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Big Ten Baseball: TD Ameritrade Park To Host B1G Championships 2018-2022

The B1G comes back to Omaha for a while.

By Brian Towle
Jon Johnston

Today, the Big Ten Conference and TD Ameritrade Park announced that the Big Ten Conference Tournament will be hosted inside the Omaha venue for a consecutive term from the years 2018 to 2022. That will pair with the venue hosting the upcoming 2016 tournament.

TD Ameritrade, where the College World Series is held annually every season, hosted the 2014 Big Ten Baseball Tournament to record numbers in that season. That turned the head of Conference Commissioner Jim Delany, who has had the tournament in Minneapolis's Target Field in '13 and '15 to sparse crowds.

Per the release:

“We are pleased to announce that TD Ameritrade Park will be the home of the Big Ten Baseball Tournament in 2016 and from 2018 through 2022,” Big Ten Commissioner James E. Delany said. “It's been a terrific venue for us with incredible fan participation and we're excited to be back.”

“As we gear up for what we hope will be another record-breaking Big Ten Baseball Tournament in May, we are honored to have the opportunity to work with the Big Ten for many years to come,” Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority President and CEO Roger Dixon said. “TD Ameritrade Park is a special place for college baseball and we are excited about the chance to play host to Big Ten fans from across the country.”

The Big Ten Baseball Tournament was held in Omaha for the first time in 2014 and established multiple attendance records. The attendance of 19,965 for the championship game on Sunday, May 25, ranked as the largest single-game conference tournament attendance in NCAA history. The five-day total tournament attendance of 62,020 marked the largest in the history of the event. Four days of the tournament featured attendance of more than 10,000, including Wednesday (10,400), Thursday (11,756), Saturday (12,319) and Sunday.

On June 5, 2014, the conference announced that the tournament would return to Omaha in 2016 and 2018 and with today’s announcement, the tournament will be held at TD Ameritrade Park seven times over a nine-year period. The site of the 2017 Big Ten Baseball Tournament will be announced at a later date.

While unclear where the '17 Tournament will be headed, one would think that a East coast type of atmosphere would be in play, such as Brooklyn's MCU Park, where the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Short-A team of the New York Yankees play. Possibly, since Maryland is in the conference, something like Oriole Park or even Nationals Park is in play for that aspect.

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