It looks like the NBA is making a return to the city of New Orleans.
Charlotte Hornets co-owners Ray Wooldridge and George Shinn and Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster have reached an agreement that will move the North Carolina franchise to the city of New Orleans for the 2002-03 season.
The team plans to play in the two-and-a-half year old New Orleans Arena.
The only thing holding up the move is a vote by the 29 owners of the other NBA teams.
A simple majority is needed for approval. The vote will likely take place at the NBA Board of Governors meeting in April.
Foster said he was certain the league would approve the proposed move.
“The whole deal is complete. We’ve worked out all the details. We have no reason to believe that the last stage of this, which is the approval of the league, won’t be in place,” said Foster.
The Hornets decided they wanted out of Charlotte because of falling attendance and decreasing revenue.
Their biggest complaint is the lack of an NBA-quality arena in Charlotte.
If their move to New Orleans goes through, they would have a state of the art arena that can be NBA-ready in a short amount of time.
However, New Orleans is a smaller media market whose citizens make less than those of Charlotte.
But the owners are not worried about playing in what would be the smallest media market in the NBA.
“It’s not the size of the market that’s important. It’s how you market your market,” Shinn said.
Ticket sales are off to a great start.
According to officials with the New Orleans Arena, there have already been 6,500 requests for season tickets.
The agreement between the city of New Orleans and the Hornets calls for a 10-year lease with the Arena with the team paying $2 million annual rent.
The state will provide $8-10 million in improvements to the Arena to be completed in October of this year.
This is New Orleans’ third attempt to land an NBA team since 1979, when the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah.
The city tried to bring the Minnesota Timberwolves to town in 1994, but the NBA blocked the move.
New Orleans also made a major push to get the Vancouver Grizzlies in 2001, but the team opted to move to Memphis.
One of the city’s main problems in attracting the NBA was its lack of big companies for corporate sponsorships, especially Fortune 500 companies.
But Gov. Foster says the Hornets will help with that.
“Our efforts to attract new business to Louisiana just took a major step forward,” he said. “The Hornets are a big business themselves, and the great media exposure that comes with them will get our message out to millions of travelers and companies looking to relocate.”