I don’t think there is anything that says having charlotte as our affiliate improved the canes market share in Charlotte.
I would start with the question of how market share is being measured.
The effect on ticket sales, either in Charlotte or in Raleigh, is impossible to track. It comes down to individuals making purchases without any way to track their motivation. In any case, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect ann increase of more than tens per game.
Same is likely true of jersey and merch sales — did the Canes sell more jerseys in the Charlotte market because of the affiliation? No idea.
One thing that can and probably has been tracked is TV ratings. Of course it would take a really sophisticated analysis to extract truly reliable conclusions on an affiliation-driven increase. There’s a lot of white noise in the data of TV ratings, everything from the current state of the Canes to opponent-driven effects to what else is on TV at a given time.
In all of the cases above, the thing that I see missing is a deliberate organized effort to capitalize on the affiliation. I think I recall an occasional Charlotte Night at PNC, where the focus was on the Panthers and Hornets. Once in a blue moon, the mascot Chubby would show up for Stormy’s birthday party. That was about it. There was no cross-promotion, no merch sold in the stores, no Canes billboards in Charlotte, and certainly not any preseason games which would have made all the sense in the world.
Given the lack of data available, and the lack of any visible effort to increase their share in the market, we don’t have much to go on when drawing conclusions about the marketing value of the affiliation. It was a marriage of convenience, and treated as such until it ceased to be convenient for the owners.
