Posted by John Vrooman on Monday, January 29, 2018 in National Football League.

Interview with Charlotte Observer.

Keep pounding, Carolina.

Given the current ownership structure of the Panthers and ongoing renovations (and lease agreements) at BOA, the new majority ownership partner will probably be from or have strong financial ties to sweet home Carolina, and the Panthers are not likely to engage a credible franchise-relocation stadium-extortion game for at least another decade.

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The irony of Carolina’s current anxiety over losing the Panthers in an all-too-familiar NFL franchise relocation venue extortion game is that in the beginning BOA (ne Ericsson) Stadium was the architectural prototype of the new luxury seat PSL venue that spawned the NFL stadium revolution over the last qurter century.

It was the new luxury-seat PSL economic architecture of BOA that originally won the 6-market expansion-relocation derby of 1995 for Carolina (Charlotte and to a lesser degree, Jacksonville) over Oakland, Baltimore, Mid-South (Memphis/Nashville), and St. Louis. The true nature of the venue extortion game of musical chairs was then on full display when each of the four frustrated 1995 expansion finalists became relocation target markets that lured the Raiders, Browns, Oilers and Rams from their respective homes with almost 100 percent public stadium funding and PSL payments to the clubs.

After the planned 20-year economic obsolescence, the NFL luxury stadium revolution has now come full circle and is beginning to recycle again right through BOA. With each iteration in progressive economic design, many modifications have been made to the first PSL, club-seat mezzanine luxury suite tiers of BOA.

The most immediate venue extortion correction was for PSLs to be issued as untaxable revenue by the local sports authority (St. Louis Rams) instead of the team (Carolina). This passes on about a third of the PSL revenue to the NFL club instead of the IRS. Early in revolution the upper-deck end-zone seats were eliminated in mid-markets because they were the most expensive to build and the hardest to sell. But BOA was still the prototype because its orthogonal footprint architecturally maximizes the quality of seats in the stadium (as opposed to a classic coliseum design).

The most recent venue extortion requirement (threat) concerns the technological revolution of new media. The “smart stadium” that is technologically designed to match the multifaceted new media (and modern fan base) is the new venue vogue.

Many of these new additions to the economic architecture were included in the Panthers most recent relocation gambit preceding the recent and ongoing renovations to BOA.

In the Charlotte Biz Journal I recently said “Rest easy Carolina, it is likely that the prospective (majority) owners will come from Carolina, and given the current wave of renovations to BoA, it is unlikely that the Carolina Panthers would be relocated in the next decade.”

Here’s what I told Wired about new stadia in NFL: https://www.wired.com/2015/11/the-future-of-stadiums-might-be-no-stadium-at-all/

“Two-thirds of NFL revenue is derived from media and probably half of the TV or new digital media viewers are fantasy league players who could care less about the traditional NFL product derived from team production and the game-day stadium experience,” Vrooman said. “Welcome to the new NFL.”

In spite of the tenuous and capricious “what have you done for me lately” relationship of the NFL with its home markets, the credibility of relocation threats still depends on the strength of the stadium lease ultimately depends on the existence of superior alternative locations. Rest easy, Carolina you still hold the cards.

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