This year the Men’s Final Four is hosted in Phoenix for the second time. When the Men’s Final Four Championship games were last hosted in Phoenix (2017), it was the second highest-attended Final Four game (with 77,612 average nightly attendees).
Arizona has grown rapidly in the past 10 years – household incomes are more than 50% higher today than they were in 2011, and the percentage of people in poverty is down 7 percentage points to 12.5%.
While on average, consumer prices have risen 92% since the turn of this century, the prices of six goods have more than doubled – gasoline (+260%), home prices (+214%), rent (+167%), medical care (+154%), college tuition (+119%), and food away from home (+114%).
On a year-over-year basis, the rate of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation in the Phoenix metropolitan area decreased in October, matching the lowest rate of inflation since March 2021.
The state’s impending successful hosting of a World Series, following a Super Bowl and during an ongoing recovery for the state’s conventions and tourism industries, is another opportunity to celebrate its success in cultivating a robust and diverse local economy.