{"id":144348,"date":"2026-03-21T03:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T03:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144348\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T03:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T03:48:07","slug":"march-madness-draws-thousands-to-philadelphia-as-tournament-heats-up-its-a-different-beast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144348\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness draws thousands to Philadelphia as tournament heats up: “It’s a different beast”"},"content":{"rendered":"

March Madness has taken over South Philadelphia Friday night at the Xfinity Mobile Arena for the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.<\/p>\n

“Awesome. What an environment,” said Boston native Drew Calabrese. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Calabrese family turned the weekend into a mini vacation, trading a warm and tropical destination for the big dance in rainy Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

“It was a family vacation. We were supposed to go to Jamaica and we ended up in Philadelphia for March Madness,” a member of the Calabrese family said.<\/p>\n

People came from all over and say they can feel the brotherly love.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Beautiful. Great city. Great people. We had one of the best lunches we ever had. Philly cheesesteak and then top it with ice cream,” Los Angeles resident Joe Kazemi said.<\/p>\n

Fans say the best part was watching the games in person compared to just watching it on TV at home or at a bar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s a different beast. You get to feel the energy rather than just hear it through the TV,” Samuel Bass, of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, said.<\/p>\n

“It was great. My first time ever seeing March Madness in person,” Kyle Rosenfeld, of California, said. “This is my favorite sporting event of all time. I just love watching the games and seeing all the teams compete.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as the tournament heats up, fans say the competition is fierce and fun to watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was packed and really good games to be watching,” Veronica Ryan said.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March Madness has taken over South Philadelphia Friday night at the Xfinity Mobile Arena for the first round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64216,22507,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-144348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-march-madness","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}