When the Grand Sumo Tournament arrived in London this October, the town reacted as if a worldwide pop star had touched down. For 5 days, the Royal Albert Hall remodeled right into a dohyō (sumo ring), alive with roaring crowds. It was a collision of worlds: historical Japanese ritual unfolding in a Victorian live performance corridor normally reserved for symphony orchestras.
Sumo’s first go to to London in 34 years sparked an electrical response. Tickets disappeared virtually instantly; social media feeds flooded with viral clips of rikishi wrestlers biking on Lime bikes and selfies snapped outdoors Buckingham Palace; and all of the sudden Britain had found a brand new sporting obsession.
But past the spectacle, one thing extra attention-grabbing occurred: followers started planning journeys to Japan explicitly to expertise sumo in its homeland. What began as a novelty grew to become a catalyst for travel.
From viral second to travel motivation
Sports tourism has exploded in recent times – from cricket followers turning New York into a short lived Mumbai in the course of the T20 World Cup, to Formula 1 followers constructing holidays round race weekends.
Expedia’s newest annual trend report has named “Fan Voyage” as a defining travel trend – a transfer away from generic spectator sports activities and towards deeply native, culturally expressive athletic traditions. For Gen Z and Millennial travellers particularly, the draw isn’t the scoreboard however the ceremony, the environment, and the possibility to really feel a part of a group. Think Muay Thai in Bangkok, curling in Canada – and now, more and more, sumo wrestling in Japan.
For many British travellers, the London event planted the seed.
“We didn’t come to Japan for sumo,” says UK customer Max Johnson, who attended the November event in Fukuoka together with his associate, Dolly, “but once we realised it was on during our trip, we thought – we have to try to see it.”
They secured tickets by way of a world reserving service that bundled seats with an English-speaking interpreter and a brief pre-match introduction. “We did pay a premium for the experience, but it was absolutely worth it,” Max says. “Without that support, we wouldn’t have been able to access tickets at all. You need a Japanese phone number, and everything sells out in minutes.”
Inside the sumo expertise
Sumo has at all times been greater than a sport in Japan. With origins tracing again over 1,500 years, it is a type of budō – a Japanese martial artwork – deeply rooted in Shinto ritual, with purification ceremonies, salt-throwing to cleanse the ring, and bouts that always unfold in close to silence, punctuated solely by the gang’s gasps.