CIAC, Mohegan Sun announce partnership

It’s been well known for a couple of months that the boys and girls high school basketball state championship games were coming to the Mohegan Sun in March.
The two parties, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and Mohegan, just made that official on Tuesday morning at Mohegan Sun Arena.
For the first time, the girls and boys championship games will be held on the same weekend, in the same venue.
The first session, consisting of two games, will be played on Friday, March 20 at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. That will be followed by six games on Saturday, March 21, beginning with the second session at 9 a.m. Two other games will follow at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. before an intermission. The last session will be played at 4:30, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. on that Saturday.
The CIAC will wait and see what kind of match-ups take place before it makes a decision as to who plays when. Admission will be a flat rate for each session with a $10 ticket granting admission to all games in that session.
The big question on the mind of CIAC Executive Director Mike Savage on Tuesday was not whether there will be fall-out about having high school games played in a casino venue, but rather how many seats of the 10,000 in the Mohegan Sun Arena will be filled.
“We are always worried about that, because it’s an issue of our draws,” Savage said. “If we get quality draws, highly competitive teams with large spectator draws, it won’t be a problem. If we don’t, it could be.”
It’s not like the CIAC is on the hook for a lot of money. It’s more of a case of whether or not Mohegan will continue to host the games beyond this March. The two sides have agreed on a one-year deal and Savage is hoping that if the March games are successful, a multi-year deal could be struck.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to negotiate a financial package that is of minimal risk to the CIAC based on past attendance,” Savage said. “Our use of the Mohegan Sun is not a financial risk to us.”
The CIAC has come to Mohegan for several reasons, according to Savage. One was that the member of the state’s educational hierarchy have become less concerned about the casino’s gambling activities as proms and other high school activities are held regularly on the site. The Eastern Connecticut Conference actually opened the door to negotiations when its superintendents and principals approved the league’s championship games to be played at the arena, something that was eventually displaced by the state championship games.
There was also the fact that the CIAC had nowhere else to go. Central Connecticut State University in New Britain — a facility that the CIAC “loves,” according to Savage — holds only 2,800 people. Gampel Pavilion in Storrs was not available either, and frankly, according to Savage, the “time was right to re-kindle negotiations with the Sun,” which had been smoldering for about 12 years.
Since the announcement was originally made, Savage said he has received just one negative e-mail.
“Our biggest concern is hosting an event at a substantial distance from many of our member schools and the travel,” Savage said. “We are not particularly concerned about the issue of exposing our kids to a gambling facility because we’ve been assured that can be handled in a limited way.”
The senior vice-president of sports and entertainment at the Mohegan Sun, Paul Munick, expects more will be said about the partnership between the two and the issue of gambling, but he doesn’t expect it will be a long-term discussion.
“The colleges came in and that caused an uproar for a day or two,” Munick said. “I remember we were having a Nike clinic and I was standing next to (Duke coach Mike) Krzyzewski, (UConn coach Jim) Calhoun and the Marquette coach and the press asked me a few questions and I said, ‘If you really think there’s more gambling going on here — because the issue is about gambling on basketball — than on the campuses of these three schools, I think you’re all nuts.’ ”
The coming of high school basketball to Mohegan could pave the way for another athletic opportunity for the facility as it’s actively engaged in negotiations with two college basketball conferences to bring their postseason tournaments to Mohegan.
Although Munick declined to name the conferences, he did say another conference looked eager to come to the arena but the Sun turned them down out of fear of a lack of attendance.
“If high schools can do it, why can’t colleges do it?” Munick said.