A jam-packed run of events at Enterprise Center and venues around the region will bring thousands of sports fans to St. Louis during the next two months.
And, potentially, tens of millions of dollars.
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The St. Louis Sports Commission, St. Louis Blues, and other sports entities in the metro area are gearing up for an especially busy spring sports calendar, headlined by the return of the NCAA men’s hockey Division I national championship April 9–12. The combination of that event—also known as the Frozen Four—the Missouri Valley Conference’s Arch Madness tournament from March 6–9, and the American Collegiate Hockey Association club national championships from March 13–25 are expected to account for 41,000 hotel nights and an economic impact estimated at $40 million, says Chris Zimmerman, the St. Louis Blues’ president and CEO of business operations.
“This is wonderful for the region,” says Marc Schreiber, president of the St. Louis Sports Commission. “It’s going to boost the hospitality industry, especially in downtown St. Louis. It’s going to bring a lot of life when we desperately need that vibrancy and activity downtown. It’s a big boost.”
Some of the initial activity will be concentrated in the suburbs, beginning with this weekend’s Blue Note Cup, a championship tournament for youth hockey teams taking place at Centene Community Ice Center and the Maryville University Hockey Center. That tournament will feature 170 teams from around the state. During the second half of March, the ACHA National Championships will draw 82 college club teams from across the nation to the same two venues.
“We aspire to be one of the great hockey cities in our country,” Zimmerman says. “If you look at the lineup, we’re going to touch every level and make St. Louis a real North Star for the game.”
That includes the highest levels of the men’s and women’s games. The Blues, winners of three in a row and pushing for the playoffs, have 10 more regular season games at Enterprise Center. The building will also host a Professional Women’s Hockey League regular season game on March 29 between Boston and Ottawa—a notable addition to the calendar for a few reasons.
The six-team league, which launched in January 2024, is eyeing expansion. CBC Sports says the PWHL is expected to announce in the next six weeks whether it will add two new teams for next season. This year, St. Louis is one of nine markets—Edmonton, Seattle, Vancouver, Denver, Quebec City, Buffalo, Raleigh, and Detroit are the others—hosting the league on its barnstorming tour.
The Blues have been active and intentional in their support of the girls’ and women’s games in recent years. During the 2023-24 season, the organization reported that more than 250 girls participated in its youth hockey programming, including its Girls Development Program, Little Blues, North City Blues, and Try Hockey For Free sessions. The Blues are also finalizing plans to launch an all-girls 12U Tier 1 tournament this summer.
Is the March 29 visit from the PWHL an audition for a potential St. Louis expansion franchise? Zimmerman cautions against looking too deep.
“It’s really about continued growth and exposure,” he says. “If that’s an opportunity, it’ll sort itself out over time. What’s exciting is that this new league has chosen us as one of nine cities to come visit. That speaks to the fact that we matter, as well as their interest in us as much as our interest in them. Girls’ hockey and women’s hockey are priorities for us.”
The Frozen Four is a big deal, too.
St. Louis has not hosted the pinnacle event in college hockey since 2007, when 19,432 fans descended on downtown for the championship between Michigan State and Boston College. The unique opportunity of hosting an NCAA Tournament regional in 2024 at Centene Community Ice Center allowed organizers to begin prepping for April’s main event a year early. It also reinforced local belief that the St. Louis market has formed strong relationships with the governing bodies of hockey, particularly the NCAA.
“I think what was maybe most gratifying last year was to get the feedback about how we executed at the operational level,” Zimmerman says. “One of the best behind-the-scenes compliments we got was when the Michigan State equipment manager—he has been coming to these for many, many years—said that the event was by far the best run NCAA regional he’d ever seen.”
Although hockey will be the main attraction in the coming weeks, there will be something for most sports tastes. St. Louis CITY SC, which kicked off its season last weekend, has four MLS regular season games scheduled through April. Cardinals’ Opening Day is set for March 27 at Busch Stadium, which will also host two sold-out exhibitions featuring the ever-popular Savannah Bananas. The St. Louis Battlehawks return to the UFL with a six-game home schedule at The Dome at America’s Center set to begin on April 6.
“Our region should feel really good about what’s ahead, and the affirmation and the validation that people want to be here,” Schreiber says. “They want to have their events here. People recognize that this is a great destination for major events and we should take pride in that. We should build on it to be even more successful going forward.”
Why It Matters: Even with St. Louis’ reputation as a great sports city, it’s hard work bringing major events to town. Twenty years ago, events like an NCAA championship might bring forth only a handful of bids. Now, the St. Louis Sports Commission routinely finds itself competing against upwards of a dozen peer markets nationwide. Under Schreiber—and predecessor Frank Viverito—the organization has been largely successful landing major events. “We’re doing so much of our work through private funding means, which is not the norm” Schreiber says. “The Sports Commission is 100 percent privately funded. That’s not the norm in our industry. We’re working hard to identify potential ways that the public sector can help these efforts. With greater public sector investment, the more successful we’re going to be, the more events—the bigger events—we can bring in, and the greater impact we will have.”
What’s Next: Next year will see more marquee events head to St. Louis, including the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships (January 6–11) and the first and second rounds of the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (March 20 and March 22). The ACHA also recently exercised its option to bring its 2026 men’s and women’s national championships back to St. Louis. The NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships are headed here in March 2027.
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