The Columbia metropolitan area just doesn’t have enough hotel rooms.
There should be no question that college sports is a big big business and the pretense of college athletes playing a game for the love of the game is gone. The days of the so-called student-athlete playing for the glory of a school are done and the National Collegiate Athletic Association doesn’t even hide its business anymore except when it talks to politicians asking them to put the genie back in the bottle and try to return to 1955 when student-athletes were given pep talks to win the game for some guy like George Gipp. Columbia, South Carolina just isn’t good enough to hold NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament regional contests in March anymore. The city does not have enough quality hotel rooms even though Columbia is the capital of South Carolina.
Scott Powers, Executive Director at Experience Columbia South Carolina Sports, was told better luck next time after the city’s bid for either the 2027 or 2028 regional contests was rejected. Also while you are at it get some five star hotels built. The area’s 13,000 rooms just don’t live up to NCAA standards. Columbia hosted six regional games in 2019 and there was a claim that the six games brought an economic impact of about $11.3 million to the area although that was never officially verified. According to the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, there are at least 160 hotels with a total of 13,263 rooms which is more room inventory than in 2019. The NCAA wants host cities with eight to 10 full-service hotels with in-house food and beverage options, with four meeting rooms of at least 2,000 square feet. And it wants each of the eight teams playing in the tournament rounds to have their own hotel. The NCAA doesn’t want smaller and not as wealthy cities to host major basketball games.
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