NIT Update: LVCVA Tourism Agency Pays $150,000 To NIT/NCAA For College Basketball Tournament Semifinals, Finals At Orleans Arena In Las Vegas
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher/Writer
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) paid $150,000 to sponsor the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) that is being played at Orleans Arena tonight and Thursday.
It’s just the latest public money being spent on the sports industry and related events in Las Vegas.
Wisconsin plays North Texas in one semifinal, while Utah Valley plays the University of Alabama at Birmingham Tuesday.
The winners play each other Thursday.
The LVCVA/Las Vegas Events spent more than $1 million on sponsorships to have the West Coast, Pac-12 and Mountain West conference basketball tournaments be hosted here in Las Vegas in early March.
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Trey Woodbury is like any other college basketball player.
Man, the Las Vegas hoops product playing for Utah Valley would have loved to dribble, shoot and rebound a basketball at Madison Square Garden — college basketball’s mecca that used to be the host of college basketball’s historic National Invitational Tournament. The NIT and the Garden are synonymous, as they say.
But it’s not a bad deal either, Woodbury said Monday, to be playing in the NIT at his hometown Orleans Arena, where his Utah Valley team will play the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in one semifinal game Tuesday. Wisconsin plays North Texas in the other semifinal, with the winners of the two games tipping off at Orleans Arena on Thursday.
“It is crazy,” Woodbury said of playing the NIT in his hometown after he transferred from UNLV to Utah Valley, where he has blossomed into a scorer and even the team’s point guard this season.
“It’s kind of like full circle to be back,” Woodbury said, chatting with LVSportsBiz.com on the Orleans Arena court before a presser. “I wish it was Madison Square Garden.”
True, the NCAA-operated NIT started in 1938 at Madison Square Garden, where the semis and final used be held. COVID-19 scrubbed the 32-team NIT in 2020 before it resumed with 16 teams in a bubble-style environment at two arenas in north Texas in 2021 and returned to the famed Garden in Manhattan in 2022.
But Madison Square Garden and the NIT/NCAA parted ways mutually and the 32-team event decided to play its semis/final move to Las Vegas at Orleans Arena this year and in Indianapolis in 2024. After that, the NCAA is open to host cities and arenas. Who knows? Maybe Madison Square Garden will be back? Or maybe the NCAA will take the NIT on the road to another city?
The NCAA saved money by renting Orleans Arena, which just hosted the West Coast Conference and WAC college basketball tournaments earlier this month.
“It’s safe to say the rental fee of Orleans Arena was less than Madison Square Garden,” said Jeff Williams, an NCAA spokesman for the NIT at Orleans Arena Monday.
He noted Orleans Arena’s schedule is more flexible that Madison Square Garden as the four teams practiced at Orleans today.
The NCAA worked with sports contact Lisa Motley at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) to arrange for the NIT at Orleans Arena. LVSportsBiz.com emailed Motley to find out if the LVCVA paid or sponsored the NCAA to hold the NIT in Las Vegas, but we have not heard back, The LVCVA approved more than$1 million in sponsorship money for the Pac-12, Mountain West and West Coadt conferences to have their tournaments in Las Vegas this month.
At the NIT at Madison Square Garden last year, attendance was about 8,500 for the semis and 5,000 for the final, Williams said.
Orleans Arena, with its 8,200 seats, is a good arena for the NIT crowds.
With five college basketball conference tournaments two weeks ago and the West Regional Sweet 16/Elite 8 games at T-Mobile Arena last week, Las Vegas is getting another dose of college hoops.
“The challenge is will local fans be excited for more basketball this week,?” Williams mentioned.
