Matter of fact, I would say that
Charlotte at #3 and Minneapolis at #4
are going to be the biggest surprises
around the country when they look at
our project that we've completed here.
I think the thing that pushes Charlotte
over the top, especially against some of
the similarly sized markets, number one,
you have that Motorsports footprint.
There are thousands of people
employed in Motorsports in Charlotte,
from the race teams to the facility
to even the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
So that gives Charlotte a real
advantage in terms of just the
number of people employed in sports.
I think another thing that helps
Charlotte is an oversized media
footprint when you think about ESPN
and how many employees they have for
the SEC Network for ESPN events,
which runs a lot of their business
out of Charlotte.
So that can't be underestimated.
And I think that gives Charlotte
an advantage that maybe some other
cities that size don't have,
getting back to our methodology a little bit.
One of the buckets of data that we use,
we interviewed about 100 top level
executives from around the industry
and just got their anonymous feedback.
We wanted them to be as honest
with us as they could.
They gave Charlotte really high marks.
So it's a great environment for business.
The banks and financial sector really
underpin a lot of the sponsorship
here and I think that's important,
plus not to mention great people,
great weather,
great food and restaurants.
It really is just outside of sports,
a great place to live.
So people may be surprised by Charlotte,
but I think folks within the sports
industry will not be nearly as surprised.
I think one thing that Charlotte
has done over the last few years
has built some more hotel rooms.
That's important.
You know,
we have talked for years and years about it.
Would Charlotte ever be able to
potentially host a Super Bowl,
maybe wanting a domed stadium
as part of that?
But another part of that equation was just
how are we going to fit all these people?
In the city when they're
coming in for a Super Bowl,
they're starting to resolve
some of those problems.
So I think events in Charlotte,
you mentioned a lot of them.
Don't underestimate what goes on at
Quail Hollow, the PGA Championship,
the Ryder Cup.
Those are really big sort of premier
marquee events and Charlotte is
winning a lot of those bids.
So I think that as the city grows
and as it establishes these public
private partnerships around sports,
I don't see this as something
that is going to.
Receipt,
I think Charlotte is going to
continue to be a hub for sports.
One of the metrics we looked at,
Charlotte actually in our study
came out as the fourth fastest
growing region in the country.
So Dallas is our number one
city in this report.
Dallas is very similar to
Charlotte in that it is
a growth city. If you think about Dallas,
you have so many transplants from California
that move in because of the low taxes.
Government regulation is
not nearly as strict.
It's just very business friendly.
Charlotte kind of on the East
Coast has that same dynamic.
You have people moving in from New York,
you have people moving in from Buffalo,
Pittsburgh, Cleveland.
We know that because when you go to a
Panthers game and those teams are playing,
it's hard to tell sometimes
who the home team is.
But that plays into Charlotte
as a destination city.
This is the type of place that people move
to and they stay because they like it.
So the facilities in Charlotte are top notch.
Virtually any kind of sport
you want is played here.
We'll see if Charlotte is in the running
for a Major League Baseball team or not.
Even if they don't get it,
it's easy to see that the Knights have one
of the top minor league facilities anywhere.
That's almost like watching
Major League Baseball.
When you go to a night's game,
it's a great environment.
So Charlotte has a lot going for it,
and I think they've put a lot of
effort into this in the last few years.
And this is the result of that.
Well, one of the things we looked at was,
if I'm a, let's say I'm a salesperson.
Or a vendor and the sports space.
And I want to visit a city and in
two days I want to make as many
in person sales calls as I can.
Charlotte's a great place for that.
All of the properties are located
essentially within blocks of
each other Uptown.
Getting around Charlotte is not
nearly as difficult as it is,
say in Los Angeles or Atlanta,
two cities that are bigger than Charlotte,
but got dinged for this type
of thing in our survey.
So I think Charlotte is it
rates really highly with people.
Coming into town, they like what they see.
They know that they can do business here.
When you talk about the financial
services industry,
just look at what they've done
with local sponsorship.
So you know,
Bank of America obviously has a
huge relationship with the Panthers
and the stadium ally with Charlotte
FC's Jersey ally has been a great
corporate sponsor and has done
a lot of really innovative stuff
with their sponsorships.
Truest has the deal with
the Knights LendingTree.
As the Hornets jersey patches.
So these are all local financial institutions
that are heavily invested in sports.
And that means a lot to people
when they come into town,
they know they can hit up four of
the biggest sponsors in sports and
they're all located within just a
block of each other, right Uptown.
So those are the kind of things
that help Charlotte out a lot.
The financial services industry,
you know,
is the bedrock on which the city is built.
I think as a baseball city,
the first thing you have to think
of is there are 81 home games.
Are we really going to be able to draw
30,000 people a night to 81 home games?
There's reason to think that you can
#1 the weather here is fantastic.
So you're not going to have some of the
problems you may have in Cleveland, you know,
and Milwaukee as far as getting snow dates.
But you know, can Charlotte
support 81 home games a year?
That really is a big question.
You do, like I said,
have so many transplants that you'll
have a lot of fans from the visiting
teams that will go and show up for games.
I think that will help.
We'll see.
I mean, I think we weren't sure
that soccer was going to be,
it was going to take off in Charlotte
and we see how successful that's been.
Just looking at what Charlotte
FC's doing right now,
winning and losing doesn't seem to matter.
They're having great success now over time.
That's where winning and losing
we say around here all the time.
There's no promotion like winning.
So there's no marketing or sales
efforts you'll ever be able to do that
is better than just winning games.
And so if Charlotte has a Major League
Baseball team and they end up being a
small market team with a low payroll like,
say,
Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or Detroit,
and they're going to kind of languish
around the bottom of the league.
Baseball's revenue sharing structure
is such that you'll have the Mets
with a $300 million payroll and the
pirates with a $60 million payroll.
That's pretty unique in sports.
So if I were to look into a crystal
ball and say 10 years from now,
Charlotte had a Major League Baseball team,
but it's payroll was near the bottom
and they weren't able to really compete
with some of the other big market clubs,
that's a possibility.
It could turn out that way.
It could also go a totally different
way where there are more like say Tampa,
another small market or low revenue
team still finds success so there's
no promotion like winning and
that will cure all ills.
But there are still some questions
Charlotte is going to have to answer about.
So they can support a Major
League Baseball team.
And I think Charlotte was in the
running for FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
They want to be in the conversation
for every major sporting event.
Charlotte has had final fours
and Charlotte has, you know,
North Carolina's obviously a great
market for college basketball.
You know, I think back to even 30 years ago,
did we even think the NFL was
going to succeed in Charlotte?
I mean,
there are a lot of people who have
doubted Charlotte over the years,
but the business climate here,
there's a lot of smart.
People working on it.
They know what things they
need to address and Danny
Morrison and the crew at the
Charlotte Sports Commission do a
great job of sort of looking at these
problems and trying to address them.
As long as you have corporate support on
your side, that will be a big feather
in their cap and it will help them
compete against some of these other markets.
If you look at the top ten cities in
our recent survey of the best cities,
six of those ten are sort of what
I would call sunbelt cities,
so Phoenix, Las Vegas, Nashville.
Atlanta, Charlotte,
Dallas Business is moving away
from New York and Los Angeles.
There's no question about it.
Taxes are too high,
cost of Living's too high.
Some of the regulatory problems these
cities have are just a lot to overcome.
Charlotte, Dallas, Atlanta,
they don't have a lot of these problems.
And so you see businesses moving to
these cities and they're growing.
And I don't see that kind of
growth on the coast anymore.
I think we're undergoing not just in sports,
but really the whole country
is undergoing a shift.
Away from those two markets
and markets like Charlotte are
definitely taking advantage.