Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon buys the Portland Trail Blazers; impact on MLB to Raleigh?

Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon buys the Portland Trail Blazers; impact on MLB to Raleigh?

And Tom Dundan is a very rich man. Tom Dundan, the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes. Well, he’s agreed to buy the Portland Trailblazers from the estate of Paul Allen for a valuation of just more than $4 billion. Sources confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday. Uh, Dundon intends to keep the team in Portland, sources told ESPN. Other members of the ownership group include Mark Zar, co-president of Blue Owl Capital, and Shield Tile, Portland-based founder and co-CEO of Collective Global. That’s the nuts and bolts of it. Um, the the less tangible aspects of this are just are just full of questions. Here’s one that that popped into our kind of collective conversation earlier today. Right. As the news broke, as a sports station will do, we get together, we start bouncing ideas off of each other. Um, once this goes final, and there could be a month of approvals and dotting eyes, crossing tees. Once this goes final, for the first time since Tom Dundan purchased the his the the entirety of the Canes, once he completed owning 100%. The Carolina Hurricanes will not be the crown jewel of his portfolio. They will not be the most expensive. They will not be the the topline thing on Tom Dundan’s credits and debits sheets. Does this mean the Canes are going to have less supervision? Because there are certain aspects of the Carolina Hurricanes reputation nationally in the NHL that pretty much just get thrown on Tom Dundan, right? every time that a uh negotiation with a player takes longer than it should, every time that a a you know, I mean, going back to like uh offer sheet situations and like just that it’s always like, well, Tom Dundan has to win every negotiation. Tom Dundan has to feel like he got the better of every single negotiation. Is it a coincidence that this off season? It did kind of feel like they just went, “No, let’s do something fair and let’s get it done early with Logan Stanovven. No, let’s do something fair. Let’s get it done early with Jackson. We don’t have to draw this out with Jackson Blake. We don’t have to threaten people with we have this much control or this much.” Maybe Tom Dundan was too busy looking at everything he was going to spend on the Blazers. And and meanwhile, Eric Tolski was over here going like, “Is it cool if we just give eight years to a guy that was a rookie last year and Dund’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s Dame Lillard doing?” Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s fine. What’s the arena look like in Portland? Yeah. Stankov, sure. Do whatever you want. Yeah. Can you defer as much money to that as possible so I can Yeah, that might have been the only thing he was saying. Like, as long as I still am as liquid as I need to be in about two months, then sure, go ahead. Give the rookie whatever you want. Um, they might be a little less supervised. There might be a little of a tension splitting. I don’t know, but it’s a possibility because he’s already he’s a Texas guy, right? He’s based in Dallas. Um, and he already had a bunch of other business entities. It’s not like the Canes were all he had, right? He’s not like what we think of with a Rooney or Amara in the NFL where it’s like their entire family, everything was these teams, right? He’s somebody that always had other stuff. Um, but he made the time to to make sure he was involved where he needed to be with the Canes. I still would expect that to be the same. The next question is, does this end the dream? Did it ever become more than a dream? Does this end the the hope, the plan, whatever far you think they’ve gotten, uh, to bring an MLB team to Raleigh? Because the MLB to Raleigh movement, if you will, uh, the thing that it always had that I thought was like, you know what, that might actually work, right? because who knows what Major League Baseball is looking for? Who knows what you know what they think as far as media markets, who knows? But the one thing that every time somebody brought up bringing Major League Baseball to Raleigh that made me go, you know what they do have that’s a pretty big asset is they had a billionaire that put his support fully behind it. Tom Dundan was was willing to say publicly, I want to bring it to Raleigh. And there are a whole bunch of other markets that have, you know, the the people and the the amount of television sets and they have the the uh maybe stadium location. Like they have all that, but they don’t have the billionaire. And that’s really important. So the the Raleigh always did. And I don’t pretend to know like I don’t pocketwatch Tom Dundan like that. I don’t have the log into his mobile mobile banking. I don’t know how much money he has, but I assume if you buy a team at a valuation of $4 billion dollar, it’d be tough to find the cash you need to buy another team worth billions of dollars again and bring them to a new market. So Mike Sunheim of the Carolina Hurricanes, who’s their head of public relations and and uh communications did put out a statement saying uh we can confirm Tom Dundan is in the process of buying the Portland Trail Blazers and is excited about the opportunity. This will not impact the Carolina Hurricanes and Tom still wants to bring Major League Baseball to North Carolina, but like you said, what’s the practicality of that? Hey, wanting something to happen and then having the actual resource to to make it happen are two separate things. I I I still think his support and his inclusion in the conversations is a good one. He’s now he he’s a double owner, right? He owns in the NHL and he owns in in the NBA once this goes through. Having him in the room, whether he can bring a billion dollars or not, having him in the room helps the the idea, but money makes the world go round, right? Cash rules everything around me. Cream, get the money. Shout out to the Woo. Uh, it’s it’s I think at least in the immediate future, it it becomes more difficult to to look at Raleigh as the best option for Major League Baseball to choose. It’s still a good option. I will always advocate for it and I think it would thrive once it gets here. I think it’s a market that a baseball team would work. I think it would be awesome for a network like ours. Like I’m I am all in on it, but I also acknowledge that I think this makes it less likely at least in the immediate future because eventually, by the way, Tom Dun’s also not a dummy. Uh he intends on making money on the Portland Trailblazers. Oh yeah. Just like he makes money on the Carolina Hurricanes. Eventually, him owning both will put him in a better financial situation to bring in a team to Raleigh, but that takes time, right? You you got to spend money to make money, and he just cut the check. And here’s the thing, out in Portland, you’re you’re the act like you’re the thing. Now, I know not that far away is Eugene, where obviously the University of Oregon is, but you’re the team. Obviously, they only have like, you know, a couple soccer teams and things along those lines, but around here with the Carolina Hurricanes, you talk about baseball, is that one thing that you have to have, I know people want to bring up statistics about the growth population of the Raleigh, you know, triangle area. They want to bring up the size and Well, guess what? Major League Baseball is moving a team to Las Vegas, the Athletics, where their population is pretty much the exact same as it is in the Triangle area. and they also added a ma a NFL team within recent years and they also have a hockey team as well. You have to keep in mind where the corporate dollars coming from. That’s something you have to keep in mind. And corporate dollars are already stretched between Carolina State, Duke, the Canes, the Courage, the Durham Bulls. There’s already a it’s it’s already thin as is. So people want to point out, well, Amazon has a area coming in Apple and all that stuff. Well, guess what? Amazon and Apple and Google. When’s the last time you saw them buy the naming rights to something? When’s the last time you saw their logo posted on a stadium? You know what they want you to do? They want you to purchase their product to watch the sports, not buy properties or buy sponsorships on sports teams. That’s not what those companies want to do. You have to have the corporate backing in order to make this work. And you need to find another cash cow to go with Tom Dunn, especially after this purchase. Fine. Get Bezos on the line. Let me talk to him. All right. I I’ll convince him. I’m sure you could. He’s making enough money on Thursday Night Football. I’m sure. Jeffy B, give me a call. All right. We’ll we’ll talk. Hear Automotive Group hotline 919-8605326. Yes, Jeff. Call us. Um, listen, it is a uh it’s an exciting time to be at Dundan. I’m not sure there’s going to be a ton that you notice changing for his uh Carolina Hurricanes portion of his portfolio. Um, but it’s it’s definitely exciting. Here’s last question here before we move on, and we’ll come back to this later in the show. Um, do we now root for the Blazers to do really well so that he gets more money so that he can spend more money on the Canes? Like, does it does it make it more possible for him to to kind of flex his his financial chops in the NHL if the Trailblazers are rolling in it? Like, did we just become huge Scoot Henderson fans? I guess for the future of being able to afford Sebastian. Well, I mean, he’s going to spend to the cap. He’s going to do that. True. I But here’s But facilities and and everything else, team planes and and you know, everything there there’s there’s a lot of stuff you can spend on outside the coaching salaries. A lot you can spend on front office salaries outside of the cap. I know he’s he’s got a stadium or arena needs to renovate out there in Portland now, too. Or just have another one built. I think he’s going to he’s going to spend a lot. Just again, I don’t pretend to know business. Seems like he’s going to spend a lot in the next like five years and then make a bananas amount of money the following like 20. Yeah. Oh, for sure. That’s the way I I look at it. And you know, it’s all investments and everything. I I don’t think he’s going to go poor in the next 5

Tim Donnelly & Dennis Cox discuss Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon purchasing the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA, and the impact it could have on the Hurricanes, and if it affects the potential of MLB to Raleigh, even if Dundon stated he still is interested in bring MLB to Raleigh, North Carolina.

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