With a 2026 Ivy League Tournament in Ithaca that attracted less than 1,500 and 700 fans, to the men’s and women’s finals, respectively, it wasn’t a surprise when the conference decided to move the 2027 event from the farther reaches of Hanover back to Philadelphia’s historic Palestra.
On the other hand, the Sept. 15 announcement that Ivy Madness would relocate to the PPL Center in Allentown for the 2028-2030 editions did come as a bit of a shock.
With apologies to Harvard alum Colin Jost, my first thought was “I didn’t have that on my bingo card.”
After accepting that the tournament would be moving to a neutral site, I then came up with what I felt were a number of more logical and northeasterly locations: White Plains, N.Y.’s Westchester County Center, Bridgeport, Conn.’s Total Mortgage Arena, Hempstead, N.Y.’s Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Stony Brook, N.Y.’s Stony Brook Arena, Uncasville, Conn.’s Mohegan Sun Arena, Worcester, Mass.’ DCU Center and Springfield, Mass.’ MassMutual Center.
Armed with these thoughts and a number of questions, I reached out to the conference office to find out if it would provide any additional information about the decision.
I was informed by an Ivy League official that the athletic directors, while not unanimous, made the decision to explore a neutral site after six or seven years of conversations the league had with coaches, student-athletes, administrators, fans and media about the format and location of the tournament.
The league office looked at many venues within the conference’s geographic footprint to find a location where it could establish a consistent presence to be embraced by Ivy fans and the local community.
Ultimately, Allentown and the downtown PPL Center proved to be an impressive destination for league officials, including all eight athletics directors and the Basketball Tournament Working Group, due to the arena’s modern scoreboards, locker rooms, seating, suites, hospitality areas and media room, as well as a revitalized city center and ample hotel spaces, including one that is directly attached to the arena.
While acknowledging people’s concerns about cost and the inconvenience for those traveling from Brown, Harvard and Dartmouth, the league official contended that the cost isn’t going to be any more expensive than having it at the league venues and that there have been no discussions or plans for the tournament beyond 2030.
Dealing with a skeptical Ancient Eight fanbase as well as a Lehigh Valley location that isn’t a hotbed of alums from the eight schools and an arena ownership whose team has seen an 18.6% decline in average attendance from a high of 8,244 in 2015-16, the conference and its new partners have their work cut out for them.
Looking at things from the glass half-full perspective, the PPL Center’s owners have stabilized the yearly average attendance of the Philadelphia Flyers’ AHL affiliate team that plays there, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, over the last four seasons to 6,700 after a low of 6,000 following the missed 2020-21 campaign, and the league has a dedicated staff with a history of putting on successful events and finding creative ways to increase the conference’s exposure.
As a fan of the Ivy League Tournament and the league, I’ve got my fingers crossed that the tourney’s keepers will find ways, both inside and outside the box, over the next 18 months to get fans of Ancient Eight hoops and the Lehigh Valley community to show up for Ivy Madness.
Thanks for asking these questions Rob!