youth-sport markets in the United States. That accessibility, paired with the city’s small-town feel, is part of what gives McKinney its particular character—close enough to a major metro to deliver the audience and the infrastructure, far enough away to feel like its own destination.
A Sports Scene Built for a Range of Disciplines
McKinney’s sports infrastructure is anchored by several different facilities across the city. The McKinney ISD Stadium and Community Event Center is a $70 million, 12,000-plus-seat facility that opened in 2017. Since then, it has become one of the most respected event venues in the region, hosting everything from high school football to NCAA DII Football Championships and statewide UIL competitions. The adjacent community event center adds flexible meeting and reception space that turns a game day into a full weekend experience, and the venue’s amenities, sightlines, and broadcast-ready media operation make it a comfortable fit for governing bodies that need a stadium with both capacity and polish.
Just down the road, the Courts of McKinney Pickleball and Tennis Center at Gabe Nesbitt Community Park has emerged as one of Texas’s standout racket-sport complexes, with four dedicated outdoor pickleball courts, eight hybrid outdoor courts that flex between tennis and pickleball, four dedicated indoor courts, and additional tennis surfaces. The complex was purpose-built for tournament play, with championship-quality surfaces, dedicated spectator areas, and a parking footprint that handles the volume of a national tour stop with ease. The McKinney Soccer Complex at Craig Ranch delivers tournament-grade soccer fields with lightning-detection systems and modern amenities, and the Al Ruschhaupt Soccer Complex provides additional fields used for soccer, cricket, and lacrosse—a multisport flexibility that quietly opens the door to events that struggle to find homes in single-sport markets.
Beyond those headline venues, TPC Craig Ranch, host of the PGA Tour’s CJ CUP Byron Nelson tournament each spring, brings the world’s best golfers to North Texas, while Myers Park & Event Center offers an outdoor pavilion well-suited to festivals and equestrian events. Erwin Park’s miles of mountain biking trails round out the picture for cycling and trail-running events, giving organizers a genuine variety of outdoor settings within a short drive of one another.
Across the city, McKinney maintains around 3,000 acres of parks and open space, with disc golf courses, a robust trail network, and venues that double as event spaces when the situation calls for something different. That breadth is exactly what allows Visit McKinney’s sports team to support a wide range of events. The team works with rights holders end-to-end—site visits, venue selection, hotel sourcing, transportation logistics, and ancillary event programming—and the pace of new investment in the city means the conversation often includes what will be available when an event lands, not just what’s here today.
That kind of long-view planning matters in sports tourism. The team’s familiarity with the surrounding region, including connections to neighboring sports communities, ground-transportation partners, and local volunteer networks, means organizers walk into McKinney with a head start. Many of the events on the city’s calendar today began as a single conversation about a venue and grew, over multiple years, into anchor events. The city is genuinely interested in those longer relationships, and the staff continuity within McKinney supports the kind of trust that comes from working with the same people across multiple event cycles.
Fun For the Whole Family
For visiting athletes, families, and fans, McKinney’s downtown plays a quietly important role in shaping the overall experience. Tournament weekends often hinge on what happens between matches including where teams gather for dinner, where parents find a quiet coffee, where the awards banquet is hosted. McKinney’s downtown is set up for exactly those moments, with locally owned restaurants of every cuisine, distinctive bakeries and dessert shops, breweries and wine bars within walking distance of one another, and the kind of gentle pace that lets visitors decompress between long days at the venue. It’s the sort of detail that doesn’t always make the venue tour, but it shows up clearly in post-event surveys.
A Track Record Worth Mentioning
McKinney has been the home of the NCAA Division II Football National Championship every December since 2018, and the NCAA has extended that partnership through 2027—making McKinney one of the longest-tenured championship hosts in college football. Last year’s title game saw Ferris State complete a perfect 16-0 season with a 42-21 win over Harding in front of a packed house at McKinney ISD Stadium, with the Bulldogs becoming the first NCAA Division I or II team in the modern era to finish a season at 16-0. The event reliably draws fans from across the country, fills hotel rooms in McKinney and the surrounding Collin County market, and delivers a college football atmosphere the city is proud to provide. ESPN2 broadcasts the game annually, and championship weekend has become a December tradition.
In pickleball, McKinney has become a regular host on the PPA Tour, the world’s premier professional pickleball circuit. The city hosts the Veolia Texas Open, an open-level stop with 1,000 PPA points on the line for winners, at the Courts of McKinney each spring. The tournament brings in the top professionals in the sport alongside thousands of amateur competitors who play their bracket matches alongside the championship court where the pros compete. In 2026, more than 12,000 spectators visited during tournament week, and the event drew live coverage and a steady stream of media attention to the city. The PPA Tour’s continued partnership with McKinney is the kind of long-term relationship that signals to other governing bodies that this is a market that delivers.
McKinney has also expanded its racket-sport portfolio. In April 2026, the city was pleased to host the US Senior Pickleball South Zone Championship for the first time, a qualifier for the US Senior Pickleball National Championships and a draw for competitors aged 50 and over from across the South Zone. Hundreds of registered competitors filled multiple age and skill brackets across men’s and women’s singles, doubles, and mixed doubles for three days of competition at the Courts of McKinney. Senior pickleball is one of the fastest-growing segments in racket sports, and welcoming the South Zone Championship reinforces the city’s positioning as a destination for masters-level and senior-level competition, a category that often comes with longer stays, family travel, and meaningful per-visitor spend.
And every July, McKinney rolls out the red carpet for DCI McKinney, a stop on the Drum Corps International Summer Tour that has become one of the most-anticipated nights of the year for marching arts fans in North Texas. Top World Class corps from across the country, including names like the Blue Stars, Carolina Crown, the Colts, Phantom Regiment, the Santa Clara Vanguard, the Troopers, and Texas’s own Genesis, march into McKinney ISD Stadium for a night of competition described by organizers as marching band meeting Broadway in eleven-minute, sensory-rich performances. A companion drumline battle at TUPPS Brewery the night before adds a second event, and proceeds support local band programs through the nonprofit Marching Music Made in McKinney. The 2025 edition was streamed online through FloMarching, expanding the event’s reach beyond the in-person crowd of more than 5,000 fans, and the partnership has become a model for how a community-rooted nonprofit can work with the city to host an event with national reach.
Where Teams and Fans Stay
Headlining McKinney’s hotel scene is the Sheraton McKinney Hotel & Conference Center, the city’s largest hotel with ample guest rooms and meeting and event space. Located five miles south of the historic downtown square at the city’s southern gateway, the Sheraton has long been a trusted home for event hosts and team blocks that need a single base with full-service catering, ballroom flexibility, and the staffing depth to handle a large banquet. The property’s conference center has hosted everything from corporate summits to sports federation meetings, and its location offers easy access to McKinney ISD Stadium, the Courts of McKinney, and the city’s other major sports venues.
The Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott McKinney offers a comfortable, value-driven option in McKinney’s busy 380 corridor—a good fit for amateur tournament travel, family-and-friends spectator stays, and youth-team room blocks where budget and consistency matter most. Marriott’s Fairfield brand is a well-known quantity for tournament directors and team parents alike, and the McKinney property’s location near retail and dining makes it a practical home base for events that don’t require a full-service conference hotel.
McKinney’s hotel inventory expands meaningfully in summer 2026 with the opening of the AC Hotel by Marriott McKinney. Designed for the modern business and event traveler, the new AC will deliver 136 contemporary guest rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows that flood the rooms with natural light, an outdoor pool, private balconies, and a flexible meeting room with pre-function space.
Beyond those three flagship properties, McKinney offers a deep bench of additional accommodations: TownePlace Suites and SpringHill Suites by Marriott, the boutique Denizen Hotel at District 121 for travelers looking for something with more character, Hampton Inn & Suites, Home2 Suites, Holiday Inn Express & Suites, Tru by Hilton, and more as well as a charming roster of Airbnb’s and boutique inns in and around downtown. The variety means organizers can build room blocks that match the scale and price point of their event without compromising on quality.
Looking further ahead, an even larger luxury anchor is on the way. A separately announced JW Marriott resort—featuring 290 guest rooms, more than 51,000 square feet of upscale conference space, a pool with a lazy river, full-service fitness, multiple restaurants, dedicated pickleball courts, and ample parking—has been approved for the Craig Ranch master-planned community. Once open, the JW Marriott will give McKinney a true upper-upscale resort property that adds another option for top-tier events looking for a marquee host hotel.
Bring Your Event to McKinney
McKinney has grown, thoughtfully and steadily, into a destination where event organizers feel at home. The venues are well established. The hotels are growing. The downtown area is unique, with an authentic Texas square that also happens to be a top foodie destination. Add in the exciting attractions on the horizon including Cannon Beach Surf & Adventure Park, the 20,000-seat Sunset Amphitheater, commercial airline services, and additional hotels, and McKinney is the up-and-coming city where you’ll want to host your sporting event.
Interested in hosting your next sporting event or tournament in McKinney? Reach out to our services and sales team for more information at sales@visitmckinney.com or 972-547-2058 or fill out an RFP today.