Let’s start with this: who wouldn’t want to attend a basketball game in a palace devoted to UNC’s tradition and fan experience? Modern design, modern amenities, ease of access, high-end concessions, great sight lines, multiple concourses, students with real access to quality lower level seating – what’s not to love? It’s an easy thing to desire. Fans should want those things.
Wants, however, can drive rationalizations. A key assertion in the argument for a new arena tends to be that this new facility
would enhance the fortunes of men’s basketball, both financially and competitively. To date, it’s largely an assertion taken as a given, an unquestioned assumption. Would it?
Let’s look at last year’s Sweet 16 participants and where they play.
* Moody Center limits seating for Texas basketball games to 10,763.
** St. John’s plays some high profile games at Madison Square Garden, but the team lives and practices in Carnesecca Arena.
Yes, most of those facilities have undergone major renovations, some of them multiple overhauls. Only two programs in the Sweet 16 last season played in a facility built this century: Texas and Nebraska. Only Nebraska (full time) and St. John’s (part time) play home games in an off-campus arena. There’s no evidence in that sample that a sparkling new arena correlates to basketball good fortune.
Looking within the two money-printing conferences (SEC, B1G) for new arenas doesn’t offer much precedent.
Auburn University’s Neville Arena opened in 2010 and seats 9,100, at a 2010 cost of $95,000,000. Ole Miss launched The Pavilion in 2016, seating 9,500 at a cost then of $86,000,000. Alabama recently considered a new arena to replace Coleman Coliseum, but given current building costs, instead opted for $54 million invested in a new practice facility and team spaces (which left more donor money available for NIL).
Oklahoma University just broke ground on Rock Creek Entertainment District, a 269-acre development at a cost of $1.1 billion that will include a new 8,000 seat arena, along with 1,000 residential units, office spaces, hotels, and retail units. It’s a larger project than Carolina North (230 acres), and the project doesn’t appear to be an expansion for University of Oklahoma facilities outside the multi-purpose arena. Immediately adjacent to I-35 and roughly six miles north of campus, the Rock Creek Entertainment District appears solely a business venture that happens to include a new arena as part of the business plan.
As for the B1G, Nebraska’s arena was noted above. The next newest belongs to Oregon, opened in 2011 and seating 12,364. USC’s basketball arena opened in 2006 and seats 10,528. Fourth youngest at 2002 would be Maryland’s XFinity Center, holding 17,950. And so on.
It’s impossible to find a college basketball program where a new facility measurably lifted the fortunes of the program. It’s easy to find household names on annual Sweet 16 lists playing and practicing in buildings much older than the Smith Center. If UNC opts for a new arena seating 16,000+ at a cost of more than $700,000,000, it would be the only such creation within the college basketball world. Which brings us to this question:
Could UNC be in a unique position to benefit from a new arena in ways other programs aren’t?
UNC basketball exceptionalism has real-world value. That uniqueness should be celebrated and showcased. A sparkling new basketball palace would be a symbol of that history, prestige, and expectation. However, would that exceptionalism translate to enhanced revenues or recruiting?
That’s an open question, and no one knows the answer. To the extent UNC has divulged financial details, a new arena along with mixed-use rents would supposedly generate an additional $20-$30 million a year (depending on the source) in net cash flow. How those hypothetical profits could be funneled directly to competitive advantage remains unclear.
As for recruiting, a showcase arena appears remarkably low on the elite recruit priority list. Cameron Indoor (dates to 1940) and Allen Fieldhouse (dates to 1955) haven’t impeded Duke’s or Kansas’ recruiting at all. NIL, pro development, and TV appearances appear to be the main concerns of today’s versions of Sam Perkins, Sean May, Tyler Hansbrough, and Brice Johnson. While walking to center court in a fancy facility used to have high value in swaying high-end talents, recruits prioritize different things now.
Pouring 3/4ths of a billion dollars into a new arena with the expectation that it will attract elite players seems a dangerous assumption. Frankly, investing even the $200,000,000 in projected philanthropy for the building in order to use it to fund recruiting would probably be a better choice in that singular context (which in turn assumes the NCAA doesn’t somehow get a life-line from Congress to enforce compensation caps).
A new arena would be a massive investment while moving into a highly uncertain future. Things currently in flux: UNC’s conference affiliation, the definition of the athlete-university relationship, compensation boundaries for players, the behavior of consumers in relation to in-person sporting events, media distribution platforms and related revenues, and about a dozen other variables directly impacting a project of the size and scope of a new arena. But that’s a different discussion.
A new arena would on a number of fronts be a wonderful thing. The point of this discussion isn’t to oppose a new arena, simply to explore what a new arena likely would not mean to the future of UNC basketball. What are your thoughts on this particular topic? Let us know in the comments below.
