Iowa’s capitol city is among the hosts of the opening rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament this week.
Catch Des Moines president and CEO Greg Edwards says the games Thursday and Saturday will feature eight of the nation’s top teams in college hoops. “We estimate, at least for the last couple times we’ve hosted this, it’s brought in over $8-million in economic impact,” Edwards says. “We anticipate about 20,000 people being in and around the Des Moines metro, so it’s going to be a great week.”
Hosting the March Madness games is a tremendous boost for the area’s restaurants, hotels and parking decks. “So many places benefit. You figure people travel, they’ll probably hit some grocery stores, convenience stores, they’ll shop,” Edwards says. “They may do some other entertainment venues while they’re here, do a show at the Civic Center or all kinds of different activities, because there’s a lot of downtime between games as well.”
Since the tournament’s opening rounds have already been staged at the Iowa Events Center twice before, Edwards says he’s pretty confident they have all of the bugs worked out of the process. “I think we’ve got all bases covered,” he says, “everything from actual tournament operations to outside the Event Centers stuff, you know the hotels and getting things into the restaurants and bars, and just really making Des Moines a welcoming place for all the fans, and especially have a great experience for the student athletes that are coming here.”
This is the third time Des Moines has hosted the opening rounds of the tournament, and Edwards says it’s possible they’ll bid on hosting -regional- rounds in the future. “We’ve always looked at it, you know, you get eight teams coming in for the first two rounds, and you’ll only get four teams coming in for the regional rounds,” he says, “so I think our impact is probably a little bit stronger hosting rounds one and two, but we’d certainly be open to hosting a regional as well.” Could Des Moines host a Final Four? That would be a long shot, Edwards says, at least not until we have an NFL team here with an 80,000 seat stadium.
Iowa is sending six teams to the tournaments this year, both the men’s and women’s teams from Drake, Iowa State and Iowa, which is significant for a state our size. “It is a big deal. I think it is so cool. We’re excited about our hometown team Drake getting both the men and women’s teams in there and and both Iowa and Iowa State as well,” Edwards says. “So I don’t know if you go back in history, if there was ever a time prior to this or if this is a first.”
Play opens at 1 p.m. on Thursday with Howard versus Kansas, followed by Arkansas versus Illinois at 3:30 p.m., Colgate versus Texas at 6:25 p.m., and Penn State versus Texas A&M at 8:55 p.m.