Well, another year has come to an end, and as we do every year on Itinerant Fan, it’s time to look back and review everything we accomplished in 2025 in the name of progress on this site.
I continued to focus more on international travel over the last year, heading to a country that I had always dreamed of visiting: Australia. While there I immersed myself in the joys of watching Australian rules football and rugby league, while getting a chance to watch an event at the storied Melbourne Cricket Ground — a venue that will become part of the NFL’s International Series in 2026.
As U.S. sports leagues continue to set sights on new frontiers around the globe, Itinerant Fan is doing the same. We’re looking to expand our portfolio of international stadium guides, and the hope is that in 2026 we’ll be able to add a few popular sites to the collection on this site.
We’ll get going on that initiative pretty quickly, with a trip to Italy for the Winter Olympics planned for early February. It’ll be my second winter games, and I’m excited to churn out some hopefully useful content for fans who would like to experience the Olympics for themselves.
But the big story for me in 2025 was that I achieved the goal that led to the creation of this very site in the first place.
‘Club 124’ has a new member: Me!
Itinerant Fan began in 2025 as a way for me to chronicle my quest to watch a home game for every team across the four major U.S. sports leagues: Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA and NHL.
When 2025 began, I had long completed my MLB and NHL lists, but needed four NBA arenas and two NFL stadiums left to join what has become known as “Club 124” (the number 124 refers to the total number of teams in the four leagues).
I managed to check off three of the four NBA venues — American Airlines Center in Dallas, Capital One Arena in Washington and Little Caesars Arena in Detroit — before the end of the 2024-25 regular season.
Fortunately, the one I left hanging until the new season was an easy one for me: Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, where I live. After 25 years of putting it off, I finally watched an L.A. Lakers game in November.
That left the two NFL stadiums on my list: Hard Rock Stadium in Miami and MetLife Stadium in New Jersey (Giants only — I had seen the Jets there more than a decade prior).
A weeklong business trip to the East Coast in mid-November afforded me the perfect opportunity: I traveled to Miami the weekend prior to catch the Dolphins, then flew to New York the following weekend and checked off the Giants — thus earning my long-sought after membership into Club 124.
While the achievement of a goal after more than 20 years is certainly thrilling, it doesn’t end my desire to travel for sports — not by a long shot. Some of the venues that make up my list were visited more than a decade ago, and in this ever-changing world of stadiums, it’s worth revisiting to see what’s changed.
I did that with several venues in 2025, and in the coming year I have a few more on my list. Namely: a handful of Midwestern MLB ballparks as well as some NBA and NHL venues in the Southeast.
Plus, MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays are moving back into Tropicana Field after a year away, so I would love to see what’s new there. And in the NFL, two new stadiums are set to open in 2026, in Buffalo and Nashville. You bet I’m making plans to see both of those buildings in their inaugural seasons.
Itinerant Fan steps into uncharted waters
I’m a writer at heart, and thus the written component of Itinerant Fan will always be what I care about most. That means maintaining this website and the accompanying newsletter (which, if you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to by following the link!).
However, I also accept that video has become the preferred type of content for many if not most users out there, and somewhat reluctantly, I’ve begun wading more into the world of video content in an effort to expose Itinerant Fan to a wider audience.
The biggest step toward that goal was the launch of the Itinerant Fan YouTube channel in February. Maintaining a YouTube channel is quite a lot of work and often requires time that I don’t always have, so I am certainly more inconsistent in posting content than most experts recommend.
However, as of this writing I had posted nearly 50 videos and had 552 subscribers, way more than I thought I’d have through 11 months on both counts. I can attribute the majority of subscriber growth to the five-video Australia series I posted over the summer, which attracted many viewers from Australia. I can only hope those subscribers continue to stick around even though I have no plans to head Down Under again for the foreseeable future.
One potential conclusion I learned from that, though, is that international travel attracts viewers on YouTube far better than domestic travel in the United States does. Hopefully that bodes well for when I create content around the Olympics in Italy!
So between YouTube, Instagram and perhaps a renewed foray into TikTok, that’s a lot of video content to create. I doubt I’ll have time for all of it in 2026, but I’d like to keep the first two channels growing as much as possible.
I-Fan’s audience trends in 2025
It’s always interesting to see what our audience is reading. Our 2025 in review continues with our top five most viewed posts in the last year.
- 2025-26 NHL arena rankings
- 2025 MLB stadium rankings
- Cactus League ballpark rankings
- A guide to buying Premier League tickets from the USA
- Steinbrenner Field guide
Well, the first conclusion to draw is that people really like rankings! (Or at least the search algorithms do.) I’ve had NHL and MLB rankings up on the site ever since I completed the circuit of current stadiums for each.
And now that I have all of the NFL and NBA venues under my belt, I am hoping to complete stadium rankings for both of those leagues as well. Watch out for those in the early part of 2026.
Meanwhile, the guide to buying Premier League tickets has been one of my top-viewed posts for four years running now. I update it every summer, right around the time the schedule for the upcoming season is released in June, and will continue to do so for as long as I can. After all, I often need to heed my own advice when I plan my trips to the UK!
The Steinbrenner Field guide, of course, is a one-off, and with the Rays headed back to Tropicana Field, my visit to the Yankees’ spring training home to watch MLB regular-season ball will become but a fond memory.
What comes next in 2026?
As mentioned above, the Winter Olympics are the thing I’m most looking forward to! I’m currently in full planning mode for the games and have tickets to several events secured.
After that, we’ll see where the urge to travel takes me. Whether domestic or international, I’m excited to explore new horizons and maybe revisit old ones. While there won’t be a stated goal defining where I travel, I do still have ambitions for the coming year.
As always, the goal of Itinerant Fan is to inspire like-minded sports fans to travel and see their favorite teams and games up close. If you’re looking to take your own trip in 2026 and need some advice or inspiration, we’re here to help! Please reach out at [email protected] and let us know what you’ve got in mind.
Wherever you plan to be, here’s to an epic 2026! I’m looking forward to seeing what the new year brings.
Edward de la Fuente | Itinerant Fan
I live for sports, and I love to travel. My biggest thrill is combining the two. I’ve been blogging about sports travel for more than a decade, and traveling for sports for twice as long. To find out more, check out our About page.
