I’m fine skipping the NBA just due to the Hornets, but one of the other leagues might be good. At the end of the day, we are a growing region and we should be in line for good things at some point. Vegas for instance is significantly smaller than us economically, and no one bats an eye at them getting all the sports leagues they can handle. A strong push for MLB is probably my dream so the state can have the big 4.
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The 'State" will never cooperate with Dundon…NC State will be a pain because they are in love with their parking lots.
My biggest concern is Dudon saying “F This” & the Canes are off to Houston.
Raleigh could support the NBA probably but it would spread the disposable income for both the Hurricanes & UNC, NC State & Dook basketball. charlotte usa has ZERO universities therefore a small market with no competition for dollars.
PNC can only support basketball & hockey. Its not going to support the NFL, baseball or anything else…hence why MLS makes sense…
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I think Dundon won’t do that, I think the city needs to start giving him and working with him on giving some land. The city in 1997 put a gun to the head of commissioner Bettman to bring a team and a all star game here we could do the same.
Dundon wouldn’t move. Not with the things are now at least. The state might not directly give him the land, but it is part of a major corridor, the Blue Ridge Corridor, where there is a larger plan of development where the state may feel to develop themselves and work with the canes.
Only basketbabll and hockey? We’ll take a WNBA franchise then, please. The WNBA season being during the summer also gives PNC regular sporting events when the Canes and Wolfpack basketball are on break.
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Houston is one of the 6 largest populations in the US. Dundon is from guess where? Texas.
He will NEVER get what he wants where PNC stands today. The State & NC State are going to prove to be too big of a pain in the ass & will never ‘give’ him the property around the arena.
All of these major sports team owners now realize there is a much bigger way to monetize a franchise…real estate development around the arena or stadium…of which 99.9% are in DOWNTOWNS (except for Raleigh). We are the only City that doesn’t seem to understand this…Hell, even Fayetteville who already has a baseball stadium downtown has announced they are moving the Crown Coliseum…guess where?! Along with a ‘mixed use’ development around it…
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FWIW if Raleigh is serious it looks like they’d better throw their hat in the ring as the WNBA is looking at having new teams up and running by 2025. Hopefully the Charlotte Sting experiment wouldn’t put them off from looking at North Carolina again.
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The WNBA should worry about turning a profit for the first time in their existence before thinking about expansion. Sounds like the cart before the horse.
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There are plenty of Profession sports stadiums that are nowhere near downtown. Way more then 0.1%. Just a few that come to mind:
KC CHiefs / Royals
NY Jets / Giants
NE Patriots
Atlanta Falcons
Buffalo Bills
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Yeah, what the hell?? I’m seeing all these comments here about “Raleigh should get a WNBA team” and I’m just sitting here thinking “because the currently existing ones are already super successful and bring in tons of tourism???” hahahaha. Absolutely nothing against women’s basketball… it just objectively isn’t popular nor has it generated any profits or major success. Do those of y’all commenting here with this idea seriously want that? Look… this entire thread is essentially useless at this point. Any time I see that someone has commented in this thread, I open it up and it’s 99% of the time yet another “we need to move PNC downtown!!!1!!” and/or “we need to get an MLS or MLB team” … now we’re resorting to even lesser franchises and wishing for a WNBA team??? (again, that’s zero disrespect to women’s basketball, just simple reality that it’s not a successful nor even popular franchise…) @dtraleigh just close/lock this whole thread indefinitely LMAO.
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Yeah not at all disagreeing with you on that one. Maybe in the next couple of years they might be close to turning a profit on their own or breaking even, but I think they’re gonna be subsidized by the NBA for a while at this rate.
Still it is kind of interesting ‘10 cities’ are looking at adding a team (per the article). Maybe these cities know something we don’t 
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It’s not that easy though… First, the Stars will likely argue the move to Houston. Then the city of Raleigh would press a lawsuit against him. Dundon won’t get what he wants in Houston either. In Houston, the Canes would be the second team in Toyota center and would have absolutely no control on ANYTHING that happens in the arena or nearby areas. On the contrary, the Canes operate PNC Arena.
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They have lost on average $10 million per year since their existence with $12M in 2017 alone, and have never once turned a profit. Now factor in the new collective bargaining agreement in 2020 where the players demanded more money from a pool that doesn’t exist, and the problem has grown even larger.
The NBA subsidizes basically the whole thing and wouldn’t exist without them. I would prefer we not get involved with something like that, and it’s shocking they are even considering expansion anywhere.
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I’d love a WNBA team because I have two daughters who play basketball and we’d have a blast. Wolfpack Womens Basketball is fun too but WNBA would be just awesome.
From my perspective I don’t really care if they aren’t profitable and the NBA is keeping them afloat.
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Exactly…don’t nobody wanna watch no damn WNBA. And the numbers reflect that. Lmao
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Yeah it losses slot of money but they maybe some people who want in. If they expand.
So Raleigh if we have to pay taxes so be it. The city should listen to his demands thus could’ve all been avoided if we decided to find some land for downtown arena. Parking isn’t everything. But you guys says no to it and liked the current situation so he has to work with them.
If Raleigh wants to attract a sports franchise, it shouldn’t go about it still mired in 20th-century thinking. Football will surely be on its way out soon because of its inherent risks of CTE. Hockey? In a world of accelerating climate change, tomorrow’s kids won’t even know what ice is. People have been complaining that baseball is dying for more than a century, and they have an unbroken track record of being constantly wrong about this, but who knows, maybe this time they’re right. Basketball will always be with us, of course, but the University of North Carolina Tar Heels are a far greater treasure than any NBA team anyway.
Instead of focusing on the pastimes of yesteryear, Raleigh should boldly look forward to a sport that has already taken the world by storm, and is in fact already the world’s second-most popular sport after soccer, and is about to bring that same fervor to the United States. Am I talking about cricket? You’re darn right I’m talking about cricket.
The article is behind a paywall because journalists need to make a living, too, but the headline gives you pretty much everything you need to know. (The story even talks about cricket’s success right here in Morrisville.) And the people who write this magazine are British, so I trust them to be the experts on how great cricket is.
Raleigh has a chance to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing in American sports. What this city really needs is … Major League Cricket.
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Hah, I had a great time reading this.
In all seriousness, if the momentum is ever there for the US to get even half-serious about building a national cricket team, the Triangle would be the literally ideal place to base them out of. Big South Asian population (with even more regularly moving in and out thanks to the universities), corporate money, cheap land, good airport, minimal pro sports competition.
We already have USA Baseball, let’s just be the bat-and-ball capital of the country.
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Slow day at the office today, I needed this.
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