Sports
Like Maui Invitational, Acrisure to host annual college basketball … – Desert Sun
Tom Izzo took a tour of Acrisure Arena in the late spring of 2022, while the facility floor was still a pile of dirt and there was barely a roof. The $500 million building in the Greater Palm Springs area was six months from opening and the legendary Michigan State men’s basketball coach, a friend of Acrisure founder and chief executive Greg Williams, was brought to the Coachella Valley for a specific reason.
It was to sell Izzo on the idea of his Spartans playing in a major pre-season college basketball matchup inside the venue, with the belief that with Michigan State on board it could help the arena quickly draw other teams for a major college basketball tournament in the desert.
But it took more than just a tour of the facility and some encouragement from a friend to get Izzo on board. It took a massive effort that resulted in a matchup against an iconic program, televised nationally on Fox, sandwiched between a pair of NFL games on Thanksgiving Day, to get it done.
Somehow, with most major college programs locked into schedules years in advance, this year’s matchup between Michigan State and Arizona in the California desert miraculously came together. The Acrisure Classic, it’s being called, will bring one of the season’s premier non-conference college basketball games to the arena and the valley.
“It’s exciting to be the first college basketball game played in the arena and I know that a lot people in Southern California have been excited about the opening of Acrisure Arena and the events it has brought to the area,” Izzo told The Desert Sun. “I think it’s a great venue for college basketball.”
The Michigan State versus Arizona matchup will offer a mere glimpse at what’s to come at Acrisure Arena.
The game, which is expected to draw a television audience of around 2.9 million, according to one estimate, will be more than just a one-day spectacle for avid college basketball fans. It’ll be the start of what organizers say will be an annual tournament at the arena that will showcase the very best college basketball programs in the country every year during the week of Thanksgiving.
“When you see the arena and the quality and the market and all the things associated with the development, it doesn’t take a lot to envision what could be,” said Williams, the Acrisure chief executive. “What events could be here? You think about entertainment and concerts. It was, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to get a first-rate tournament at Acrisure Arena?’ It felt like a natural thing.”
The arena, which is under a 10-year naming rights deal with Acrisure, a billion-dollar Michigan-based fintech company, seats 10,815 for basketball and is the home of the American Hockey League’s Coachella Valley Firebirds. Comedians Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle opened the venue on Dec. 14, 2023.
Since then, major recording artists including the Eagles, Lizzo, Harry Styles, Shania Twain, Sting, Peter Gabriel and KISS have played at the arena. Madonna, Stevie Nicks and Olivia Rodrigo are slated to perform there in early 2024. The Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns played in a pre-season game in the building last month, as did the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes and the Anaheim Ducks.
Lakers head coach Darvin Ham compared Acrisure Arena to an NBA venue, in terms of quality, and said that he would welcome the Lakers playing pre-season games there annually.
But it’s college basketball that is expected to have a particularly special place at the arena moving forward.
“I hope it’s something we’ll be known for,” Williams said.
There’s reason to believe that Williams could get his wish. While Michigan State and Arizona will take center stage this year, next year and in the years to come several other major college basketball programs will make their way to the arena for Thanksgiving.
Next year, for instance, 16 teams — 12 men’s teams and four women’s — will play at Acrisure Arena as part of two five-day tournaments and 18 games during the week of Thanksgiving. While the arena has yet to announce the men’s teams that will play, the women’s teams will be Michigan State, Arizona, Vanderbilt and California.
The arena is expected to announce the names of the men’s teams participating next week, over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Dan Shell, a former college basketball assistant coach at Saint Mary’s and Stanford, now works with venues and major college basketball programs to schedule intriguing non-conference matchups. He played a leading role in organizing the Michigan State versus Arizona matchup this year and is working with Williams and Acrisure Arena to make the venue, as he says, a college basketball mecca.
“A lot of the top programs in the country will want to play here and some have already expressed that,” Shell said. “The problem is that they’re scheduled out for a few years, so we’ll work with the schools that would be a draw here, when they have openings.”
Shell believes that there’s a “huge” opportunity for Acrisure Arena to become the premier pre-season tournament in college basketball. There are currently others, such as the famous Maui Invitational, which began in 1984, that draw some of the nation’s top college basketball programs to participate.
Maui, known of course for its tropical resort locale and the nationally televised games between some of the top teams in the country, is perhaps the most well-known of those pre-season tournaments. Arizona won the tournament last year. Wisconsin won the year prior, with Kansas, Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, UCLA and Gonzaga among the teams that have won it in the past.
“Coaches that have great programs are always looking for unique venues and to play team that they don’t usually play, to give players an experience they don’t usually have,” said Williams, a huge college basketball fan.
The Greater Palm Springs area offers teams those resort accommodations in a brand-new facility without the travel across the Pacific Ocean,
“This could be like Maui, but bigger,” Shell said. “Palm Springs, with that arena, has that potential.”
In an effort to push college basketball forward at Acrisure Arena, the venue has partnered with Spotlight 29 Casino in Coachella and Visit Greater Palm Springs to make it happen.
Scott White, the VGPS chief executive, said that hosting a major college basketball tournament in the Coachella Valley is “like winning the lottery” for the region.
“I don’t think local people will fully realize that millions of people will be watching this year’s Thanksgiving Day game, and the ones in the future, and learning all about this place where they live,” White said.
White said that from a tourism perspective, having a major college basketball tournament will add money and jobs to the local economy and that it will futher elevate the area as a vacation destination.
White added that, for local businesses that rely heavily on tourism, “Christmas came early” this year.
“There’s no downside to any of this,” White said.
VGPS has worked with the arena to help find lodging for the teams that are traveling the region for games, among other unique tasks. VGPS is also working with the arena to locate major college basketball programs that have traveling fan bases that would most likely travel to the Greater Palm Springs area during the week of Thanksgiving.
The fan bases of Michigan State and Arizona fit that description. It helps that Arizona, based in Tucson, is a half-day drive from the arena and that Michigan State has a massive group from Acrisure that will be traveling to the valley for the game.
Williams, the Acrisure chief executive, said that more than 100 Acrisure employees and their families are flying to the valley for the game.
They’re all coming out to California to watch the first iteration of big-time college basketball at Acrisure Arena. Shell said that Izzo was adamant that the Spartans play a top-tier program, which helped land them on national television.
That’s exactly what Shell, Williams and officials at the arena had wanted all along.
“The Palm Springs area is about to become a major college basketball destination,” Shell said. “Teams want to play there and fans will travel for an experience.
“It’s really going to be exciting.”
It all came together because Arizona’s commitment to the Maui Invitational had expired and the Wildcats were one of the very few of the top college basketball programs that could come to Acrisure Arena this year.
The prevailing opinion among organizers is that the game will showcase the kind of excitement a major holiday college basketball experience will generate here in the desert.
“Greg Williams is a very good friend and he and his wife, Dawn, care a great deal about Michigan State and our community,” Izzo said. “Getting a chance to play in the arena and Greg being part of the leadership group at the venue made this a no-brainer for us.
“We don’t get play in that area very often but I know our West Coast Spartans are really excited for the game and we are, too.”
Andrew John covers sports in the Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at andrew.john@desertsun.com.