Tony Padgett, a 60-year-old industrial-cleaning executive who once painted whiskers on his face and wore a full-length, black cat costume to a Carolina Panthers playoff game, did not attend his team's 15th straight loss last Sunday at Ericsson Stadium. He was out of town visiting an aunt.

Padgett was similarly unavailable to watch the team's next-day news conference, but he agreed with owner Jerry Richardson's public explanation for firing coach George Seifert. Richardson's offering, ponderous yet precise: "The energy has been sucked out of our organization and fan base."

Says Padgett: "It's just been depressing."

Only five years ago, Charlotte was the best kind of sports story - an underdog confounding the experts with two playoff teams and perpetual sellouts for each. But after new lows in Hornets' and Panthers' attendance, the city has become something far less enviable - an illustration of the wide-ranging difficulties facing small and medium pro sports markets.

Last week has offered such for Charlotte sports fans, who have alternated between hope and disgust with their franchises.

On Monday, news of Seifert's dismissal was immediately followed by speculation that former Florida coach Steve Spurrier might ride in to save the Panthers.

On Tuesday, Hornets fans were buoyed by a $100million corporate offer toward an uptown basketball venue, yet watched later in the week as co-owners George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge nevertheless visited New Orleans and its ready-for-revenue arena.

The solution for Charlotte's sports woes might be as simple as a new coach and new building. But in an era of declining interest in professional sports, Charlotte and similar-size cities are armed with less corporate oomph, fewer government dollars and a smaller population base to ride out the inevitable choppiness of the sports world.

"Critical mass tells you the more people you have, the more potential fans you have," says Max Muhleman, a Charlotte sports marketing executive and architect behind the city's successful bid for an NBA franchise. "If you have a bad year, or if fans get mad at Ray and George, the nucleus of capable ticket buyers is not as deep."

And so Charlotte has become a test case of sorts. Can a smaller-market metro area of 1.5million compete in the modern professional team sports environment?


The highs
On the near-freezing night of Jan. 5, 1997, after the Carolina Panthers had defeated the Dallas Cowboys in an NFC playoff game, after the players had taken a joyous lap around the field to thank their fans, Tony Padgett stood outside Ericsson Stadium in full costume, speaking in exclamation points.
"My occupation is Panthers fan!" he declared. It was a good thing to be, a good city to be in. Across town, the Hornets - in their eighth season - were a playoff-caliber team still selling out the not-yet-obsolete Coliseum. Truly, Charlotte, as a sports town, seemed to have arrived.

Such was the dream more than 10 years before, when Kannapolis native George Shinn began to put form to his fantasy of owning a professional sports franchise. He had considered but wisely rejected an opportunity in the United States Football League, then was told by Major League Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth that Charlotte was not yet ready to house that sport. The next option: the National Basketball Association.

"I remember that first meeting with George and (NBA) commissioner David Stern," Muhleman says. "Stern was sitting with a big cigar on the couch of his office, and he pointed that cigar and said, `Why Charlotte?'"

Charlotte's best response was a youthful "Why not?" The city, biggest in a basketball-rich state, was in its pimply adolescence in the 1980s, growing in corporate leaps, ever confident in possibilities. "It was an exciting, very adventurous time," Muhleman says. "There really was less skepticism that we could support a pro team. The overriding thing was, `They'll never get it.'"

Charlotte did, and in 1993 the city surprised again when the National Football League awarded Jerry Richardson with the Carolina Panthers. In the franchise's first year, fans proved the NFL prescient as tens of thousands made the 140-mile trip to Clemson for home games. The next year, the fans were rewarded with Ericsson Stadium, the playoffs, and the victory over Dallas - still thought by most as the city's finest sports moment.

"It was as loud as you could imagine," Padgett remembers. "It was a wild and beautiful evening."

It seems, he says, as if it were a very long time ago.


The lows
Last Sunday's loss to the New England Patriots drew just 21,070 to a rainy and cold Ericsson Stadium, less than half the Panthers' previous low for a home game. Across town at the Coliseum, Hornets fans also have bluntly asserted their apathy. On Jan. 3, an impending snow - and the Golden State Warriors - knocked attendance to 925, according to unofficial counts.
The Panthers, after their miracle second year, have taken the traditional route to fan disinterest - with no winning seasons since. The Hornets, with nine straight .500-or-better seasons, have stumbled off the court with early trades of popular players, with Shinn's successful but embarrassing sexual assault civil court defense in 1999 and, most recently, with ownership's roving eyes toward other cities.

But Charlotte's woes might also be a matter of timing. With professional team sports, the city has perhaps bought into an industry on the wane.

"You're seeing broadcast rights level off, TV ratings erode, seats half-empty," says David Carter, a sports-industry consultant who teaches at the University of Southern California's graduate school of business. "Maybe there's just too much supply and not enough demand."

A sampling:

TV ratings continue to show long-term declines in most pro sports. Most notably, NBC failed to renew its current NBA television deal because it lost $300million in the past two seasons. Also, three of the four networks televising NFL games had ratings declines this season, including ABC, which had an all-time low for the second straight year of "Monday Night Football" telecasts.

Attendance was down for 18 of 30 Major League Baseball franchises this season, including playoff teams Cleveland, Atlanta, Houston and the World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks, who had the lowest attendance in their four-year history.

The falloff has been exacerbated - or, some say, exposed - by the shaky economy. "Corporations are pulling back spending," Carter says, "and you're seeing families thinking twice about whether they should go to a Hornets game or whether they should stick their money under a mattress."

With a notable exception in NASCAR, those decisions increasingly are turning against pro sports. Experts cite the usual laments - the proliferation of other entertainment options, the behavior of athletes and owners - but they worry most about the gentrification of sporting events. With luxury boxes and rising ticket prices, they say, more fans simply have been priced out of the game.

"The problem is if middle- and lower-income people stop being able to afford to go to games, it threatens the television base, which is very, very important," says Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics at Smith College and co-author of the report "The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities," published last summer.

"People who no longer can go to stadiums and arenas don't develop the same emotional attraction to teams," Zimbalist says.

That loss of interest already has altered the marketplace. Sports is no longer a great corporate buy, says Dean Bonham, a Colorado sports marketing executive and consultant. "There was a time you could market sports franchises and hit all the demographics," Bonham says. "Today we're seeing fewer and fewer fans in the Ford Escort category and more in the Cadillac category."

The fan disconnect, however, might have deeper roots. Observers wonder whether declining attendance is a product of the widening cultural and racial gap between ticket buyers and the athletes they pay to see. Others decry a waning sense of loyalty in society - and especially business. In an age where large-scale layoffs are common, pro teams and athletes represent such corporateness to working-class fans.

"They are definitely less loyal," says Carter. "As sports becomes this huge business, it doesn't have the allure it once had to families."


The future
The downtrend is beginning to be felt in Charlotte and other small-to-medium markets.
In Jacksonville, Fla., the NFL Jaguars were blacked out of local TV broadcasts three times this season - the result of the first non-sellouts in the franchise's seven-year history. In Memphis, Tenn., the NBA Grizzlies already are struggling after moving from Vancouver in the off-season. Through their first 18 home games, the Grizzlies are averaging 14,792 in the 19,000-seat Pyramid, which regularly sells out home games of the Memphis University basketball team.

The NBA poses distinct difficulties to smaller markets, says Charlotte's Muhleman, who points to a 41-game home schedule that's primarily played on weeknights. Fans are less inclined to drive long distances on those nights, he says; teams in smaller metro areas subsequently suffer at the gate.

But small and medium markets are suffering in other sports, particularly baseball, where cities such as Kansas City, Montreal, Tampa Bay and Minnesota field franchises that are financially and competitively second-rate.

"With secondary markets, you tend to have a smaller corporate population, and smaller cities are also cash-strapped," David Carter says. "Public-sector dollars are rapidly drying out."

Charlotte, as a longtime boom city, is burdened with the additional challenge of newcomers arriving with their sports allegiances already rooted elsewhere. Also, says Muhleman: "There's less margin of error particularly in the first 10-20 years (of franchises) because people don't have that "they belong to us" feeling. That hasn't set in with Charlotte."

Not everyone sees a dire future.

"The case that many are making that small markets can't support pro franchises is a flawed argument," says Bonham, who represents Tricon Global Restaurants, the corporate backer of Louisville's bid for the Hornets. "You have communities that are not dividing their attention between several major league sports franchises."

Bonham is encouraged by the NBA's recent moves to change the pace of its game and, more importantly, lower ticket prices. The average cost for a family of four to attend an NBA game fell by 1.6percent this season, according to Team Marketing Report, a sports industry newsletter. The decline was the first in a major-league sport since TMR began compiling statistics 11 years ago.

In Charlotte, Muhleman says his city's best hope is time - and bulk.

"In 10 years we'll have that critical mass you need," he says. "As long as we keep together this delicate stew of corporate headquarters coming and staying, and good schools and amenities, we're OK."

But, he warns: "It's a fragile thing." "Critical mass tells you the more people you have, the more potential fans you have. If you have a bad year, or if fans get mad at Ray and George, the nucleus of capable ticket buyers is not as deep."


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Max Muhleman
, Charlotte sports marketing executive