Did some digging. Looking like the arena wasn’t ready and the Whalers were looking at Greensboro and Fayetteville until the arena was complete.
But capacity isn’t an issue with the Hurricanes. Many teams are realizing it isn’t about sheer attendance numbers but about atmosphere. A lot of teams are renovating their arenas to be smaller. Good example was the Atlanta Hawks. We reduced our arena from 20,000+ to 17,000 and the difference in atmosphere is great. More open concourse space, nearly every game sold out, more premium spaces.
Also, most newer arenas in the NHL and NBA are trending smaller from that 20-22k in the 80s-90s to 16-18k now. There’s a much larger focus on the atmosphere and premium seats. Teams rather bank on a full building every night. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but while the Canes are known for one of the best crowds, they’ve struggled through the years with actual numbers right? I think a downtown 16k stadium with loads of premium seats and open concourse, amenities would be ideal.
I think that MLB is planning on having new stadiums built smaller in the future . It seems like I read that 30,000 to 40,000 seats instead of 40,000 to 50,000 seats .
I think the trend has already started. Atlanta went from half empty 54,000 Turner field to 41,000 truist. Sold out most nights now and much much better atmosphere.
If Raleigh ever gets MLB, I’d love us to have no more than a 32-35k seat stadium. Fill it every night instead of half empty most nights.
When they weren’t doing good their arena looked very similar to the Cleveland Browns stadium but that’s expected. Now that they are good again the attendance has increased.
Every seat in PNC Arena has fantastic viewing angles for NHL games, it’s honestly the perfect size arena seating wise. There’s not a bad seat in the house.
Pre-Covid Canes were gaining huge momentum with the fan base. Were consistently seeing 17K+ crowds and about 50-60% of games were sold out. I’d expect next season we’re going to see those same numbers or maybe even better. Canes are built to be a pretty good team for a good while.
Edit: Just looked it up. The Canes finished with an average of 16.9K per game before Covid hit. I remember the final 4 or 5 games were back to back sell outs.
Here a photo from a friend tonight at the Game!!! Sorry it blurry but it was packed so for anyone saying Raleigh not a sports town they can go back under a rock and hide!!!
I mean Chapel Hill has a 21,000+ arena. Built in a different time and with a different purpose. But also, anyone that ever drove nearly 2 hours to go to a Canes “home” game in Greensboro with the black sheets of death knows, it’s not the best place to see hockey.
I grew up in Asheville in the 80s-90s and even there, support for the braves was electric. Braves hats everywhere. They were the only team from the south. So, cheering for them (and hating their perpetual foil, the Yankees) was basically an obligation. And so we did.
Asheville has pretty close ties with Atlanta, there’s a lot of tourism between them. Between that, the Braves, and the Olympics, Atlanta really seemed like it was the epicenter of the country to me.
Back to Raleigh, it’s really odd to me that a region as densely populated as the NC/SC Piedmont has no baseball team.
But putting it in Charlotte and making it a “Carolina” team is a bad idea, because I suspect Greenville and Columbia will still lean Braves. Based on what I saw in the 90s, even peeling Asheville away would be a challenge - but perhaps the fan base has grown less fervent since then.
I always thought dropping a team in Greensboro (with a stadium near the coliseum) would be shrewd, but then again I live in (greater) Raleigh, so I wouldn’t want my loyalty to be questioned.
The Triad just isn’t growing at the clip a major sports league would want to see for a team. That said, a team in the Triangle would likely see some attendance from the Triad on weekends, similar to how I know a few Panthers season ticket holders who live in Raleigh.
Having any “Carolina” team is terrible that’s why I’m glad the Carolina Bobcats became the Charlotte Hornets, that was the best name change I’ve seen in a decade. If SC wasn’t such a confederate lover state maybe they’d have a professional sports team. Texas has professional teams because of its size.
They were Charlotte hornets in the 90s until they left. Then Charlotte bobcats until 2010 when New Orleans dropped the hornets name and Charlotte took it back. Never were they Carolina though.
And technically metro Charlotte bleeds into SC so that’s partly their team / market. GSP , Columbia and Charleston are just too small to sniff having any major team. All metro pops <1 mil.
But we were also showing trends and signs of growth unlike SC so that made us by far the market of choice. Plus out of the shadows of Atlanta and Charlotte
I don’t really think it’s that objectionable, there is enough cultural bleedover between the two that the teams do it to nominally rope in as many fans as possible. The Patriots, Warriors, (Texas) Rangers, and (Florida) Panthers all did the same thing.
I agree that SC’s politics are not helpful in terms of relocations or marketing (as well as being a toxic antebellum relic), but they won’t ever get a pro franchise because they’re too small, end of story. None of the major metros is in the top 50, and the two biggest are an hour and a half from Charlotte. Greenville is just as close to Atlanta. Even if you flipped a switch and changed SC’s politics to Virginia’s and guaranteed that each major metro would sustain its highest rate of growth, there still wouldn’t be a major league franchise there in my lifetime. The closest you’d ever get is if a CLT franchise put their stadium in Northern York County, which of course does not count.
The Greensboro Coliseum has an incredibly rich history hosting college basketball: An NCAA Final Four, multiple NCAA East Regional finals and regional rounds, a record 26 ACC men’s championships, ACC women’s championships, the old Big Four tournament, MEAC conference championships, and tons of ACC regular season games. You’d be hard pressed to find an arena with more college basketball history, and college basketball has always been the sport this state is most passionate about. (Who else remembers the teachers cancelling class and rolling in the TVs to watch the first afternoon of the ACC Tournament in school every year?)
It makes tons of sense to have a big arena, within an easy drive of all three major markets in North Carolina, for those sorts of signature events. The Coliseum is a great environment for those events. But for an NBA or NHL team that has to fill the building for 41 regular season games a year, 22,000 is way too big. A slightly smaller arena makes way more sense and provides a better gameday atmosphere. That’s the lesson Charlotte learned when it built the 24,000 seat Charlotte Coliseum. That was the original home for the Hornets, but the city built the arena with an eye toward poaching the ACC tournament away from Greensboro. That was considered at least as sweet a prize in those days, if not sweeter. But that building ended up being too big for the Hornets and was demolished after just 17 years.
Here’s a crazy fact, by the way: As late as the 1980 census, Greensboro was still a bigger city than Raleigh, and Guilford County still had more residents than Wake County!
What’s even crazier still is that it’s not like Greensboro or Guilford County are shrinking or anything. They’re both plugging along at a decent rate decade after decade. The growth in Raleigh and Wake County has just been so incredible that it’s just zooming on past them.
