The Ohio Valley Conference plans to keep its men’s and women’s basketball tournament in Evansville for an extended time, ensuring a financial boost for the city’s tourism industry each March.
The OVC’s board of directors in September approved a deal to park the event at Ford Center through 2032. It’s a five-year extension of the current contract, which has a 2027 expiration.
The universities’ presidents and athletic directors “were all completely on board with it,” says Brandon McClish, executive director of the Evansville Regional Sports Commission. “They did not want to pursue other cities and felt Evansville is the best fit.”
The tournament, where the winners receive automatic bids — often the first tickets punched in the nation — to the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments, moved to Evansville in 2018 from Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Tennessee’s capital city. The University of Southern Indiana became an OVC member as it began transitioning to NCAA Division I athletics in 2022; its reclassification period ended in June, one year early.
McClish says recent OVC tournaments have made an estimated $750,000 annual economic impact to the Evansville area. In addition to the top eight men’s and women’s teams competing, the event brings in OVC staff, media, and game officials, plus bands and cheer and dance squads. The tournament sells no fewer than 1,700 hotel rooms, McClish says, adding that fan attendance can increase the total depending on which teams make the tournament and advance through the draw.
The 2025 men’s title game, won by Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville over regular season champ Southeast Missouri State University, drew 2,243 fans to the 11,000-seat Ford Center. Bigger crowds in earlier tournaments were largely driven by Murray State University in Kentucky, which in 2022 left the OVC for the Missouri Valley Conference.
Highest-seeded OVC teams stay at the DoubleTree by Hilton, adjacent to Ford Center, but the conference utilizes several hotels throughout Evansville. McClish says those partnerships are key to the tournament’s success. He also notes the enthusiasm that Downtown Evansville Improvement District Inc. and businesses throughout the city show for the event.
McClish says OVC officials clearly wanted to keep the basketball championship in Evansville, but legwork needed to be done to ensure financial protections for all parties. Once that was completed, the contract was signed. “Everyone — the Ford Center, the City of Evansville, the Sports Commission, and the OVC — sees this as a major win,” McClish says.
The OVC event is coming back, but two other basketball tournaments Evansville hosted in March 2025 will not return. The Missouri Valley Conference women’s tournament was at Ford Center for only one year, while the NCAA Division II men’s Elite Eight concluded its most recent run in Evansville, which started in 2021. That tournament shifts to Indianapolis in 2026 and Fort Wayne, Indiana, the following two years.
More collegiate championship sporting events are coming through town soon, including the NCAA Division I Great Lakes cross country regional Nov. 14. That is the final cross country event scheduled to be hosted by Angel Mounds State Historic Site.
In 2026, Deaconess Aquatic Center is the scene for a series of men’s and women’s college swimming and diving championships: the Great Lakes Valley Conference (Feb. 9-14), the Missouri Valley Conference (Feb. 25-28), and the NCAA Division II national championships (March 10-14).
Although Evansville did not land the host gig for the 2026 NCAA Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament, McClish says the city intends to bid on several NCAA championships in various sports for the 2029-2031 timeframe, with announcements expected in mid-2026. He says such events boost Evansville’s economy, adding, “we’re going to be aggressive.”
