Vibrant Downtown Tampa, Amalie Arena Ready For Women's Final Four

Forbes

02-04-2025

The 2025 NCAA Women's basketball Final Four will be held in Tampa at Amalie Arena on April 4 & 6.
Options were sparse in downtown Tampa when it came to celebrating North Dakota's Frozen Four championship game victory over Quinnipiac in 2016. A restaurant and bar that was across the street from Amalie Arena was bursting by the seams as the Fighting Hawks' faithful enjoyed their team's first national title in 16 years.
'It was the only place they could go and there were shipping containers serving as makeshift bars,' recalled Steve Griggs, chief executive officer and vice chairman of the Vinik Sports Group (VSG), which operates the Lightning and Amalie Arena, among other properties.
When Griggs leaves his Amalie Arena office today, he walks out into an environment that is light years removed from even immediately prior to the pandemic, let alone 2016.
'To where we are at today with five-star hotels, restaurants, bars and retail, the riverwalk by the arena, it all comes together and makes it a sense of place that people want to be a part of,' he said.
Plenty of basketball fans descend upon downtown Tampa this weekend with UConn, South Carolina, UCLA and USC competing in the NCAA women's Final Four. It is the fourth time Tampa will host the event, which is the most of any city. Basketball leads the way when it comes to the immense growth of women's sports.
'The trajectory that it has been on has been phenomenal,' said Rob Higgins, executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission. 'Each time that we have served as host we have seen the growth of both the sport and the event on full display. In the past few years, the level of popularity with the sport has been phenomenal.'
It is phenomenal what has happened with Tampa's downtown district, which rapidly grew, and continues to grow, into a destination for top-tier sporting events along with tens of thousands of fans.
There were things to do prior to the development of Water Street. The riverwalk, museums, convention center and parks hosting concerts, community events and other activities have attracted locals and visitors for a number of years. What downtown Tampa did not have was a livable and walkable district with many forms of entertainment and shopping ranging from grocery stores to high-end retail.
That changed in a monumental way, and rather quickly. While the pandemic shut down much daily activity, construction was humming along and with little interruption on the Water Street Tampa project, so named in 2017 when Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and a development group he partnered with began to turn a vision into a reality. Frankly, in many ways, and especially the arena district, Tampa will look like a new city to those who took in the 2019 women's Final Four, when Baylor won its third and most recent title with an 82-81 thriller over Notre Dame.
'When people come back this weekend, they will see a $2 billion development that's come out of the ground and is activated,' said Griggs. 'We have created a walkable city that is next to the arena with hotels and restaurants. When you create a development or district outside your arena it really creates a sense of place for the event that is going on. So, the women's Final Four is going to take over not only the arena, but the entire Water Street district and you are going to feel it.'
TAMPA: Baylor celebrate their NCAA championship following an 82-81 win over the Notre Dame Fighting ... More Irish at Amalie Arena on April 7, 2019 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by)
Higgins could not agree more. Fans supporting Baylor and UConn, which also participated in the 2019 Final Four, who made the trip to Tampa six years ago will experience a far more appealing and convenient environment from which there will be an unmistakable high level of energy will radiate.
'For the fans that have not been here since 2019, I don't think they will recognize us,' said Higgins. 'It's a community that's transformed and I think back in 2019 we were really under construction on a variety of levels. Water Street did not exist and now it feels like a totally different community.'
As in 2019 and with events that took place before and have taken place since, one thing has not changed.
'What has not changed is how (visitors) make the city (vibrant) and how we are going to roll out the red carpet to make them all feel at home,' he said. 'Hopefully, memories are created that will last a lifetime.'
The home of the three-time Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning opened for the 1996-97 season. Fifteen years later, $62 million in improvements began to be implemented over a two-year period. Several upgrades have taken place since the pandemic at a venue that hosts about 150 events per year, including digital signage outside and around the building's perimeter that allows the NCAA and the like to, as Griggs put it, 'own the event.'
Thunder Alley, a popular gathering location immediately outside Amalie Arena's main fan entrance, always seems to have a new feature or two with every NHL season and major event. Inside, suites and clubs have been refurbished. Indeed, nobody is sitting still when it comes to making sure fans have been treated very well. And they keep coming back.
'All of that creates a fan experience that is important to out-of-town visitors and people that come to NCAA events,' said Griggs. 'All of those things are being done to make sure this building, even though it is a 1996 building, feels fresh and new all of the time.'
UConn, Baylor, South Carolina and UCLA are the participants in the 2025 Women's basketball Final ... More Four. It will be the fourth women's hoops Final Four at Tampa's Amalie Arena.
Because of that, Amalie Arena not only remains in the game, so to speak, but is at the top of the list when it comes to desirable venues to host an NCAA championship. This year being Tampa's fourth women's hoops Final Four underscores that point.
'I think we have a reputation nationally of being able to execute and doing it in a world class manor,' said Griggs. 'The game presentation and our guest experience, how we treat people, is tops in the NHL. That is also transcendent to all of the other events we have in this venue be it a concert, the Final Four, the Frozen Four. The execution behind the scenes and the execution the fans see, is second to none and we carry that throughout the industry.'
Even with the Water Street development, the effort of city and county officials, the Tampa Bay Sport Commission and VSG, little would matter unless there is not just cooperation, but synergy among all concerned. That is especially the case with commission and VSG as they work side by side, and often several months if not years in advance, to attract major events.
'There is no better partner than Vinik Sports Group and Steve Griggs and the entire team there,' said Higgins. 'They are a world-class organization that has been the ultimate partner time and time again. They are a huge reason why this is our fourth women's Final Four and why we have had three Frozen Fours and two women's volleyball championships. They do things at such a high level and they really help make sure these events not only come here, but keep coming back.'