The vote last Friday is the second big break David Tepper has received on the facilityGETTY IMAGES
The Mecklenburg County (N.C.) Board of Commissioners voted to "slash the Bank of America Stadium's assessed value" from $472M to $215M, according to a front-page piece by Smoot & Muccigrosso of the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER. Last year, Mecklenburg County's valuation of the stadium "surged by 324%," from just under $135M to $572M, though the team "insisted the stadium was worth less than it was at the time of the last assessment" in '11. In September, the county "lowered the value of the stadium and related property the team owns" to $472M. The vote last Friday is the "second big break" Panthers Owner David Tepper has received on the facility in the past few months, with the Charlotte City Council expected to approve funding for renovations to the stadium in order to host MLS games. Between the two changes, the Panthers are "now set to save" $3.55M on the stadium's tax bill under '19 tax rates. The Panthers' tax bill now comes to $2.15M, whereas under the "original valuation" of $572M, the team would have paid $5.7M. Panthers COO Mark Hart said that the team "appealed for a lower evaluation in part due to the building's age," having opened in '96 (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 2/1).
BLUE PERIOD: In Charlotte, Smoot & Getzenberg in a front-page piece note Panthers home attendance "reached its lowest point of the decade last year." For the '19 season, when the Panthers went 5-11, an average of 72,220 fans attended home games. That figure was "down from the decade peak" of 74,056 in '15, when the team went 15-1 and made the Super Bowl. While the Panthers' attendance last year "ranked 9th around the league," the team also "had the 10th largest drop in attendance numbers from the prior year." With "swaths of empty blue seatbacks" for many games this past season, the team's actual attendance was "likely significantly less than official attendance" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 2/2).
