The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The two Battle 4 Atlantis basketball tournament will bring a combined 7,000 visitors to The Bahamas over the Thanksgiving period, creating “exponential” tourism benefits for the country.

Lea Miller-Tooley, chief executive of Complete Sports Management, the agency responsible for co-ordinating the men’s and women’s events, told Tribune Business that The Bahamas can expect to receive thousands of college baskteball fans with visitors already starting to trickle in for the inaugural Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis Women’s Tournament that starts this Saturday.

“The fans for the women are starting to land. Probably tomorrow we’ll get a couple of thousand fans for the women, and I would say we would get up to 5,000 for the men,” she said.

The tourism-related benefits stemming from Battle 4 Atlantis are “beyond exponential” as the tournament resumes its growth following a one-year COVID-related hiatus. Besides attracting more visitors, the marketing push the event gives The Bahamas through ESPN screening games exposes this nation to millions of viewers throughout the world.

Ms Miller-Tooley added: “The television exposure, and the level of competition that we get to play at a place as beautiful as Atlantis, I would say is one of, if not the most, impactful sports tourism event in the Bahamas.

“Atlantis has done such an unbelievable job. Visitors have to get tested to come into the country, and then tested to get out of the country, but Atlantis has made it logistically very seamless. The Women’s tournament starts on Saturday. This is our inaugural event and we have the top teams in women’s college basketball. The locals should really get behind this. We want to expose the next Jonquel Jones to this country.”

The University of Oregon women’s team landed on Wednesday, while the other seven arrived yesterday. “We’ve got the number one and the number two teams in the country here in South Carolina being one, and then the University of Connecticut with Geno Auriemma being two, along with Dawn Staley at South Carolina coming off an Olympic gold medal,” Ms Miller-Tooley said.