Regional Sports Commission confident in its new playbook

Chris Smith still remembers the exact moment he fell in love with the Southern Conference (SoCon) Men’s Basketball Tournament.

It was March 2, 1984, and Smith’s grandparents pulled him out of class at Hendersonville High School. They had tickets to the tournament in Asheville, and the plan was simple: Skip school and catch some high-stake hoops at what was then called the Civic Center.

Little did Smith know that experience — including seeing Marshall University pull out a double-overtime thriller to win the championship game — would spark a lifelong passion for sports. “I was hooked,” he recalls.

Four decades later, Smith serves as executive director of the Asheville Buncombe Regional Sports Commission, a nonprofit that has operated the SoCon men’s and women’s basketball tourneys since they returned to Asheville in 2012. Bringing the SoCon back to the mountains was the impetus for forming the commission in 2010, Smith says.

“We were fortunate to have that tournament here for 12 years [from 1984-95],  then it went away,” he explains. “It really hurt the local economy and the businesses that were used to that boost in spending.”

The commission was founded by the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority (TDA), UNC Asheville, the City of Asheville and Buncombe County. In its 14 years, it has expanded beyond the SoCon to bring several high-profile sports events to Asheville, including the Billie Jean King Cup, the Great Smoky Mountain Grapple high school wrestling tournament and the Maui Invitational basketball tournament in 2020.

But the group’s future has been in doubt. In 2023, the TDA proposed a merger that would have put the nonprofit under the control of the TDA/Explore Asheville. After the commission’s board rejected the idea, the TDA  cut its $230,000 in annual funding and hired a Florida company, Airstream Ventures, to attract sports events to the area.

“As the current one-year agreement with the Asheville Buncombe Sports Commission came to an end June 30, we made the decision to remain as a sponsorship partner only,” TDA board chair Brenda Duren said in a written statement. “This means that the BCTDA and Explore Asheville will not be renewing an agreement with the sports commission. The BCTDA will be happy to explore sponsorship opportunities for new events the Sports Commission pursues.  We will continue to collaborate on future sporting events.”

Back in April, sports commission board member Jan Davis told the Asheville Watchdog he feared the Airstream contract could lead to the end of the commission by making its mission redundant. He called the contract a power move by Vic Isley, TDA president and CEO, to bring all sports marketing in-house.

“I think she’s really trying to win this war that’s been a skirmish all along,” he said.

But five months later, Smith is optimistic the commission will survive without the TDA’s financial support. He has plans for keeping existing events like the SoCon tournaments, bringing in new events and maybe even working with communities outside Buncombe County to land outdoor recreation events.

“We have a sustainable model moving forward,” he says. “And we’ll just see where things go collaboratively [with TDA].”

The TDA, meanwhile, says it has no plans to step on the sports commission’s toes.

“The purpose of Airstream is to bring in new events that have never been in Asheville before,” says Michael Kryzanek, TDA’s vice president of business development. “We don’t want to duplicate effort. It’s all meant to be collaborative.”

Creative solutions

The TDA’s funding cut left the commission’s already bare-bones budget in bad shape. The group, which has two paid staffers and relies on hundreds of volunteers, receives $45,000 from the city and another $45,000 from the county annually. About $30,000 of the county money is earmarked for the SoCon.

But through some creative fundraising, Smith says he presented to the board a 2024-25 budget with a projected income of $278,500. For instance, the commission now charges management fees for some events it used to run for free. It also has landed more sponsorships and received money through donations, grants and fundraisers.

“We’re working a little bit harder right now,” he says. “But we feel very confident in that budget moving forward.”

With money concerns off the table, the commission is moving full speed ahead as it enters a new era.

Smith is talking to SoCon officials about renewing the contract for the basketball tournaments before it expires in 2026. The commission also recently helped Harrah’s Cherokee Center – Asheville land a three-year contract to host the SoCon volleyball tournament, and it is pursuing U.S. Tennis Association events, NCAA basketball games and more. In all, the commission has more than 20 new events on its radar, Smith says.

Smith is particularly enthusiastic about the volleyball tournament, which will take place Thursday-Sunday, Nov. 21-24. It’s the first time the SoCon has held the tourney off campus, an indication of the surging popularity of the sport. In 2023, the NCAA Final drew a record 1.7 million viewers to ABC and the University of Nebraska played a match before 92,000 people, a world record for a women’s sporting event.

“We have a proven track record with the basketball tournament, and they [SoCon officials] saw that, and we convinced them that we can do the same in volleyball,” Smith says. “And we’re going to find out.”

Other new commission events this year include the USA Beach Wrestling Grapple, to be held in Carrier Park in October, and the New South Wrestling Nationals, scheduled for Harrah’s Cherokee Center – Asheville in December. Additionally, Smith is expecting to hear soon on some NCAA Division II and Division III championships he is pursuing.

The Asheville Championship, a two-day tournament that brought four men’s college basketball teams to the arena the last three years, will not take place in 2024. But two individual games — UNCA vs. Appalachian State on Thursday, Nov. 14, and Western Carolina vs. Florida State on Wednesday, Nov. 27 — are on tap. Two-team, neutral-site games like those may prove a better bet in the future than multiteam events like the Asheville Championship, Smith says.

“These multiteam invitationals, they’re starting to go away now,” Smith explains. “They’re harder to schedule. Neutral-site games are becoming more and more attractive to them because you’re not there for three and four days having to worry about missing classes.”

The commission also plans to pursue men’s and women’s games from the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences.

Tennis, anyone?

Smith also would like to bring Billie Jean King Cup qualifying matches to Asheville for the fourth time. The arena hosted the competition in 2018 and 2019, when it was known as the Fed Cup, and in 2022. The 2018 event featured tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams playing doubles before an electric crowd.

“If you told me when I was that kid growing up in Hendersonville that you’d be able to go to the Civic Center and see maybe the greatest tennis player of all time as well as a top-five tennis player of all time, I would have told you, you’re absolutely crazy,” Smith says. “But it happened. And we hosted it. And we want to host it again.”

The sports commission’s pursuit of tennis events demonstrates how the TDA envisions the two groups operating going forward, Kryzanek says. The U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) is one of Airstream’s clients, and as soon as the TDA got word that Airstream was talking to the USTA about bringing the Billie Jean Cup to Asheville, it asked the company to stop.

And Airstream has been instructed not to pursue any events the sports commission and Harrah’s Cherokee Center – Asheville are trying to book. Instead, the authority will focus on new events. “It’s all about bringing in more business to support our hotels,” Kryzanek says.

The TDA lists 33 events that are new to the area in 2024 and 2025 that were booked without the commission. Among those are the N.C. Athletic Directors Association State Conference, which was held in March; the Super NIT Softball Championships, held in April; the N.C. Youth Soccer Association’s Spring State Cup Series, held in May;  the National Club Softball Association’s Fall Invitational Tournament, slated for November; and the She Can Fly gymnastics invitational, scheduled for January.

Most of the events are held at places other than Harrah’s Cherokee Center – Asheville.

“There’s no point in pursuing a sports event that doesn’t fit into one of our venues,”  Kryzanek says. “There’s a thought process that goes into which types of groups are going to be most appropriate, with a heavier emphasis on ones that come during weekday periods and during the colder months of the year because those are even more beneficial to the community.”

Venues are as varied as the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center in Fletcher, Bob Lewis Ballpark in Candler and various facilities at UNCA.

The sports commission also has an interest in expanding venue options. “Outdoor events are something that we’re really focusing hard on right now, utilizing our natural resources,” Smith says. “We don’t have as many brick-and-mortar facilities for events that some major cities do that we compete with. So we’re looking to utilize our natural resources.”

Such events could end up in neighboring counties like Henderson or Madison, but fans could stay in Buncombe County hotels.

Meanwhile, the commission will continue to work with the TDA on some events, particularly when it comes to securing hotel rooms.

“We’re trying to work together collaboratively to bring events to the area, and we’re also working independently of each other. We’re both doing our own thing.”

Smith adds: “We feel confident in our game plan moving forward.”