The NCAA Tournament’s return to Portland produced the lowest attendance of the three times the event has been held in the Moda Center, and the NCAA’s annual attendance report released Monday showed that it did not fare well compared to the same rounds at other sites. The Moda Center was one of eight sites for second- and third-round games, held in three sessions at each location. Portland was in the bottom half in attendance for those sites by one measurement, dead last by another. For total attendance for the three sessions, the eight sites ranked this way: Louisville (KFC Yum Center), 64,643 Columbus (Nationwide Arena), 55,116 Omaha (CenturyLink Center), 52,654 Charlotte (Time Warner Cable Arena), 51,978 Pittsburgh (Consol Energy Center), 50,750 Portland (Moda Center), 45,265 Seattle (KeyArena), 44,262 Jacksonville (Veterans Memorial Arena), 38,236 However, because the arenas varied in size – from the 14,901-seat building in Jacksonville to the 22,090-seat arena in Louisville – percentage of capacity offers a different metric in deciding how well each site fared. It should be noted that an arena’s capacity for basketball does not mean there were that many tickets available for the tournament, with spots taken up by the extra media and NCAA officials at the sites. But because the demand for those types to seats should be similar in each arena, capacity percentage should offer an accurate comparison. Here’s how the sites ranked by capacity of the building: Louisville (22,090 capacity), 96.9 percent Omaha (18,320), 95.8 percent Columbus (19,500), 94.2 percent Charlotte (19,077), 90.8 percent Jacksonville (14,091), 90.5 percent Pittsburgh (19,100), 88.6 percent Seattle (17,072), 86.4 percent Portland (19,441), 77.7 percent One factor in the Portland attendance was likely that the Oregon Ducks played in Omaha. Oregon also was the host school for the Portland staging, which by NCAA rules made the Ducks ineligible to play at the Moda Center. The Portland games featured several players who have since been taken in last month’s NBA draft, including Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell (drafted No. 2 by the Lakers), Arizona’s Stanley Johnson (No. 8 by Detroit), Utah’s Delon Wright (No. 20 by Toronto) and Arizona’s Rondae-Hollis Jefferson (No. 23 by Portland, then traded to Brooklyn). Despite the attendance decline, Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis – a member of the NCAA basketball committee – told The Oregonian in March that Portland remains an attractive site for a NCAA regional. — Mike Tokitomtokito@oregonian.com503-294-7604; @mtokito
Continue Reading: NCAA Basketball Tournament attendance in Portland lagged behind other sites
