#6 Tulsa, Okla.
▶ RÉSUMÉ: Last year’s events calendar was typical of Tulsa’s success at landing large-scale events; the U.S. National Taekwondo team trials, USA Cycling’s Elite BMX Racing National Championships, and USA Gymnastics’ U.S. Championships were all held in the city.
The state and city’s vibrant GrecoRoman wrestling culture helped attract the NCAA Division I wrestling championships — and more than 95,000 fans over three days — to the BOK Center, while LIV Golf made a stop at Cedar Ridge Country Club in the suburb of Broken Arrow.
BMX also has found a home in Tulsa. The $23 million USA BMX National Headquarters and Hall of Fame Museum opened in 2022 and the city regularly will host the sport’s biggest U.S. events.
This summer, the city’s Cox Business Convention Center will host more than 5,000 boys and girls basketball players from across the country for the Premiere Nationals, powered by 1 Movement Hoops, an event that will require 20 basketteams,” ball courts to be shipped to the city. In 2025, Tulsa will host the Sports ETA Symposium, an event that attracts around a thousand people from the sports tourism industry.
▶ DEVELOPMENT: Cox Business Convention Center; BOK Center (19,199 seats, city-owned, opened in 2008); Mabee Center (10,000-plus-seat arena on Oral Roberts University campus); ONEOK Field (Class AA Tulsa Drillers); Donald W. Reynolds Center (8,000plus seats on University of Tulsa campus); and Cain’s Ballroom (built in 1924, hosted the World Breaking Classic’s USA Qualifier in 2022, which returns to Tulsa this year). FUNDING FOR THE SPORTS COMMISSION: The Tulsa Sports Commission is primarily funded by a city lodging tax. ▶ STAY AND PLAY: Dig into Tulsa’s folksier side with a visit to the Woody Guthrie Center or Bob Dylan Center. Across Archer Street from ONEOK Stadium, home of the Tulsa Drillers, sits Greenwood Rising, a memorial center to Tulsa’s Black Wall Street neighborhood, which was razed by a white mob during a 1921 massacre.