Mark Richt (left) of Georgia and Bobby Petrino of Louisville visited Charlotte on Wednesday to promote the Belk Bowl on Dec. 30 at Bank of America Stadium.
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Erik Spanberg
Senior Staff Writer- Charlotte Business Journal
First, the good news: ESPN.com ranked the Belk Bowl the seventh-best matchup for 2014, trailing only the playoff games (Sugar and Rose) and a handful of other major games.
Now, the bad news: The Valero Alamo Bowl was ranked sixth, one spot ahead.
No one seemed much concerned about the Alamo Bowl — sorry, the Valero Alamo Bowl — on Wednesday in Charlotte as Belk Bowl organizers started their promotional pitch by hosting the head coaches at a press conference.
Mark Richt of Georgia and Bobby Petrino of Louisville ( sorry, no motorcycle questions) met with reporters at Bank of America Stadium to tout the Dec. 30 game, the first in a six-year contract pitting an ACC school against one from the SEC. From its start in 2002, the Charlotte bowl included the ACC against a Big East team and, later, the American Athletic Conference.
Adding the star power of the SEC, organizers believe, will help ticket sales and, in turn, boost tourism by visiting fans. This year marks the first time Charlotte will have two top-20 teams in the bowl. Georgia is 13th in the latest AP Top 25 poll and Louisville ranks 20th. The game will be on ESPN with kickoff at 6:30 p.m.
Tom Murray, head of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, pointed to the combination of the ACC conference championship (played in Charlotte on Dec. 6) and the Belk Bowl as important attractions at a time of year when many hotels and restaurants are looking for business.
Last year, North Carolina played Cincinnati in the Charlotte bowl game. Attendance, based on the number of tickets sold and distributed, was 45,211, or 62 percent of capacity at Bank of America Stadium. Between 2002 and 2008, the bowl game sold out three times at the 73,298-seat stadium. Since then, none of the games has reached 60,000 in sales.
Erik Spanberg covers government, sports business, hospitality and airlines for the Charlotte Business Journal.
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