If you walk around Rocket Arena during a Cavaliers game, you’ll often see fans drifting through the concourse — grabbing a drink, browsing the team shop, stopping to look at the artwork along the walls.
The NCAA Division I wrestling championships?
They’re, uh, not like that.
“There are truly people that will come in right when doors open, they'll buy their merchandise, they'll buy their snacks, they'll buy their drink and then they will camp,” said Brooke Lowery, senior vice president of booking and events at Rock Entertainment Group. “They don't want to miss a single part of the action.”
Added David Gilbert, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission: “If the fans watching could pee in a cup so they wouldn't have to get out of their seat, they wouldn’t.
"These people are crazy. And I don't mean that in a bad way.”
The three-day tournament, set for March 19–21 at Rocket Arena, is expected to draw nearly 120,000 fans across six ticketed sessions — and most will come from out of town. In Philadelphia last year, 85% of attendees traveled at least 50 miles. In Tulsa two years earlier, it was 93%.
They don’t just fill the arena. They fill hotel rooms, restaurant tables and bar stools across downtown. The NCAA requires roughly 4,000 hotel room nights to accommodate teams, media and officials alone, before accounting for fans.
And those fans are a demographic delight, with more than 80% reporting household incomes above $100,000.
“Seventy-plus percent of our fans are traveling more than 200 miles to come to a championship, which means what? They’re staying overnight, they’re eating, they’re shopping, hotel rooms and the like,” said Anthony Holman, vice president of championships and alliances for the NCAA. “Our championship takes place over three days, so they’re staying the entire time.
“Unlike a team sport or bracketed sport, your team loses and you go home. You’ve got wrestlers in all weight classes, multiple opportunities — more likely you’re staying around for the full event. You’re traveling further, you’re staying overnight, you’re staying longer. So all those things add up to economic impact and revenue generation for the market that’s hosting it.”
The GCSC estimates this year’s event will generate more than $19 million in direct spending, and while those numbers often are disputed by economists, in the case of wrestling, it’s harder to write off as economic hype.
“Think of it almost like six sold-out Cavs games, and in each one of them, probably somewhere around 90% to 95% of everyone in the arena is from out of town,” Gilbert said. “It’s just a rabid, rabid crowd. And what’s cool is, they also, quite frankly, spend a lot.
“The impact of that is incredible. I think it’s one of the best events we can host.”
Cleveland will host the championships for the third time this March, eight years after the 2018 tournament set the all-session attendance record with 113,758 fans. That mark still stands, even though parts of then-Quicken Loans Arena were under renovation.
This year’s event won’t surpass that mark — the arena’s 2019 transformation trimmed capacity slightly — but it’s already nearing a sellout, with only limited single-session tickets remaining, Lowery said.
And that renovation reshaped the building for events like this one. It widened concourses, upgraded locker rooms and added banquet and practice space — areas that now serve as team camps, weigh-in rooms and staging space for 330 wrestlers and their coaches.
“That was one of the reasons why we were able to get the event when we bid on it back in 2019,” Lowery said. “They saw some of the overall investments we were doing, not just in the arena bowl itself.”
There’s also a lot happening beyond the arena, too. Tower City’s recently removed fountains have opened up the atrium, where wrestling mats will be installed for a fan fest featuring demonstrations and merchandise. East 4th Street will host live music between sessions, and youth wrestlers will participate in clinics with Olympians.
None of that is required by the NCAA. But it’s the kind of touch selection committees remember — particularly with the 2029, 2030 and 2031 championships coming up for bid in the next few months, a process Gilbert expects to be “incredibly competitive.”
“So many cities want this thing,” Gilbert said. “We know attendance is going to be great. We know the experience in the arena is going to be great. So it comes down to all these extra things that, again, they don’t ask for but we know we need to do so that we can show them there is absolutely no better host for this event.”
Fortunately, Cleveland has some built-in advantages over other markets. It’s already proven it can host the event successfully. It’s a hotbed for high school wrestling in Ohio — most notably at Lakewood St. Edward — and it’s geographically well placed, with more than 30 Division I programs within 400 miles.
Of course, the next bid cycle could include another wrinkle: a dome.
In 2028, the NCAA will stage the Division I wrestling championships in a football stadium for the first time, when the event moves to U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. It was supposed to happen in 2020 — the NCAA had already sold more than 40,000 all-session tickets — but that tournament was canceled a week out because of COVID-19.
The move fits into a broader NCAA strategy to grow the sport’s fan base by staging the championships at a non-traditional site at least once per bid cycle, a shift that started with Madison Square Garden in 2016.
“We have a really loyal fan base, which is great,” Holman said. “If you talk to professional sports, if they get 90% renewal rates for their season ticket holders, they’re ecstatic. But for us, it was challenging because while we had that high return rate, they were aging out. They’re middle-aged white men and we weren’t creating the next wave of fans.”
“It’s certainly something we’re going to look at,” Gilbert added. “I think that having the dome available to us as another alternative will really help us.”
In the meantime, Cleveland will focus on delivering a great experience at this year’s championships — and trust that the next bid cycle will reflect it.
“Our big goal for this year is to get this event back,” Gilbert said. “We have a great opportunity because of the timing. Hopefully when the committee is reviewing (the next bids), what they'll have fresh in their minds is how great Cleveland was.”