Will the world’s second largest multi-sports event come to North Carolina?
One of the world’s biggest sporting events could come to North Carolina, bringing up to 600,000 spectators from 150 countries to watch baseball, tennis, diving and gymnastics.
The U.S. International University Sports Federation selected the Triangle region for its bid to host the 2027 Summer FISU World University Games, the biggest multi-sport event for student athletes on the globe.
If the U.S. bid is selected over other international bidders, stadiums and gymnasiums across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary would host over 7,000 student athletes for up to 13 days.
“It’s the kind of event that I think we can be very excited about, very proud to be behind, and certainly have the capabilities to host and do a great job on it,” said Hill Carrow, chair of the NC Bid Committee and chief executive officer of the Triangle Sports Commission.
A summer and winter edition of the FISU World University Games are staged every two years in a different cities across the world. The last time the summer games came to the states was in 1993, in Buffalo, New York.
Economic boost, university showcase
Although the event is a long ways off, the federation may announce where it will host the 2027 games next spring, Carrow said. He speaking to county leaders across the Triangle to rally support for the bid.
The games could generate at least $150 million for the local economy off of an estimated $99 million budget, Carrow told the Durham County Board of Commissioners. While the athletic competition could draw in corporate sponsorship from companies like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, the event would also need local support to succeed, he said.
“We’ll want state government involved, but we’ll also want big companies from Charlotte and Winston-Salem and others to help us out, he said.
Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam thinks it could be a great opportunity for Durham.
“I have no athletic ability,” she said, smiling. “But it would be really fun to see this coming to Durham and people being able to engage at different levels with it.”
Commissioner Wendy Jacobs, the board’s vice chair, said the games could showcase local universities.
“It just has tremendous benefits,” she said.
North Carolina hosted the Olympic Festival in the Raleigh-Durham area in 1987, which Carrow helped bring to the state.
The next Summer World University Games will be held in Chengdu, in China’s southwestern Sichuan Province. FISU postponed the games from 2021 to 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
