BATON ROUGE - USBC Executive Director Chad Murphy recently had his Town Hall meeting at the recent USBC Convention in Reno. It gave the delegates a chance to ask questions about whatever and there were several whatever-type questions.

One was regarding the upcoming openings in the 2030 decade for the USBC Open, which you remember had an extremely successful run in Baton Rouge in 2025. I should point out here this year’s tournament is in Reno at the National Bowling Stadium and it always seems after the lower scores in BR in 2005, 2012 and 2025, the scores were much higher the next year. I know it’s a coincidence, but it just always seems to happen. Believe me, the scores are much higher this year already. 

Anyway, back to Murphy and his response to a question regarding the openings available to host.

“There is an RFP that goes through August of next year? I think it’s this year,” Murphy said. “We’ve done three RFPs that included all the way through ’39 and those open dates are ’31, ’34 and 37 … And so we do have a few options in there … We had originally slated Baton Rouge for ’31 because we, you know, we knew we were going to have a good event. They are renovating their convention center (the Raising Cane’s River Center), and it won’t be ready till ’34, and then also the bid process changed a little bit, and so we basically pushed that conversation out to ’34.”

Murphy also said, “Greenville would obviously like it again. We can go a lot of places that have not been preferred by the bowlers before. Most of the options that you’re asking about aren’t better than having it in Vegas or Reno and so Vegas is a better option, and more than likely, if nothing changes, ’31 will be held in Vegas. But there is an open RFP …”

There has been much discussion in the city, the city council and in the media about what the River Center would become in the year ahead in relation to a possible new arena at LSU. Nothing has really been discussed about the new arena project in quite a while, but obviously there has been conversation regarding the future of the River Center as a convention destination.

I sent Murphy’s comments to Visit Baton Rouge because I wanted to try to verify that what he was saying about Baton Rouge and the River Center as accurate.

In an email, Laura Cating, the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications said that “Chad's statement is accurate, but I did want to clarify that we are not yet to the renovation stage with the River Center. As part of the Mayor's River Center Oversight Commission, we are actively working on the next stages of RC development and hoping to be renovating in 2031 and complete by 2034.”

I don’t know that there is really anything that is earth shattering here other than the USBC really wanted to come back here in 2031. This was discussed by Murphy last year in the town hall, including meeting with some of the movers and shakers in the city while in he was in town last year.

I think the USBC will wait to see how Greenville does in 2028 with the Open before deciding how quickly they get another Open championship.

The question that remains right now is does Baton Rouge want to bid for another go in 2034. It’s not a cheap asking price to want the tournament, but the rewards are impressive.

Visit Baton Rouge put out a report this past week reviewing some of the numbers like 146K estimated attendance and most importantly $150M economic impact. There were some 11.6K registered teams for the 2025 event at the River Center and 58.4K bowlers in all.

There were several other events in our city in 2025 and some 244 events registered an economic impact of $193.3M for meetings, conventions and sporting events. So again, while the bid is large, the returns can be amazing.

Is there a 2034 in Baton Rouge’s future? Is there one more chance to run the USBC Open in the local plans? Just keep it in the back of your mind as we move forward and see where we are down the road as the new decade begins.

Back with you next Monday. Until then, good luck and good bowling.