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How Tom Dundon Spent Millions to Transform the Hurricanes Into Stanley Cup Champions · stormTRacker Podcast | Carolina Hurricanes & NHL Hockey

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: With the recent news that Tom Dundan 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?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everything I've seen says Tom is the real deal.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take a look at that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tom was born in New York City in 1971.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: He and his family moved to Texas and he went to Southern Methodist and got a degree in economics.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Upon graduation, Tom and a friend of his co-founded a company called Drive Financial.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you might have heard of those guys.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: They did car loans mostly to uh credit uh challenged individuals, uh basically offering a way for them to get cars, and it worked out real well for them.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tom ultimately sold his share in the company to Santander and uh and made significant dollars in doing that and went off to form uh Dundan Capital Partners, uh, which was his own company to do commercial development.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they started off with uh development in downtown uh Dallas, uh 33-story building that uh launched their business.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's invested in a lot of other businesses along the way and uh had pretty good success with Carvana, which uh we know extremely well in a pop golf, both of these very topical businesses these days.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Tom uh wanted to get involved in sports at different times, and once he had success financially, he was in a position to do just that.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2017, Tom started to see an opportunity with the hurricanes.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: The then owner, uh Peter Carmanos, had uh started to struggle with the hurricanes, in fact.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he had been the owner since 1997.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: They uh were in Hartford, he brought them over to North Carolina, had some success, they had won a cup, and also had had some success in the playoffs.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: But in most recent years, it wasn't going well.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Canes had not been in the playoffs for eight years and it was going south.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Tennis was down, uh, generally not good feeling about the hurricanes.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the big problems the hurricanes had was that Carmanos, as the owner, was not willing to spend money.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was not willing to bring in free agents and was not willing to keep the top players he had.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a tough situation.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Both his general managers, Jim Rutherford and uh Ron Francis struggled uh with Carmanos.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember many times at uh free agency and trade deadline and watching these guys unable to make moves because Carmanos just was not willing to spend the money.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So Carmanos 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 Dundan was uh was aware of that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he started having conversations with Carmanos in late 2017, and in January 2018, uh they packaged up a deal and announced it that uh Dundan had purchased 52% of the hurricanes and also got rights to PNC Arena for the Hurricane Games.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this was big news.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was now a National Hockey League owner and little known.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was a guy that didn't come from hockey, he was uh a businessman, came in, uh was going to be a part of the mix.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: He made it very clear he was not gonna be an absentee owner, he wanted to be involved, and uh there were a lot of questions that came up as a result of that from folks trying to figure out what does he know?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anything?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so they kind of looked at this very closely.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, early decisions by Tom were met with mixed reaction, frankly.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um 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.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tom interviewed the top GMs available, as you would expect, uh, but decided that none of them really caught his attention and frankly thought they were overpaid.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he uh decided to uh take one of his own guys, an internal candidate, uh Don Waddell, and to uh promote Don into the role of general manager and president of the Hurricanes.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Don had been doing a role for uh Carmanos running business operations, so now he was kind of in charge of all the operations, both hockey and business, so it was interesting.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was met with a lot of controversy.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of folks felt like Dundan was going cheap on this one.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of folks did not like Don Waddell.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had been a general manager with the Atlanta Thrashers.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Thrasher story was not a good one.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, they left and went to Winnipeg.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he had done some things with the Thrashers that did not go over well.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the big one was the deal that he did with the New Jersey Devils to trade Ilya Kovichak to the Devils in what turned out to be a bag of pucks.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not a good situation for Waddell.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: But Dunden liked him and thought he was a good choice to run the hockey operations for the Hurricanes.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So off they went, both Dundan and Waddell needed to solve the coaching situation, and of the same thing again, where they went out and interviewed the top candidates.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as you can imagine, a lot of controversy followed when Dundan came out and publicly said, My guy is Rod Brindamore.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Really like him.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and the Canes hired Brendan as the new head coach, and the rest is history.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, a lot of moves made by Tom, uh, very key decisions to get the Canes off and running.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Good news.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at the same time, that year uh the Canes got a little bit of fortune, as you kind of recall.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the draft lottery, the Kanes came up second.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and uh Waddell and they laughed a lot.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: He used to wear his turtleneck quite a bit in the uh uh meetings, the league meetings, and he had his turtleneck on and and uh pulled up the number two slot.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out the Canes drafted Andre Svechnikov and a tremendous player that he is and will be.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, great news for the Hurricanes, and a key part of building a team that could be competitive.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, lots of cool things with Tom uh getting his organization in place, and you know the rest of the organization has followed as well with some great people.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing Tom has done is really promote analytics with the Hurricanes.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh they're a leader in the National Hockey League.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Their uh guru is uh Eric Tulski, who's among the brightest and the best at analytics in the league.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of a cool story.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tom's done some other things in sports, you may not have seen it or paid attention to it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: In 2019, uh Tom uh got involved with the Alliance of American Football, the AAF, as it as it was called.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were uh a relatively new upstart league, uh getting some attention.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh once again, uh trying to jump into that huge opportunity in football in in uh the U.S.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Tom invested 250 million, wanted to be a part of it, really thought this would be an opportunity for him to get uh a strong role in sports continuing, uh, but did not go well.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: He invested in February, and in April the AAF suspended operations.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a good situation.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for Tom, uh he lost money in the deal, uh, a lot of controversy, he was being sued for different things.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a good situation for Tom at all, uh, but it did blow over, and he moved on uh to put more attention on the hurricanes and his own business entities.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: He decided in 2021 that uh he was ready to do something else again, and at the end of the year he got involved in pickleball.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, pickleball is probably the fastest growing sport in North America and is gaining a lot of attention.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I could say there's leagues everywhere.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have a league where we are now, uh, and it's uh definitely uh exploding.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So Tom wanted to get involved on the ground floor, and uh his first uh activities in December 2021 were to acquire uh 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 they choose for pickleball tournaments.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So these were some pretty good starting points for Tom in the pickleball world, so that was pretty exciting.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh in January 2022, uh Tom decided that he might as well get really serious about this and he acquired the Professional Pickleball Association, PPA, and so had a really strong role in the direction of pickleball here in the United States, and this was big news.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tom has uh put a bowl around that recently with the announcement that uh he had negotiated a television contract for pickleball in the US and for PPA.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So pickleball tournaments now uh will be uh broadcast on tennis channel, so they are the exclusive broadcaster for pickleball uh in the US, and Tom was instrumental in making that happen.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, uh another thing that came out of that, which was kind of interesting, uh you might have seen the explosion of what they call fast television channels now in uh right around the world, basically.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And these channels are free channels that are paid for by advertising, they're not on cable, they're basically being distributed through uh televisions have fast channels.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: There are uh groups called uh like uh Pluto or Plex or uh Tubi and others, uh they're no cost and they are available uh 24-7.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so uh he has been able to negotiate for the PPA a 24-7 fast channel with the tennis channel uh running it uh exclusively on uh pickleball tournaments.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So very, very interesting.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, Tom on the foreground making something happen and uh really making a difference out there.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk hockey for a minute.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, Tony on the business side, man, he's doing a lot of cool stuff, but what's happening on the ice?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, since 2018, when Tom got involved, the Hurricanes have had quite a record.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, they've made the playoffs every single year.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: They 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.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So clearly, they are a team that is enjoying wonderful success, and everybody is talking about the potential this year of the Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the talking heads are on board, and uh and the words are are pretty clear that this Canes team is going to compete for the Cup.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we will see as the season unfolds how that all plays out.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I wanted to talk about some other key metrics around uh kind of numbers, if you will.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh remember that when Tom came in, the attendance was somewhere around 13,000, and of course it was dwindling.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is under Carmanos, team not doing well, fans getting disinterested, tough market in North Carolina.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of rumors that the canes were going to be moved.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not a good situation.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward to last year, and the canes are in the top two or three of the National Hockey League right now.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: They averaged 19,500 fans last year, basically sold out.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is quite a story.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they go from 13,000 to 19.5, and that is impressive.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, something else that happened to drive the number last year, of course, was the outdoor game.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: They had 57,000 fans uh at the uh Carter Finley Stadium, uh, which is right beside a PNC Arena.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I attended the game and it was really impressive.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a wonderful affair.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh man, it was a class act all the way around and uh and wonderful.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit cool, but it was a great, great affair.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, the hurricanes demonstrated to the world and to the hockey world that we are right there with the top of top teams for sure.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tom Dundan had everything to do with that.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: He drove the bus to get that outdoor game.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: He, in fact, it was planned a few years earlier, as you might recall.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: COVID derailed it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Tom was right there, and uh and kudos to him for making that happen.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Great event for the Keynes, the NHL, the area, everybody was a winner with that.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: One other thing I want to mention is that uh Tom uh looking at the the value of the hurricanes, Tom, when they acquired the hurricanes at 420 million, uh basically now they're at 650, so tremendous situation for the hurricanes all around.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um facility enhancements is the other area I wanted to talk about.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is something that's often not even considered uh in the discussion with Dundan and the hurricanes, but man, he's been doing a lot of different things behind the scenes to uh to really make this exciting.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um 2018, uh, when Tom got involved, he said, look, we've got to improve the experience for the fans.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotta happen.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: 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 uh conclude with that video board in 2018 and and install it, and and uh it was an amazing ad because it was a three times larger video board than what was there before, it was state of the art and very impressive, and of course, really made a difference for the uh all the different uh fans who were attending the games.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a different experience.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So he was the man that really drove the bus on that.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, uh he wanted to make uh some of the things much better for the players, and at the same time as he did the video board, he uh he arranged that they would have a different entrance onto the ice and they updated that a little bit to make that a more uh enjoyable experience.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, uh in 2019, uh Tom was involved with uh the development of a new practice facility for the Hurricanes, and that was in Morrisville.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: The uh uh the Wake Competition Center uh was a joint venture with Tom and some folks in Morrisville, and uh so the principal uh tenant was going to be the Hurricanes, and it is a state-of-the-art facility for practice, and of course, they have a number of other activities that go on there, but this was great, and it's great for the current players, and of course, it is a great asset in attracting new players as it turns out.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Practice facilities are something that the players really pay attention to, and this is one of the best in the National Hockey League.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And again, uh Tom was uh not done yet, he wanted to get involved in probably his biggest, most ambitious project to date.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, recently it was announced that uh there would be a major development around the PNC arena.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: 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 uh open space, and he said, we got to do something with that, and we've got to make this uh a destination, not just for hockey, but for a lot of things.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he went to work to get the approvals uh with his team and to get uh everything organized to uh to move forward with what is an amazing, amazing plan around the PNC arena.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Culminating in all of that, of course, was the agreement that the Canes made with PNC for a 20-year extension.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: They will be there for uh quite an extended period for sure.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are they doing?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Tom and uh his investment group will be putting uh a significant investment into this, up to about$800 million, and they're playing a key role in this, and what we're gonna see are retail restaurants, an affordable housing complex, uh new parking garage built, 4,000-seat uh music venue, and this is an interesting one.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Tom, very strong about this one, said you've got the the large venue, but what about some of these other acts that uh really are better suited to a smaller venue, and we want to do that too.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's gonna be part of it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then most recently, of course, the sports book situation.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're gonna add a sports book to the property as well, and that's uh follows on the heels of the announcement in North Carolina uh they're going to legalize betting.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, all of this exciting news for the hurricanes and exciting news for the fans.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a destination that we're gonna want to go to, and of course, culminated with the uh incredible Carolina Hurricanes Hockey Club and the action that they'll have in PNC Arena.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Folks, a lot going on, and now you've got the news that Tom is looking to bring a Major League Baseball franchise.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think after hearing what I've just said over the last uh number of minutes, you've got to believe that if anybody can pull this off, it's Mr.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Dunham.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's got the funds, he's got the ability to do it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds to me that uh Major League Baseball franchise is in the two billion range.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be up against some competition.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I guess Charlotte's gonna be in the mix.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's some others, but clearly uh Major League Baseball wants to expand, and uh the Raleigh area is well suited.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And with Mr.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dundan at the helm here, you can bet that uh they're gonna put forward a wonderful uh presentation and we'll have every opportunity to bring baseball into the triangle area.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: In any case, a little bit about Tom Dundan, what's happening with him, and a little bit of history on Tom as well.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you have to agree after listening to this that Tom is the real deal.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot, folks, for joining me.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: As always, uh, please subscribe.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Any comments, love to hear them down below.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, thanks again.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is Tom Ray here on Stormtracker.