Nowhere in the country hosts more games or fans for March Madness than Las Vegas, and the city will increase its lead in both counts to record levels this month.

Las Vegas was already far and away the busiest locale for conference tournaments as the home of five separate events for the last several years—the Pac-12, Mountain West, West Coast Conference, Big West and Western Athletic Conference tournament—but the unofficial festival of basketball will be extended for two additional weeks in 2023.

The NCAA Tournament comes to town for the first time in the event’s history for the West Regional with a pair of Sweet 16 games on March 23, followed by an Elite Eight showdown on March 25, all at T-Mobile Arena. The National Invitational Tournament then hits town with its Final Four, leaving its usual Madison Square Garden home for Orleans Arena on March 28 and March 30.

The only week of the month in which there won’t be physical basketball being played in Las Vegas—March 12 to March 18—will be out of sheer necessity. When officials began the bidding process to land the NCAA Tournament, they keyed in on the second week of the event, because hotel occupancy rates are already traditionally over 95% for the first.

The third weekend of March is one of the most popular stretches of the year for Las Vegas tourism, largely because of the wall-to-wall offerings of college basketball for the tournament’s rounds of 64 and 32 teams. The Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority reported 3.33 million visitors last March, and the gaming control board announced a statewide sports betting handle of $863.3 million for the month.

Expect both figures to go up this year with the expanded schedule, and don’t think for a second that the basketball growth has plateaued. Five years from now, an even bigger moment will arrive when Allegiant Stadium hosts the 2028 Final Four.

The NCAA holding its flagship event of the year in Las Vegas was unfathomable only a decade ago, as the organization shied from embracing the city due to its association with gambling. The WAC began shifting that perception in 1997, when it brought its tournament to the Thomas & Mack Center, with the Mountain West following three years later.

A major breakthrough occurred in 2013 when a power conference—the Pac-12—committed to Las Vegas for the first time. The Pac-12’s now decade-long tenure in Las Vegas, along with the nationwide expansion of sports betting, has helped wash away any lingering stigma.

March Madness is synonymous with Las Vegas in a number of areas, and that’s not going to change. March 2023 will go down as a milestone month as part of this town’s new sports-crazed era.

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