“Portland Leads in Women’s Sports” - Sport Oregon Voices

Photo courtesy of Scott Bisch (Big Dude Photos)

Sport Oregon Voices:

Matt Reed, Director of Sports Tourism, discusses the past success of women’s sports in Portland and the bright future ahead

The past 24 hours have been a whirlwind. A memorable, chaotic whirlwind. 

As the NCAA yesterday unveiled its list of host cities and schools for a wide variety of championship events for upcoming years, we’re thrilled that Portland will serve as host for the 2022 and 2026 Men’s Basketball 1st/2nd Rounds and a 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Regional. 

We also swung for the fences, putting together a strong and comprehensive bid to host either the 2025 or 2026 Women’s Final Four. We didn’t get it this time around as first-time bidders and as one of four finalists, but our team at Sport Oregon is more committed than ever to showcasing Portland as a top-tier basketball city. One day, securing a Final Four will be a game-changer for Portland, its hospitality community, and for our bidding partners in Travel Portland, Oregon State University, and the Rose Quarter.  

Tampa (2025) and Phoenix (2026) were awarded the two open years of the Women’s Final Four, and we’ll be rooting for their success in executing and elevating that event. 

Over the past 18 months, we and our bid partners have poured our heart, soul, and full energy behind these bids. It has been front and center in our collective minds for a long, long time.

Come to think of it, the world (and our own organization) was a much different place when this project started, and these bids actually served as necessary glue to keep us all moving in the same direction as a group. We were able to cohesively hone our vision and strategy as a bidding group, and get to the core of “why” we were a great choice for a championship.

I’m fascinated by regional values and attitudes. With how cities and entire regions align themselves, and what things they strive to showcase and achieve. Because it’s real, and important. I’ve seen it, and felt it myself.

Oregon is the third destination I’ve represented in the sports tourism space in my young career. Back east – where I was born and raised – I began my career in suburban Philadelphia at the Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board. Work ethic, toughness, and traditional office dynamics permeated the job. It was an undeniably wonderful experience - and my gateway to this industry – where I was shepherded by the great Dave Bradley and taught the basics and foundation of the sports tourism industry. From there, I ventured west to the California Bay Area, where my arrival aligned with the construction and implementation of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara (along with the emergence of one of the best sports commissions in the country: the San Jose Sports Authority). With this new construction, our focus was to go big, and that’s what we did. I was fortunate to be a part of hosting events like WrestleMania 31, Super Bowl 50, the 2019 College Football National Championship, and the 2019 NHL All-Star Game. Let’s just say I showed up at the right time.

And when I left the Bay, with these experiences and relationships in hand, I was thrilled to land as Director of Sports Tourism for Sport Oregon, the statewide sports commission for Oregon. Although we represent the entire state, there is an obvious and natural connection and representation of our crown jewel: Portland.

Portland is wonderful, and beautiful, and complicated, and the reason my family and I moved here. It’s different, and weird. The city has its own personality, its own heartbeat. It’s the sort of place you visit once and already start marking potential second visits on your calendar, because you know you only scratched the surface that first time. If you’ve never been here, it’s exactly how you picture it. Portland has food trucks as good as Michelin-starred restaurants, coffee shops with the sophistication of a Sonoma winery, and an incredible tattoo-to-person ratio. It’s the global epicenter of the athletic and outdoor industry, and a thriving hub for tech. But at its core, Portland is a sports town.

And more specifically: the best women’s sports town in the world.

Yes, the Trail Blazers are front and center, and they live in our DNA. And the MLS’s Timbers are a collective talking point and key morale driver in the community. But Portland houses a team that is widely regarded as the most successful women’s sports franchise in the world: Portland Thorns FC. The Thorns are part of the National Women’s Soccer League, and routinely welcome 21,000+ fans to home games at Providence Park in Southwest Portland, globally ranking as the best-attended women’s professional team in any sport. I wish I could explain the true fervor and madness of these games from a firsthand standpoint, but with this being my first full year here in Oregon, coupled with Covid-19, I’m sorry to say I haven’t actually experienced it myself. But I can’t compute how many times my friends and colleagues have delivered the message that a Thorns game is something to behold.

But even before the Thorns played their first game in 2013, the city’s passion for the game helped power a juggernaut University of Portland women’s soccer team to two national championships and an unprecedented run of 10 straight years with the top average attendance in the country for Division I women’s soccer.

In golf, the LPGA’s Portland Classic is the longest running event in LPGA history and will celebrate its 50th anniversary in the fall of 2021. This staple in our community also has done amazing work on the philanthropic side, generating more the $19 million for local children’s charities since its inception. The success of the LPGA in Portland also has resulted in our community hosting the 1997 and 2003 U.S. Women’s Open of Golf as well.

And you can imagine the support this city gives the Rose City Rollers, by consistently selling-out bouts for this 400-member-strong roller derby league that lives by its mission to help women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals grow in the sport, connect with an inclusive community, and realize their power both on and off of their skates. This is yet another testament to Portlanders being loud and proud in their support of women athletes.  

But we can’t talk about women’s sports without diving into the best rivalry in women’s college hoops: the Beavers and the Ducks. These programs – and the healthy competition between them – have exhilarated our community and elevated the fervor for women’s athletics in our region more than any other sport or rivalry. Both teams are perennially ranked in the top-15 in the country, and both programs have been to a Final Four since 2016. This incredible combination of success from our two biggest local programs was a genuine catalyst for our Women’s Final Four bid, and provides the perfect backdrop for a women’s college basketball championship in Portland. And we can’t forget our Portland schools either – Portland State and University of Portland – who have both qualified for the NCAA tournament in either of the past two seasons as well.

All in all, there’s no secret why our 2019 NCAA Women’s Regional was one of the most successful in history, and our 2020 Regional ticket projections – prior to its cancellation due to Covid – were even better than the year before. We have a genuine, deep, innate appreciation for women’s sports in this market, and it shows itself even deeper during these high-profile events. 

Portland can mean something different to all of us, and it probably does. From its food and bar scene, to its proud trademark as an NBA city, and standing as Soccer City, USA. From its breathtaking natural beauty, to its demonstrative focus on social equalities. From its quirkiness, to its depth. This is a city with a personality all its own, that can’t be described simply. At all.

But if there’s one unifying force in this great city, it’s sports. And we’re not even unique in that regard. A lot of cities rightfully hang their hat on that force. Sports are a powerful community-builder, and oftentimes the most potent source of pride among citizens. But Portland takes it a step further. Yes, we show up in spades to cheer on our Blazers and Timbers, but we do the exact same for our Thorns. And yes, we want our college men’s teams to make the tournament and advance, but we have the same focus and fervor for our women’s teams.

Portland’s identity is complicated. It’s a lot of things to a lot of different people. But from a sports and sports tourism standpoint, this city is about real inclusivity. People here don’t just say they care about supporting women’s teams the same as the men’s teams, they actually do it. We sell the same number of tickets to a Blazers playoff game where Damian Lillard is dropping 50 and waving “bye bye” to OKC that we do a Thorns regular-season women’s soccer game. That is incredible to me. Unfathomable in other cities.

But I’m new here. And I can’t tell if other people truly understand just how different and amazing that statistic is. Maybe it just seems normal after a while to people who’ve lived here long enough.

For me, I hope it does become the standard in my brain. That’d be a wonderful recalibration.

But I also hope I never minimize what this city has accomplished. Because it can be like this everywhere.