The American Athletic Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament took over the Amway Center this weekend with an exciting tournament that saw the UConn Huskies take home the crowd.
The Huskies run was as much a roller coaster as anything else, starting with a quadruple overtime win over the Cincinnati Bearcats and ending with the Huskies punching their ticket to the NCAA Tournament with a win over Memphis.
UConn nation showed up in droves with numerous former players and alumni filling the Amway Center stands. For the semifinals on Saturday and the championship game on Sunday, the building opened up the upper bowl.
Still, watching the game whether in the stands or from home, it was hard not to notice the empty seats. And there were a lot of them.
Amway Center can be cavernous on its own and it seemed to go double with the tournament without a home team to anchor the event.
And even UCF’s session was not incredibly well attended.
What makes that realization worse is that the announced attendance for the UCF game Thursday (8,723) was larger than the announced attendance for the championship game (7,990). That was certainly not the case in reality. The actual turnstile count probably will not be made available by the city for a few more weeks.
The average announced attendance at the Amway Center for the five sessions was 7,774.2 fans. The Amway Center can hold 20,000 fans for college basketball.
The number was certainly overinflated.
Despite the apparent attendance problems during the weekend tournament, American Conference officials told Matt Murschel of the Orlando Sentinel the conference wants to return to Orlando:
“As you know, we wanted to be here over a period of years to establish it’s a great destination,” American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco said. “It’s got everything going for it. If we could stay here for awhile – we even talked about doing something in ’18 and ’19 and – down the road, who knows?”
It was a down year for the conference, no doubt. Even though four teams got into the NCAA Tournament, several of the conference’s marquee teams were struggling this year. And then two of the bigger-name programs played each other on the tournament’s second day.
All those factors fed into what appeared to be poor attendance.
The Amway Center will likely host the conference tournament again in 2018 with the arena hosting the NCAA Tournament second and third rounds next year.
The arena last hosted the NCAA Tournament in 2014, averaging 16,484 fans for the three sessions, including 18,512 for the third round games. Of course, that was buoyed by top-seeded Florida’s presence in Orlando and Louisville filling the other pod. Those were two marquee names drawing local fans in and getting other teams to travel.
The American Conference Tournament did not quite have the same pull this year. And it will be interesting to see if fans flock to the NCAA Tournament next year, although Orlando has generally supported the NCAA Tournament.
It is clear even with whatever appearances there were with the American Conference Tournament and its attendance that Orlando and the Orlando Sports Commission are interested in continuing to bid for these events.
It may not have had the greatest look on TV this year, but the American Athletic Conference Tournament is likely coming to Orlando again at some point in the future. Hopefully next time it gets a more representative turnout.
