2024 Event Hosting: <\/b>#8<\/a><\/p>\n
Houston is home to the annual Livestock Show and Rodeo that draws more than 2 million attendees to NRG Stadium over three weeks; a franchise in every major league; and nine companies that have a venue naming-rights deal, uniform sponsorship and\/or a playing field sponsorship with a hometown team.<\/p>\n
After drawing record attendance in March for the World Baseball Classic at the Astros\u2019 Daikin Park, the city will host seven FIFA World Cup matches this summer.<\/p>\n
Home Base:<\/b> ExxonMobil; Marathon Oil; Pennzoil; Reliant Energy (NRG); Shell USA; and Walter P Moore engineering firm all call the city home.<\/p>\n
New to Town: <\/b>Chevron and Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently relocated from the San Jose area, and League One Volleyball Houston launched last year.<\/p>\n
Coming Soon:<\/b> The Houston Comets are returning in 2027; the Texans\u2019 training facility will anchor the Toro District mixed-use development (2029); and more than $70 million in youth sports complexes are in development. <\/p>\n
Key Number: <\/b>Houston leads the country with 35 active hotel renovation projects.<\/p>\n
Previous Rankings<\/p>\n
2023: <\/b>#29<\/a><\/p>\n 2024 Event Hosting: <\/b>#8<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Z6BU6JRUAREANEBJXTRDQM4NLU.jpg\")
Best Sports Business Cities No. 25 Houston: The 2025 Texas Bowl featured LSU and Houston. (Gray Moore Photography) ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/FMWTMYOMPRARDCYQMAGMPPF5OQ.jpg\")
Best Sports Business Cities No. 25 Houston: AAU Junior Olympics in 2025. (Gray Moore Photography) ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/YOODXV4CYVDR7AQ2FYKU4MTEP4.jpg\")
Best Sports Business Cities No. 25 Houston: World Baseball Classic at the Daikin Park. (Gray Moore Photography) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston is home to the annual Livestock Show and Rodeo that draws more than 2 million attendees to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":804829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[7951,327667,7263,101777,4345,1266,327668,133966,18146,60266,4281,146595,327669,26570,358,3187,327670],"class_list":["post-804828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-astros","tag-best-sports-business-cities","tag-chevron","tag-data-and-insights","tag-houston","tag-mlb","tag-mobil-1","tag-nrg-energy","tag-nrg-stadium","tag-pennzoil","tag-print","tag-shell-energy-stadium","tag-shell-oil","tag-texans","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-walter-p-moore"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}