Photo by Jon Anderson
LSU takes on Arkansas in the 2017 SEC Baseball Tournament championship game at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, on Sunday, May 28, 2017.
When the SEC Baseball Tournament rolls into town May 23-28, fans will get to see the top teams in the country play, an associate commissioner for the conference told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce Thursday.
Current NCAA Division 1 rankings show five of the current top six teams in the country are from the SEC, including LSU at No. 1, Florida at No. 3, Vanderbilt at No. 4, Arkansas at No. 5 and South Carolina at No. 6. Wake Forest from the Atlantic Coast Conference squeezed in at No. 2.
Herb Vincent, the SEC’s associate commissioner for communications, joined Hoover Parks and Recreation Director Erin Colbaugh and Shannon Ealy, general manager of the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, at a chamber luncheon at the Hoover Met Stadium to talk about the tournament and the impact of sports on Hoover’s economy.
Hoover, which has hosted the tournament every year since 1996 except 1997, has truly become a “home” for the SEC Baseball Tournament, Vincent said.
Sometimes the conference has had trouble finding a home for some of its post-season championship events, and Hoover is really the first and most successful example of bringing people back to the same venue repeatedly, Vincent said.
Players and teams don’t talk about going back to the SEC Baseball Tournament; they talk about going back to Hoover, he said.
“The city of Hoover has embraced the Southeastern Conference Baseball Tournament as its own, and that ownership is important,” he said.
The city has done a great job of coming up with ways to enhance the tournament experience for players and fans alike, Vincent said. One of the best enhancements was the FanFest experience at the Finley Center next to Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, he said.
The FanFest, which was added in 2017, is being taken over by a new company, On-Site Productions, this year. The Ferris wheel and zipline will be gone, but new additions include a laser tag area and mechanical bull, Colbaugh said. The FanFest also will include an arcade with virtual reality games and driving simulators, inflatables, billiards, air hockey, foosball, cornhole, a Euro bungee jump, live entertainment and a large video screen broadcasting the baseball games, she said.
This year, there also will be a youth baseball tournament on adjacent artificial turf fields featuring up to 42 teams from the 11 states with SEC baseball teams, Ealy said.
The SEC also is adding new hospitality packages, including a Patio Club on the terrace lawn area located above the outfield down the third baseline and a Tailgate Town where fans can rent tents on the grassy area between the Hoover Met Stadium and Finley Center on the first base side, Vincent said.
The SEC tournament really highlights some of the best baseball in the country, with the conference producing seven national championship teams since 2010, Vincent said. People coming to the tournament get to see the next generation of Major League Baseball players, he said. There were 88 former SEC players on the opening day rosters of MLB teams, more than any other conference in the country, he said.
Officials for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, also have taken note of the success of the SEC tournament, Vincent said. They will have representatives in Hoover to observe some of the features of the tournament, he said.
Last year’s tournament was plagued with bad weather for the first part of the week, forcing the rescheduling of games til later in the week.
However, SEC officials still were pleased with overall attendance of 139,630 for the week, said Ben Beaty, assistant director of communications. That was the fourth highest attendance since the tournament began, with the highest being 162,699 in 2019. The championship game between Tennessee and Florida drew 13,270 people, the fifth largest crowd for an SEC baseball title game and second largest for a title game that didn’t include Alabama.
The tournament does a good job of bringing in people from across the SEC, Vincent said, noting that 60% of reserve ticket sales were for people outside of Alabama.
The 2019 tournament had a $15 million economic impact, Colbaugh said. The Hoover Metropolitan Complex as a whole drew more than 500,000 visitors in fiscal 2022, generating 70,000 room nights and having an economic impact of about $55 million, Ealy said.
Hoover officials are asking Hoover businesses to show plenty of hospitality to all the out-of-town guests to ensure they have a good experience. The Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce is having a contest to see which business does the best job of that and is encouraging businesses to find creative ways to welcome SEC fans.
The city also is looking for volunteers to help out at the Hoover Met Complex with tasks such as selling and scanning tickets or ushering. There are 14 shifts, and 80 to 100 jobs to fill per shift, Ealy said. To volunteer, click here.
To buy tickets or hospitality packages, go to secticketoffice.com.
