Hill Carrow’s Sports Events Projects Benefiting North Carolina’s Regional and State Economies
His events and their broadcasts expected to generate more than $25 million in economic impacts and over 100 hours of national and international broadcast exposure for the state.
Greensboro, NC The 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships conclude today in Greensboro and the man responsible for attracting and hosting the event in the Gate City has been seemingly everywhere at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, host venue for the Championships. Hill Carrow, CEO of Sports & Properties, Inc., who started out in life right here in Greensboro as an adoptee from the Greensboro Children’s Home, is right at home with all aspects of directing a major sports event, from “trench work” like hauling boxes of programs and picking up trash, to more high profile roles such as meeting and greeting with guests at VIP functions and doing local and national television interviews.
“I enjoy all the challenges of major event recruitment and production,“ says Carrow. “Most people see hosting the largest sports events as a daunting challenge, but I view them simply as a number of problems to be solved. If you are good at problem solving, either from experience or you come by that skillset naturally, then you can be very successful as a major event producer.”
This month alone, Carrow has projects either completed, underway, or on broadcast television that are benefiting communities across central North Carolina if not the entire state. Starting tomorrow, Charlotte will host the first-ever U.S. Figure Skating High Performance Camp for 250 of the country’s most promising skating athletes, thanks to Carrow, who serves as the local host committee chair for that event , which he successfully landed for the Extreme Ice facility in Indian Trail, on the Queen City’s east side.
Meanwhile in Greensboro, Carrow becomes the first person in the 106-year history of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships to lead the Local Organizing Committee three times within a decade. The Championships, which include 17 ticketed events featuring top athletes (including the reigning World Champion) from across the country are the largest ice sport competition in the U.S. and typically generate over $24 million in local economic impacts. The U.S. Championships’ broadcasts encompass more than 50 hours total in a combination of live network and cable coverage on NBC and NBC Sports Network as well as “extensive” wall-to-wall coverage on a national and international internet streaming broadcast via the NBC Gold package. As a result, other studies have shown that the media impacts or exposure of the Championships are worth another $20 million or more.
Prior to the start of the Figure Skating Championships, Carrow headed the host committee for the largest water polo tournament ever held in the state, the USA Water Polo ODP East Championships, January 10-12, 2020, with over 500 athletes from the eastern half of the country competing in the USA Water Polo Olympic Development Program for a chance to move up the ladder towards a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team. It was estimated the water polo championships had a local economic impact of over $1.5 million.
In addition, another event recruited to NC and led by Carrow that was hosted in Raleigh in August, is just now hitting the airwaves with broadcasts on NBC Sports Network every week for 9 weeks. Carrow led the staging of Curling Night in America, an international curling competition among the national and Olympic teams of Italy, Japan, Scotland, and the United States, at Raleigh’s Polar Iceplex. The event was taped by NBC and is being shown by NBC Sports Network on a schedule that began Friday, January 3, 2020 and continues for 9 straight weeks into March of this year.
With re-airs, the broadcast of Curling Night in America, plus an accompanying event called NBCSN Stix & Stones (involving NHL stars and Curling Olympians in a friendly curling competition), also hosted by Carrow in Raleigh, will total more than 50 hours of broadcast coverage for the state.
Carrow himself is enjoying something of a “career month” during January 2020. In addition to the above achievements, he was inducted into the George Whitfield Baseball Clinic Hall of Fame in Goldsboro, NC on Friday, January 10, 2020. The Whitfield Hall of Fame, which has been in existence for over 35 years, includes such North Carolina sports luminaries as Steve Vacendak of Duke, and Sylvia Hatchell and Phil Ford of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
This month’s annual edition of Sports Events Magazine People’s Choice Awards named Carrow one of the leading Sports Planners & Industry Professionals to Watch in 2020, citing his extensive major event management track record and his schedule for this year including the Water Polo and Figure Skating Championships, and the USA Masters Games (which Carrow founded) in Grand Rapids, MI among others.
Also in January, Carrow has been selected by the United States Olympic Committee to serve as point person on a significant project in Africa to assist the country of Lesotho in planning for, and executing, its first-ever major international multi-sport events, the Southern Africa Youth Games (6 countries) in December of this year, and the Africa Youth Games (54 countries) in 2022. Carrow will make his initial trip to Lesotho next month to get the project underway.
About Sports & Properties, Inc.: Sports & Properties, Inc. (SPI) is a sports marketing and sports development firm located in Cary, NC, that focuses on four primary areas of business: sports tourism; sports facilities development; major sponsorships, including naming rights; and major events. SPI has recruited and directed numerous national and international events in North Carolina including the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, U.S. Olympic Trials – Table Tennis, American Cup International Gymnastics, U.S. Masters Swimming National Championships, USA Gymnastics Championships, USA Masters Games, Nastia Liukin Cup, National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships, College Club Swimming Championships, and the USA Track & Field Masters National Championships, among others. SPI clients include Capitol Broadcasting Company, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Asheville-Buncombe Regional Sports Commission, the North Carolina Football Club, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, the City of St. Petersburg, and the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, among others. For more information on SPI, visit the website at www.sportsproperties.com
?About The 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships: The U.S. Figure Skating Championships are the premier championship event for the sport of Figure Skating. Owned and directed by U.S. Figure Skating, the national governing body for the sport in the U.S., the Championships crown national champions in Ladies, Men’s, Pairs, and Ice Dance competition. The 2020 Championships, January 20-26, 2020, are being held at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex in Greensboro, NC. The cable and network broadcast schedule for the event is as follows:
Thursday, January 23rd
Championship Pairs Short Program: 4:30-7:00
Championship Ladies Short Program 7:30-11:30pm (Live on NBCSN)
Friday, January 24th
Championship Ice Dance – Rhythm Dance 4:00-5:45pm (Live on NBCSN)
Ladies free skate: 7:00-11:00 (Live on NBC)
Saturday, January 25th
Men Short Program: 1:30-4:20 (Live on NBC)
Championship Pairs Free Skate: 6:00-9:14 pm
Championship Ice Dance – Free Dance 9:30-11:00pm (Live on NBCSN)
Sunday, January 26th
Men Free Skate: 2:30-6:00 (Live on NBC)
Skating Spectacular: 2-4pm (Feb. 2, taped broadcast on NBC)
For additional information on the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships, visit www.ncskate2020.com
About Curling Night in America: Curling Night in America is an international curling competition among Italy, Japan, Scotland and the U.S., hosted by USA Curling, World Curling and the Triangle Sports Commission, which airs on the NBC Sports Network during the first quarter of 2020 on a schedule of weekly broadcasts that begin in January and end in March. The 2020 broadcast schedule is as follows:
2020 Curling Night in America Broadcasts – all on NBC Sports Network
Jan. 3 9:30 p.m. USA men vs. Scotland Jan. 10 10 p.m. USA vs. Japan (mixed doubles) Jan. 17 9 p.m. USA women vs. Scotland Jan. 31 11 p.m. USA women vs. Italy Feb. 14 11 p.m. USA vs. Italy (mixed doubles) Feb. 21 9 p.m. USA men vs. Japan Feb. 21 11 p.m. USA women vs. Japan Feb. 28 11 p.m. USA vs. Scotland (mixed doubles) Mar. 6 9 p.m. USA men vs. Italy Mar. 6 11 p.m. (repeat of USA vs. Scotland mixed)
For more information on Curling Night in America visit www.teamusa.org/USA-Curling.org