Charlotte Knights to host 2020 ACC baseball tournament at uptown stadium
Nearly 300,000 people could be in uptown Charlotte mid-May next year for two major sporting events.
The ACC and the Charlotte Knights announced Thursday that the conference baseball tournament would be held May 19-24, 2020, at BB&T Ballpark — the same week as NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 and its uptown race festival, Speed Street.
“There’s going to be a tremendous amount of activity,” said Dan Rajkowski, the Knights’ chief operating officer. “I think that only enhances the (tournament).”
In 2018, Speed Street organizers estimated the crowd at about 250,000. Last year’s ACC tournament at Durham Bulls Athletic Park drew 43,483 over six days and brought in almost $10 million, according to the Durham Sports Commission. This year’s tournament attracted 42,774 fans.
Durham has hosted the tournament four of the past five years; however, new scheduling rules by the International League, which includes the Bulls and Knights, bar teams from blocking home dates. This rule prevented Durham from hosting in 2020 because the Bulls are scheduled to play at home during the week of the tournament, but the Knights will be on the road.
The new rules also kept the ACC from reaching a four-year deal with Charlotte as it hoped. Because of this, the deal is just for 2020.
“(It was) partly due to the International League scheduling,” said Kris Pierce, the ACC’s senior associate commissioner of championships. “So, we want to wait and see if they’ll figure out are they going to change their policy, are we also going to look to see if they produce future years’ schedules? So right now, we’re just in a holding pattern until we get some more information from the International League.”
The Knights hosted the ACC tournament in 2000 and 2001 when the Class AAA club played in Fort Mill, S.C.
Greenville, S.C., Jacksonville, Florida, and Winston-Salem were other sites under consideration, Pierce said.
The decision to come to Charlotte was an easy choice for the ACC due to the city’s accessibility and amenities, Pierce said, even with knowing that Speed Street would be happening a few blocks away.
“All of those were factors that put Charlotte over the top for us for 2020,” she said. “We looked whether that would be an advantage or a disadvantage, and came out that that would be an advantage. We felt like having more people in uptown Charlotte during that time of year, ‘Well, they also can now have the opportunity to come see some ACC baseball while they’re here.’”
Charlotte has longtime ties with the ACC, serving as the host for the men’s basketball tournament 13 times and for its football championship eight times. The football championship will remain in Charlotte until 2030.
“A lot of that relates to the experience that our athletes have, our fans have, the tremendous facilities that are in uptown Charlotte, the hotels, the restaurants,” ACC Commissioner John Swofford said in a video that played during Thursday’s news conference. “It’s just a tremendous setting for collegiate sporting events, and we’re very pleased to partner with Charlotte any time that we can with one of our championships.”
BB&T Ballpark, with a capacity of 10,200, has been the attendance leader in minor-league baseball four times since it opened in 2014, and it has hosted over 20 college baseball games. After visiting Durham to see the logistics behind hosting the ACC tournament, an executive team from the Knights realized bringing this event would bring exposure to Charlotte, which outweighed the financial aspect, Rajkowski said.
“I think we’re going to exceed what other teams have been able to do,” he said, “because Charlotte is a great market and the community comes out for events like this.”
This story was originally published May 30, 2019 at 11:16 AM with the headline "Charlotte Knights to host 2020 ACC baseball tournament at uptown stadium."