If you flipped on the TV to ESPN and heard the words, “Durham, North Carolina,” you’d likely be watching the Duke Blue Devils face off against one of their conference rivals.
But this past summer, a new sports team representing the Bull City also took center stage. The Carolina Blaze, one of six franchises in the new Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), wrapped up its first season in July, with thousands of cheering fans, many of them young girls dressed in their own youth league uniforms, packing the Smith Family Stadium on Duke University’s East Campus. Thanks to an investment from Major League Baseball (MLB), even more fans had the opportunity to watch on national television.
The Carolina Blaze were a major success in their first season, selling out many of their 13 home games. The team also broke the record for the most-watched pro softball game on broadcast TV when they hosted the Utah Talons at Durham Bulls Athletic Park in June. Overall, the Blaze generated nearly $6 million in economic impact this season from ticket sales, hotel room sales, and shopping at local businesses.
Last season, none of the teams in the AUSL had permanent homes, instead touring around the country playing games in Salt Lake City, Seattle, Omaha, Tuscaloosa, Wichita, and more. But when it came time for the league to plant its flag, Durham brought its best pitch to the plate.
Marcus Manning, director of the Durham Sports Commission (DSC), remembers his excitement after hearing “Welcome to Durham” for the first time during one of the Blaze’s early broadcasts. Bringing the Blaze to Durham was a “game changer” for Manning and his small but nimble three-person team.
“For an organization like Athletes Unlimited Softball League to choose Durham as one of six host cities is extremely significant,” Manning told the INDY. “It helps continue to raise the profile of Durham as a sports destination, and one that champions and supports girls and women in sports, and it shows.”
Manning joined the Durham Sports Commission in October 2020. He previously worked in collegiate athletics before taking the lead at Durham’s sports tourism agency, a branch of Discover Durham. Manning and his team have spent the last six years trying to build up Durham as a premier sports tourism destination, bringing a mixture of well-known and unique athletic competitions to the city.
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“We talked about becoming one of the most innovative, forward-thinking sports destinations in the country,” Manning said. “We also started to understand that the landscape of sports at every level, from youth, high school, collegiate, and pro, was transforming and evolving at a rapid pace, and so we wanted to really position ourselves—Durham—as one that can take advantage of the growth, the speed of growth, and then also really partner with our key stakeholders in Durham.”
During the recruiting process for the Blaze, Manning said that Durham was able to punch above its weight because of alignment between local governments, nonprofits, and the private sector.
“Everyone from our mayor to our city manager to our county manager is on board in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish—that’s significant, and people notice that,” Manning said. “When AUSL was looking across the country… we were like, ‘hey, we’re on board, and have Duke, Durham Bulls, Durham County, City of Durham, and others who are all in this thing together.’ That was impressive to them.”
Sarah Padove, AUSL’s senior director of public affairs, says the entire coalition embraced the league.
“We were welcomed with open arms, and I think that is something that can get overlooked,” Padove said. “There was a mutual excitement and belief in the opportunity, and that’s what you want as an emerging league. You want to feel welcomed and wanted, and I think that really takes everything, all the pieces, and puts it over the edge a little bit.”
Durham has experienced significant population growth in the last decade, but its population density is still lower than other North Carolina metros like Charlotte—which plays host to the Charlotte Hornets professional basketball team and the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League—and Raleigh, a city twice the size of Durham that is home to the Carolina Hurricanes professional hockey team. For years, residents of Raleigh have been pining for a Major League Soccer or Major League Baseball franchise. NC Senator Phil Berger even tried to squeeze funding for a MLB team out of this year’s state budget (to no avail).
The athletes that arrive in Durham might be competing against each other, but Manning said his contemporaries in neighboring cities are more like teammates than opposing franchises. Cary has carved out its own niche as a growing racket sports destination for tennis and pickleball, and Morrisville has become a U.S. cricket capital. The success of one side of the Triangle and its sports teams has a ripple effect building up the region as a go-to sports tourism destination.
“We really don’t look at it in terms of competing against Raleigh, or Cary, or Chapel Hill,” Manning said. “We operate in a space where the ecosystem is tremendous, so how do we leverage the ecosystem—and that’s the entire Triangle—to take advantage of opportunities for Durham?”
Instead of swinging for the fences on major league sports teams, Durham has made the most of its size and enthusiasm by recruiting emerging sports like women’s softball, flag football, and ultimate frisbee. Perhaps the city’s biggest achievement so far is working with peer sports agencies to bring the World University Games, the largest competition for student-athletes and the second-largest multisport competition on the planet behind only the Olympics, to Durham and a handful of other North Carolina cities in 2029. Local officials estimate the 12-day event could rake in roughly $400 million for the local economy, and serve as an effective advertisement for the region’s sports capabilities.
In addition to the Blaze, other emerging sports leagues call Durham their home turf. The Ultimate Frisbee Association’s Carolina Flyers, formerly the Raleigh Flyers, moved their home games from Wake County to the Durham County Memorial Stadium in 2021. The Flyers and their sister team, the Raleigh Radiance of the Premier Ultimate League, have garnered a growing fanbase.
Walker Matthews, a Durham native and Flyers player, attributes the rise in interest for ultimate frisbee to the investment in youth programs, a point of emphasis for team owner and former Flyers coach Mike DeNardis. Many of the Flyers players who came up through the local frisbee scene have gone on to coach at the high school and collegiate levels as a way to pay it forward and build a foundation for the sport’s longevity in the Triangle.
“I’ve noticed there’s more kids in the stands, and this year, more people were allowed to come down onto the field after the game, so the players are autographing discs, shirts, hats, whatever kids wanted to bring out, and they get to actually interface with us, which is pretty cool,” Matthews said.
Matthews joined the University of North Carolina ultimate team his freshman year; DeNardis was his coach. The Tar Heels went on to win the national championship that same year. Matthews now coaches the UNC women’s team when he’s not on the pitch for Flyers games, where he’s having an “absolute blast.”
Ultimate frisbee is an active but still relatively nascent sport in Durham compared to other cities like Minneapolis, said DeNardis, who founded the team in 2015. Flyers players aren’t paid enough to make it their full-time gig; they have the option to donate what salary they do make to the Raleigh Radiance or Triangle Ultimate, which the Flyers organization will match. To reach that next level, they need to build a fanbase outside of their fellow ultimate players. DeNardis believes investing in the next generation of players will help the game flourish, especially as the costs for youth sports have skyrocketed in recent years.
“There’s a lot of pay-for-play models out there, and we want to make sure our game is really affordable for people,” DeNardis said. “It’s more about the experience of the game than a win-at-all-costs mentality with the pay-for-play model. I don’t want to make people pay $15,000 a year just so their kids can participate in sports.”
Investment in youth and amateur sports is a large part of DSC’s mission—and strategy for positioning Durham as a growing sports destination. The commission’s One Team, One Durham Fund is a privately-funded initiative that provides financial assistance for Durham nonprofit youth sports organizations. From 2023 to 2025, 42 grants have helped cover apparel, equipment, transportation, and facility costs.
The sports commission also helps facilitate a growing number of high school and collegiate championships hosted in Durham, including fencing, college football, and more recently, flag football. In April, Conference Carolinas held its inaugural championship game for collegiate flag football at Durham County Memorial Stadium, the same year girls’ flag football became a state-sanctioned varsity sport for high schools in Durham and beyond. Participation in high school sports has grown over the last five years, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, a trend driven by women’s wrestling and flag football.
“We knew the NFL was investing heavily in flag football,” Manning said, “and so we started to learn more about the sport and the growth of it, and it put us in a position to take advantage of some opportunities.”
Durham Sports Commission receives about 50% of its operating budget from Discover Durham, with another 30% coming from the city and county. Those funds go back out into the community in the form of grants, hosting events, and marketing. In 2019, Durham Sports Commission helped facilitate nearly $30 million in economic impact.
But in-person events took a major hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, and sports were not immune; sports tourism has only brought in about half that since 2020. Rebounding from the dip in activity has been a challenge for the DSC team. To regain long-term sustainability, Manning said the sports commission works on building multi-year partnerships that they can stack onto throughout the year, driving momentum.
In May, Garmin International brought its Marathon Series to downtown Durham for the first of a three-year contract to host the race, which serves as a qualifier for the Boston Marathon. Over 6,000 people participated in the race, more than the other two qualifier sites—Tuscon and Toledo—combined, bringing in over $4 million in economic impact.
“We have a complete understanding of what we can and cannot do, and we can position Durham in a space where we can take advantage of those types of opportunities,” Manning said.
As the Durham Sports Commission has strategically added an expanding list of emerging sports to its roster, the county stadium, in particular, has become Durham’s major sports hub. According to the sports commission, the 68-year-old stadium has hosted over 30 high school and collegiate championship events since 2021. In addition to the Flyers, the Tobacco Road Football Club and Shaw University’s football and soccer programs also call the stadium their home field. Built in 1958, the stadium has been renovated twice, in 2010 and 2019, to improve facilities and expand capacity.
Local stakeholders, led by Durham Next, are working on a feasibility study to improve the stadium long-term. Manning said the upcoming World University Games will test the limits of Durham’s hosting capabilities and give the sports commission and local officials a sense of what additional infrastructure needs Durham has and how to meet them. The sports commission will also have to work with its partners at Durham County, which owns the stadium, to keep the facilities affordable as demand increases and new sports leagues potentially emerge.
In addition to growing sports infrastructure, the sports commission is also trying to build a stronger sports culture off the field. Since 2023, Durham has hosted the Emerging Women in Sports Leadership Summit, spearheaded by DSC Deputy Director Kaila’Shea Menendez, a former college athlete, and for the second year in a row, the sports commission will host the John McClendon Experience in October, a two-day conference that supports young professionals aiming to break into the sports industry, named after the legendary NCCU basketball coach.
“Sports is a unifier,” Manning said. “It brings people together from all different backgrounds and from all different walks of life, and creates access and opportunities for youth in our community. It can also drive revenue and bring brand awareness for your destination. We’ve been fortunate enough that the events and the leagues that we brought in played a role in all three of those; driving revenue, being the front porch in terms of brand awareness, but also creating these opportunities for the community.”
When asked about whether Manning and the commission are aiming high for a a “white whale” event or a major league team—perhaps a WNBA expansion franchise—he said it’s more about getting consistent hits, not just home runs.
“We also know we have an opportunity to look at how we can increase our infrastructure and our capital investment as it relates to facilities,” Manning said. “The white whale is not a one-off, but this ever-evolving striving to be one of these best sports destination hubs in the country.”
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