I wish I could put a like on the circuit breaker.
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Iâve set slow mode, more or less, permanently for this thread. Itâs the least productive and the most hostile thread on the site. (the most flags come from here) Iâm hoping to tweak the delay between posts so that if you do decide to post, make sure itâs a good one.
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Very well done Canes Pride night, last night. ALL fans seemed to really enjoy the unity & particularly the music! Sets a great example for our city and region. The promotions and Gay Mens Chorus singing the National Anthem, were monumental. Thank you Hurricanes!
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as far as disposable incomes to spend on tickets or time during the day/week to watch all the sports? how?
The 3 Triangle teams in particular suck up a lot of oxygen in the room, especially as it relates to attention paid to both basketball and football. This is both in terms of dollars and time commitment.
I think the 3 universities sucking up all the dollars is dwindling as the population increases. It is not easy for non-students and non-alumni to get season tickets or boxes to university sports. I think a majority of people moving here with no university connection would prefer professional sports. I also think that companies in general are more inclined to by boxes for professional sports than for college sports. As the triangle population increases the power of the college sports will continue to diminish.
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I agree, with @jdb820 deleted post this state did a backwards thing 3 universities so close that is crazy. Number 2 NCSU is the only provider of jobs in Wake County and in the metro probably even when Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSAs are merged to become one metro area theyâll still be they largest provider. I canât see anything else by Duke and UNC. We are dysfunctional in that path, now yes maybe they didnât think that 200 years ago+ but anyone with common sense would know thatâs to close.
In fairness, cars werenât much of a thing when these campuses were built, so they probably werenât considered to be very close together at the time.
Also, having three universities in this area is a key reason as to why Research Triangle Park was as successful as it was and therefore why this region has grown as much as it has in the last 40+ years. So itâs kind of one of our greatest assets.
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College sports have a permanence, but they also have a ceiling and I donât see those who are moving here from elsewhere taking a side for the sake of taking a side. I mean, I live here and my school is a resource-poor D1 FCS school who ends up in this part of the country once in a blue moon. I have no ties to any of the three schools and none of them have anything to offer me as a fan.
I know the Triangle is unique in having three D1 FBS schools, all in P5 conferences no less, but outside menâs basketball and football this shouldnât be an inhibition to anything else entering the market. I donât think the MLS crowd would overlap with the college soccer crowd or that the MLB crowd would overlap with the D1 baseball crowd or if a WNBA team ended up at PNC that itâd step on anyone.
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Personally, Iâm a far bigger college than pro sports fan, Iâve loved moving to a hotbed of it, and my friend group and I picked up NC State fandom quite easily alongside our existing ones (helps that they donât have many national rivalries, and their games are so accessible in every sport cost-wise).
But I do acknowledge thatâs a minority opinion!
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Iâve never quite bought the notion that having three P5 universities in the Triangle is disadvantageous to pursuing another professional franchise. I think itâs easy to point to this fact and say âthe Triangle is overcommitted to its current sports options; no way it would support [other professional team].â
No one buys tickets for all three teams. At most, youâre buying season tickets and supporting one of them. And in that sense, I donât think weâre too dissimilar from other metros with one major university like, say, Columbus or Austin.
Re: the aggregate-tickets-bought argument against the TriangleâŚIf you added up the season tickets bought in aggregate for all three football teams here, you wouldnât be that far off from the tickets bought to fill up the Horseshoe in Columbus or DKR in Austin. But I have a feeling you wouldnât hear the argument that those communitiesâ universities are an impediment to another pro team. But who knows?
That said, @John, I agree that a continued influx of peopleâwhich is fortunately happeningâwill help!
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Austin and Columbus, both of which are currently larger than the Triangle combined, neither have a NFL or NBA team between them. Like Raleigh, Columbus has a NHL team, while Austin had no pro sports at all until last year when they got a MLS team. Columbus also has a MLS team. So, in those two larger markets they have 3 major league teams combined to the Triangleâs 1. Itâs not so far off.
Combined, the Triangle has more Power 5 seats to fill than either Columbus or Austin, and this is especially true for basketball where the local teams play in 2 of the 7 largest NCAA arenas x many more games.
Columbus:
Football seats: 104,944
Basketball seats: 19,500
Austin:
Football seats: 100,119
Basketball seats: 16,743
Triangle:
Football seats: 148,587
Basketball seats: 50,836
These numbers are obstacles, but are not insurmountable. Itâs just going to take more growth as I said in a previous post. FWIW, I am not pushing back on wanting more pro sports in the area, I am just realistic as to what the challenge is to get them.
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As I recall, when one of the first General Assemblyâs chartered the UNC, it was to be a âdayâs horseback rideâ from the Raleigh.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand how having multiple universities in one area is a bad thing. Most communities would kill for that intellectual and economic advantage.
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The other thing to keep in mind here, in the spirit of staying on topic, is that these universities were not built for sports entertainment. Theyâre universities. Duke moved to Durham only a year after the first game of basketball was played in Springfield, MA.
Sports have contributed to their success as schools, but they donât exist for that purpose. Only eighteen of UNCâs 30,000+ students play menâs varsity basketball. A vast majority of the rest are there to study. And thatâs 30,000+ students who otherwise probably never would have even visited the Triangle otherwise. From one school! No one would even know what state Chapel Hill was in if it wasnât for UNC!
Personally, I donât like college sports. I tried when I moved here, never got into it, will always be partial to watching the Sox or the Pats. But one of the first questions anyone asked me when I moved to Wake Forest was (and Iâm not making this up), âare you gonna pull for Duke or UNC?â Itâs a big deal, a massive part of the culture, and nothing to complain about. As much as I want an MLS team, an MLB team, and a downtown NHL arena, youâre not going to catch me saying that weâre lacking in sports.
Iâm going to keep beating this drum until Leo kicks me off this site for being annoying, but we really need to do a better job here of identifying what Raleigh is doing well and what we actually have going for us. Amplify our best traits and champion them. Raleigh could use some improvements and some new attractions, and I love talking about those things, but if we write off Raleigh as a city because we lack those things, weâre never going to get anywhere. Amplify our best traits, fix our worst traits, be grateful for any opportunities we get. Thatâs how we become a better city.
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Walking to a canes game, and thinking about how big of stretch/how impossible itâs seems that anything around Trinity could be walkable. Built like a highway.
You would really have to concentrate a SO MUCH building on the parking lots to turn this into anything.
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Anyone tell me whatâs in this article?
Literally through the Roof : membrane replacement costs escalating from estimated $2.5MM (5 yrs ago) to $8MM w/ 14 month materials lead time.
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"The price of a key project at PNC Arena is literally going through the roof.
The Centennial Authority, which runs the arena, is looking to replace the membrane that makes up the bulk of the roof, which dates to the buildingâs opening in 1999. Five years ago, the authority expected the price to be around $2.5 million but consultants later told them to expect a price more in the $5 million range.
Jeff Merritt, the executive director of the Centennial Authority, said costs now could be in the $8 million range and the lead time on the materials is running 14 months."
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I donât know if itâs been mentioned here before, but I wonder how viable it would be for the WNBA to put a team in the Triangle when/if they do their next round of expansion. The Triangle would be a great fit for the league given:
1: Thereâs a suitable venue in PNC Arena and several other suitable backups, some would be easy in a pinch (Reynolds at NC State, Carmichael at UNC), others less so (Dean Smith at UNC, Cameron at Duke).
2: The overlap with college sports isnât all that much, mainly the very end of spring seasons at the very start and fall sports at the very end. And to be honest, the WNBA crowd probably wonât overlap with college baseball/football.
3: Great basketball market for reasons I donât have to explain.
4: Established market for womenâs sports as seen by support for the NWSL.
5: While thereâd be overlap with the NWSL, there wouldnât be much more competition. You might see some overlap with the Bulls, the Mudcats less so.
6: Thereâd be automatic rivalries with Atlanta and Washington, plus you know someone would try to make something with Connecticut.
The one problem, like MLS, may be motivated ownership who has the money. Would Dundon want to add a second team to his stable? Would the typically conservative Jim Goodmon see it as a viable venture especially as his Bulls would probably have something (but very little) to lose? Itâs something to think about.
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The area did plan around some things- we now have a $6.5 Billion EV Gigafactory coming
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