Breaking Stereotypes- Why Tom Dundon is Carolina Hurricanes’ Game Changer

Tom Dundon: The real deal!

By Tom Ray

With the recent news that Tom Dundon is looking to bring a major league baseball franchise to the Raleigh Durham area. I thought it would be a good time to learn a little bit about the man and get a feel whether is this possible with Tom. You know, everything I’ve seen says Tom is the real deal. Let’s take a look at that.

Tom was born in New York City in 1971. He and his family moved to Texas and he went to Southern Methodist and got a degree in economics. Upon graduation, Tom and a friend of his co-founded a company called Drive Financial and you might have heard of those guys. They did car loans, mostly to credit challenged individuals, basically offering a way for them to get cars and, and it worked out real well for them. Tom ultimately sold his share in the company to Santander and made significant dollars in doing that and went off to form, Dundon Capital Partners which was his own company, to do commercial development. And they started off with a development in downtown, Dallas, a 33-story building that launched their business.

He’s invested in a lot of other businesses along the way and has had great success with Carvana, which we know extremely well, and Topgolf. Both of these are very topical businesses these days. Tom wanted to get involved in sports at different times and once he had success financially, he was in a position to do just that.

So in 2017, Tom started to look at an opportunity with the Hurricanes. The then owner, Peter Karamanos, had started to struggle with the Hurricanes, in fact. He had been the owner since 1997 when they were in Hartford. He brought them over to North Carolina, had some success as they’d won a cup and also had had some success in the playoffs.

In recent years, however, it wasn’t going well. The Hurricanes have not been in the playoffs for eight years and it was going south. Attendance was down and folks were generally not good feeling about the Hurricanes. The biggest problems the Hurricanes had was that Karmanos was not willing to spend money. He was not willing to bring in free agents and was not willing to keep the top players he had. So, it was a tough situation. Both of his General Managers, Jim Rutherford and Ron Francis, struggled with Karmanos. I can remember many times at free agency and trade deadline watching these guys unable to make moves because Karmanos just was not willing to spend the money.

So, Karmanos, uh, really getting in a situation where it wasn’t going well and he was also having some family issues at the time. Decided that, uh, it was probably a good idea to sell the hurricanes and the word got out and Dundon was, uh, was aware of that. So he started having conversations with Carmanos in late 2017.

And in January 2018, a deal was done and they announced that Dundon had purchased 52% of the Hurricanes. He also got rights to PNC Arena for the Hurricane Games. So, this was big news. He was now a National Hockey League owner. Little known, he was a guy that didn’t come from hockey, he was,a businessman. He was going to be a part of the mix. He made it very clear he was not going to be an absentee owner, he wanted to be involved. There were a lot of questions that came up as a result of that from folks trying to figure out, what does he know? Anything? And so, they kind of looked at this very closely, and, of course early decisions by Tom were met with mixed reaction, frankly.

One of his early parts of business was to go and get a general manager and you might have remembered a lot of the story around that. Tom interviewed the top GMs available as you would expect, but decided that none of them really caught his attention and frankly thought they were overpaid. So he decided to take one of his own guys, an internal candidate, Don Waddell and to promote Don into the role of General Manager and President of the Hurricanes. Don had been doing a role for Karmanos running business operations. Now he was kind of in charge of all the operations, both hockey and business. So it was interesting.

This was met with a lot of controversy. A lot of folks felt like Dundon was going cheap on this one. They didn’t like Don Waddell. He had been a General Manager with the Atlanta Thrashers. The Thrasher story was not a good one. Ultimately, the Trashers left Atlanta and moved the team to Winnipeg. Waddell had done some things with the Thrashers that did not go over well. In fact, the big one was the deal that he did with the New Jersey Devils to trade Ilya Kovalchuk to the Devils in return for what turned out to be a bag of pucks. Not a good situation for Waddell, but Dundon liked him and thought he was a good choice to run the hockey operations for the Hurricanes. So off they went.

Now Dundon and Waddell needed to solve the coaching situation. It was a similar situation where they went out and interviewed the top candidates. And as you can imagine, a lot of controversy followed when Dundon came out and publicly said, my guy is Rod Brind’Amour. So, the Canes hired Brind’Amour as the new head coach. And the rest is history. So, a lot of moves made by Tom.

Very key decisions to get the Canes off and running. At the same time that year, the Canes got a little bit of fortune, as you kind of recall. At the draft lottery, the Canes won the lottery for the 2nd pick overall with Waddell at the proceedings. This was humorous as he used to wear his turtleneck quite a bit in the meetings, the league meetings, and he had his turtleneck on and and pulled up the number two slot. It turns out the Canes drafted Andrej Sveshnikov, a tremendous player that has great potential for the future. Great news for the Hurricanes and a key part of building a team that could be competitive.

So, lots of cool things with Tom, getting his organization in place and you know the rest of the organization has followed as well with some great people. One thing Tom has done is really promote analytics with the Hurricanes. They’re a leader in the National Hockey League. Their lead analystics guru is Eric Tulsky, who’s among the best & brightest in the NHL and the best at analytics in the league. So kind of a cool story.

Tom’s done some other things in sports. You may not have seen it or paid attention to it in 2019. Tom got involved with the Alliance of American Football, the AAF, as a, as it was called. They were, a relatively new upstart league, getting some attention. Once again, Trying yo take advantage of a huge opportunity in football in the U.S. Tom invested 250 million, wanted to be a part of it, really thought this would be an opportunity for him to get a strong role in sports. But, it did not go well. He invested in February and in April, the AAF suspended operations. Not a good situation. And Tom lost signicant money in the deal. A lot of controversy. He was being sued for different things. It wasn’t a good situation for Tom at all, but it did blow over and he moved on putting more attention on the Hurricanes and his other business entities.

He decided in 2021 that he was ready to do something else again. And at the end of the year, he got involved in pickleball. Now, pickleball is probably the fastest growing sport in North America and is gaining a lot of attention. I can say there’s leagues everywhere. We have a league where we are now and it’s definitely exploding. So, Tom wanted to get involved on the ground floor. And his first activities in December 2021 were to acquire the top web retailer for pickleball in the United States. And then he promptly announced that he had acquired the software rights for the software that’s used for pickleball tournaments. So, these were some pretty good starting points for Tom in the pickleball world. And then in January, 2022, Tom decided that he might as well get really serious about this and he acquired the Professional Pickleball Association, PPA. Now, he had a really strong role in the direction of pickleball here in the United States. And this was big news. Tom has put a bow around that recently with the announcement that he had negotiated a television contract for pickleball in the U.S. and for the PPA. Pickleball tournaments will now be broadcast on the Tennis Channel, the exclusive broadcaster for the top pickleball tournaments in the U S. Tom was instrumental in making that happen.

Another thing that came out of that was kind of interesting. You might have seen the explosion of what they call FAST television channels. These channels are free channels that are paid for by advertising. They’re not on cable. They’re basically being distributed through applications and on televisions. Apps such as Pluto or Plex or Tubi come to mind. In addition, FAST channels are included with TVs, such as Samsung, LG, and Hisense. Tom was able to negotiate for the PPA, a 24X7 FAST Channel with the Tennis Channel producing it. They were offered exclusivity for all pickleball tournaments. So very, very interesting. Once again, Tom on the foreground, making something happen and really making a difference out there.

Let’s talk hockey for a minute. So, Tom on the business side is doing a lot of cool stuff, but what’s happening on the ice, since 2018 when Tom got involved, the Hurricanes have an impressive record.
They’ve made the playoffs every single year. They’ve won their division three times. They have gotten past the first round in the playoffs every single year. They have gotten past the second round in the playoffs twice. So clearly, they are a team that is enjoying huge success! And everybody is talking about the potential this year of the Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup. So the talking heads are on board and the words are are pretty clear that this Canes’ team is going to compete for the Cup. So we will see as the season unfolds, how that all plays out.

Now, I want to talk about some other key metrics for the Hurricanes. Remember that when Tom came in the attendance was somewhere around 13,000 and was dwindling. This was under Karmanos reign with the team not doing well and the fans getting disinterested. It’s a tough market in North Carolina. A lot of rumors that the Canes were going to be moved started to surface. Not a good situation. Fast forward to last year and the Canes are in the top two or three of the National Hockey League right now.
They averaged 19,500 fans last year, basically sold out. This is quite a story. So, they go from 13,000 to 19,500. Very impressive. Now, something else that happened to drive the number last year, of course, was the outdoor game. They had 57,000 fans at Carter Finley Stadium, which is right beside PNC Arena. I attended the game and it was really impressive. It was an incredible affair. It was a class act all the way around. It was a little bit cool, but it was a great, great affair. And once again, the Hurricanes demonstrated to the world and hockey world that they are right there with the top of top teams, for sure.
Tom Dundon had everything to do with that. He drove the bus to get that outdoor game. In fact, it was planned a few years earlier, as you might recall, COVID derailed it. But, kudos to him for making that happen. Great event for the Canes, the NHL, the area. Everybody was a winner with that.

One other thing I want to mention is to look at value of the Hurricanes. When Tom acquired the Hurricanes, he payed $420 million and now the Hurricanes are valued at $ 650 million, so a tremendous situation for the Hurricanes all around.

I think there is something that’s often not even considered in the discussion with Dundon and the Hurricanes. He’s been doing a lot of different things behind the scenes to improve the fan experience. In 2018 when Tom got involved, he said they had to improve the experience for the fans. So, one of the things he did very quickly was to start work on getting the necessary approvals and support for a new video board. And they did conclude with that video board in 2018 and, and install it. And, it was an amazing addition because it was a three times larger video board than what was there before and it was state of the art, very impressive. And of course, really made a difference for the fans who were attending the games. It was just a different experience. So, he was the man that really drove the bus on that.

Then, Tom wanted to make some of the things much better for the players. At the same time as he did the video board, he arranged that they would have a different entrance onto the ice and they updated that to make that a more enjoyable experience. And again,in 2019, Tom was involved with the development of a new practice facility for the Hurricanes, in Morrisville. The Wake Competition Center was a joint venture with Tom and some folks in Morrisville. The principal tenant was going to be the Hurricanes and it is a state of the art facility for practice but was not limited to that. They have a number of other activities that go on there all year round. That addition was great for the current players and it is a great asset in attracting new players. As it turns out, practice facilities are something that the players really pay attention to. And this is one of the best in the National Hockey League.

But, Tom was not done yet. He wanted to get involved in probably his biggest most ambitious project to date. And of course, recently it was announced that there would be a major development around the PNC arena. This was something that Tom had looked at for some period of time. Of course, as a commercial developer, he saw very quickly the potential of that area around the PNC that was open space. And he determined he had to do something with that and to make this a a destination, not just for hockey, but for a lot of things. So, he went to work to get the approvals and to get everything organized to move forward with what is an amazing plan around the PNC arena grounds. Culminating in all of that, of course, was the agreement that the Canes made with PNC for a 20-year extension.

So what is the plan? Tom and his investment group will be contributing a significant investment into this up of about $800 million and will be playing a key role in the development plan. What we’re going to see will be retail, restaurants and an affordable housing complex, as well as a new parking garage and 4,000 seat music venue. And, this is an interesting one. Tom was very committed on this one pointing out that you’ve got the large venue (PNC Arena), but what about some of these other acts that really are better suited to a smaller venue? We want to offer that too, so that’s going to be part of the plan.

And then most recently, of course, the sports book opportunity became clear. They’re going to add a sports book right on the property as well. And that follows on the heels of the announcement that North Carolina will legalize sports betting. So. So all of this exciting news for the Hurricanes and exciting news for the fans. It’s going to be a destination that we’re going to want to go to, and of course, culminated with the incredible Carolina Hurricanes Hockey Club and the action in PNC Arena.

Folks, a lot going on, and now you’ve got the news that Tom is looking to bring a Major League Baseball franchise. I think after reading about Tom’s lengthy accomplishments, you’ve got to believe that if anybody can pull this off, it’s Mr. Dundon. He’s got the funds, he’s got the ability to do it. A Major League Baseball franchise is in the $2 billion range. He’s going to be up against some tough competition. Charlotte is going to be in the mix and there are some others, but clearly Major League Baseball wants to expand and the Raleigh area is well suited. With Mr. Dundon at the helm, you can bet that they’re going to put forward a compelling proposal. And we’ll have every opportunity to bring baseball into the Triangle area. If anyone can make that happen, it is Tom Dundon.

After all, what else would you expect. Tom is the real deal!