CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The NBA All-Star Game was last played in Charlotte 28 years ago, at the Charlotte Coliseum off Tyvola Road.
Basketball’s best players will return to the Queen City in February for a full weekend of festivities.
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From Feb. 15-17, swarms of fans will pack Charlotte, filling hotels and restaurants and bringing in an estimated total economic impact of $100 million.
"I think that’s one of the things that event organizers do like, is when they come to Charlotte it’s not so big that it will get lost in the mix. It will dominate the news, it will dominate everything that goes on in the city for that four to five days,” said Erik Spanberg, a sports business reporter for the Charlotte Business Journal.
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Studies showed the NBA All-Star Weekend brought $116 million to Los Angeles last year, and $45 million to New Orleans in 2017.
“When you have that star power of Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, these are all international figures, it is a big deal,” Spanberg said. “It's probably a good test run for the RNC (Republican National Convention) coming here in 2020."
Charlotte was originally scheduled to the host the NBA All-Star Game in 2017, but with House Bill 2 still active, the league moved the game to New Orleans.
"Charlotte’s taken a long road to get here,” Spanberg said. “Remember, we had one coming in 2017, but HB2 knocked it out of the way. Now it’s here."
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Some area residents said they won’t mind the crowds.
“I'm glad it’s going to bring revenue and stuff,” Charlotte resident Mark Georgevich said. “When there’s events down here, it is a lot of fun, you know?"
In the past seven years, Charlotte has hosted the Democratic National Convention and the PGA Championship, with the NBA All-Star Game coming in February and the Republican National Convention in 2020.
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“When you look at bigger cities, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, those cities are almost constantly hosting big sporting events, big political events, and that’s what I think Charlotte is really aspiring to reach, so that’s why they are so aggressively going after these events,” Spanberg said.
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The all-star game comes to Charlotte after the Spectrum Center underwent $34 million in renovations in the past five years.
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