By RICK CURTI
Charlotte is one of the largest and fastest growing cities without MLB. North Carolina is currently the 9th largest state and just recently Forbes magazine ranked Charlotte #1 in business. Charlotte is currently the #3 largest media market without MLB behind Orlando and Sacramento and both those places have multiple MLB teams in there respected states. Another great advantage North Carolina has its next door to South Carolina which doesn’t have any professional sports. We can draw from both markets! Charlotte is also over 4 hours away from Atlanta and 9 hours
away from Washington DC.
There is no MLB in Virginia or Tennessee so more markets they can draw from. We are the home of one of the largest Banking companies in the world with Bank of America headquartered here and coincidentally it is the official bank of MLB and Duke Energy is one of the largest energy companies as well in the world. The closest professional baseball team are the triple A affiliate of the White Sox, the Charlotte Knights. Since opening up 5 years ago they have lead all of Minor league baseball in attendance 4 out of the last 5 years and is one of the many reasons MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred put our city on a short list in 2015 for future expansion. I can go on and on but this is why the Queen City should have Major League Baseball.
