How to pick a tournament site

With the seemingly never-ending debates about tournament sites and I mean that, we as fans have been hashing it out since the days when the event was in Biloxi, I thought I would try to look at the factors that carry the real weight when selection is done.

First, any site is going to have to bring dollars or a good way to generate dollars to the table. After Biloxi, that was for years done by taking dollars out of a member community. A coach would guess when he would have a contender team and would want to be at home for the run to the NCAA bid. The athletic director would then go to the community and seek support for a bid. If the host school made it to the finals the local fans would pay enough in ticket purchases to cover the bid and it mostly worked out well. The problem was that if the host didn’t go far ticket sales would be terrible and the local sponsors or the school would have to make up the shortfall. When we used campus sites, roughly half the time, the host failed to make the semi-finals and school funds or local sponsor money flowed out the community and to the league.

Returning to a neutral site was designed to end the practice of schools giving up local resources in order to host the event. It costs the league some dollars but it keeps dollars at home. Funding your competitors isn’t the best use of your donor list. So you need a site that makes it possible to make money.

A good bid has no or low arena rental cost. It includes good rates on hotels and meals for the teams because those are major costs. It includes promotional guarantees that the local community will undertake some level of effort to promote the event.

Second, the site has to have a suitable venue. It not only requires sufficient seats, it has to have adequate dressing room facilities, and sufficient lighting. The site has to have adequate work space for the media with ample reliable internet access. You need phone lines, lot of phone lines and not just regular lines, you will need ISDN lines for some of the radio crews. Also have to have a spot to park a satellite truck with a clear shot at the southern sky. If there is interest from TV stations following a team, you need more than one satellite truck parking spot so they can send highlights home. There must be facilities for the league and the member schools to entertain sponsors, donors and other important guests. That means golf outings or other such opportunities. You don’t want to go to a worn-out municipal course stocked with the finest in Wal-Mart brand sodas.

A suitable venue also requires people. A good staff of volunteers is needed to take care of the teams, officials, and media. You can hire the work done but that’s money that comes out of potential profit and generally volunteers provide better interaction than temps.

Next you have to consider your demographics. Whether it is the Sun Belt, Gulf South, SEC, the old SWC, or the NCAA tournament, the demographics at basketball tournaments tend to look the same when at a neutral site. You see a lot of 18-22 year-olds and you see a lot of 45+. Other age groups will be there but those are your biggies. College students are great at math (if someone sleeps in the tub the room will cost us $7.45 per person a night), couple that with cheap fast food and free or reduced admission, they can come in on the cheap. The recent college grads have a different equation, they are paying full price for admission, likely not piling a motel room full, they are fighting student loan debt, and more expenses than ever before in their life while working a job where they haven’t earned much leave time. Get a few years older have a family with toddlers and four days of basketball with little ones isn’t much fun and that money can be spent on a trip to Disney. A few more years and the kids are in school and four days means taking the kids out of school for two or three days. Then you hit the next demographic. Kids are in college or already out on their own. This group is established at their job and more likely to be able to take a few days off and can afford to take the time off. Give them a bundled deal where they can go golf, fish, or whatever past time they like and throw in opportunities for shopping or day spas for the wife and it’s time to hit the road. The college age group hears a city like New Orleans and thinks Bourbon Street, the older demographic thinks fine dining and may make an obligatory pass down Bourbon but won’t be there much after dark.

After you get past money, the quality of the site, and the appeal to your core demographic, you can start weighing the geography. You want as many people as possible within 500 miles or less, beyond that the drive time gets to the point that a single day drive to arrive isn’t feasible. The more outside of 500 miles, the more you have to worry about flying. It’s not just the availability of an airport either. How many connections are required, what airlines, and what sort of fares are available.

You take those factors, weigh them in roughly that order, and start looking at what sites fit and are interested in hosting.