Book excerpt: Sports Tourism: participants, policy and providers is an unparalleled text that explains sports tourism as a social, economic and cultural phenomenon that stems from the unique interaction of activity, people and place. Unlike other texts, it seeks to present sports tourism as a unique area that produces its own unique issues, concerns and controversies. The text tackles these issues from three viewpoints: participants: examining the profiles, motivations and behaviour patterns of sports tourists to create a typology of participants policy: analyses the response by policy makers to this phenomenon and the problems of achieving integration between two sectors with historically different cultures providers: their motivations, aims, objectives and strategies Illustrated by international case studies in each chapter, and with four extended case study chapters, Sports Tourism: participants, policy and providers examines this area using real life experiences and concrete evidence.