Charlotte Hornets president has ‘never been this excited’ for an NBA season. Here’s why

His mouth may be obscured because of a face mask, slightly hiding his expressions. Even so, it’s not hard to see the smile on Fred Whitfield’s face these days.

The Charlotte Hornets president/vice chairman is thoroughly pleased with how the franchise held up during the pandemic and believes its in prime position to take further flight as the season tips off at Spectrum Center on Wednesday.

“All in all our business is in great shape,” Whitfield said. “It’s very healthy. When we went into the pandemic, (owner) Michael (Jordan) and Curtis Polk, our managing partner, vowed that we weren’t going to lay anybody off. We weren’t going to furlough anybody or cut anybody’s salary. I really believe that has helped us create this culture where our team here is really running through a wall every day for the organization.”

Whitfield said the Hornets have a 90%season-ticket renewal rate and added 2,200 new full-season ticket holders for 2021-22, bringing the number of people with at least partial ticket packages to 11,000.

“I really think it’s sort of a perfect storm because we are No. 5 in the NBA in new season tickets sold,” Whitfield said. “The other four teams ahead of us went to the playoffs last year. That says a lot about our community and the way they are supporting us. They see the work coach (James) Borrego and (GM) Mitch (Kupchak) and their staff have done to move our basketball product forward. I think our style of play is so exciting.”

Whitfield spoke to The Observer about welcoming more fans back to games and what they should expect, LaMelo Ball’s influence in setting franchise merchandise records and more.

Roderick Boone: How excited are you to welcome fans up to the full capacity now again?

Fred Whitfield: I’m extremely excited for (Wednesday) and it’s sort of two phases. One, it’s going to be awesome being able to host fans at full capacity again after not being able to do it at all the season before and all of last year. We were fortunate that the governor allowed us to get the 15% capacity and ultimately 25% capacity, but it’ll be exciting to see a full house again. Especially around the second part, which is they will get the opportunity to see our young up-and-coming team live and in person, which last year many of our fans weren’t able to do.

For me, I’m as excited as I’ve been in the last 16 years. This is my 16th season. I’ve never been this excited about the opening of a season. No. 1 because of the access that every fan will have the ability to get back in and see us live again. But No. 2, just watching the growth of our young team and the progress and player development that we made on the court and I think the great job that Mitch and his team have done in really rebuilding our on-court product, our team. And then just the great work coach Borrego and his staff have done in developing this young talent.

RB: With the increased capacity, how do you plan to safeguard against the spread of COVID and keep fans safe?

FW: Initially when we were re-opening the building we made sure we had all of our health and safety protocols in place. We took it a step further. We’ve got three independent third-party certifications, based on health and safety, cleanliness, how we turn our building over, how we keep our building clean. We were the first NBA team to get all of those certifications. And then in addition we’ve been working closely with our county health department.

The masks are a county-wide mandate and we are doing everything that we need to do to be compliant with the county. We are also working closely with the NBA on NBA protocols and some of those are if people have seats within 15 feet of the court, they are required to either be vaccinated or show proof of a negative COVID test within 48 hours before the game. All kids 5 years or older are required to wear masks. Anybody over 5 years of age is required to wear a mask anytime they are in the building except when they are actively eating or drinking.

So we’ll do our best to have our fans adhere to those policies. But we want to do it in a respectful way because we want our fans to feel welcome. All the things we put in place we hope will build that fan confidence that we’ve created as safe an environment for them to come out night-in and night-out to watch our games.

RB: What else will be noticeably different?

FW: We’ve gone completely cashless in the building. So mobile ticketing, if you go to the fan shop, you go to concessions, you can either order on the app and pre-order your food, pay for it on the app and go pick it up at a designated location. You can do the same thing with the fan shop.

We also have a reverse cash machine. A reverse ATM is what they call it. So if all you have is cash, you can go put it in the reverse ATM and it will spit you out a card that you can use just like a debit or credit card. We’ve got three locations (box office, main lobby and upper concourse).

RB: You have worked hard on establishing the franchise’s business plan and promoting it the past few seasons off the court while the product on the floor has been reconstructed. What’s it like to know fans are embracing the on-the-court product now?

FW: The things that we’ve tried to do on the business side is to prepare our organization to be able to take advantage of our on-court product as it improves. So since I’ve got here we’ve been focused on our game entertainment and making sure everyone feels welcome here, that we literally hit every demographic with our music. What we do during halftime, what we do during timeouts. So you will hear a little country music, a little rock and roll, a little hip hop, a little old school R&B. All of that is a part of our game presentation. The other piece that we have been focused on is our fans’ experience, to make sure that when people come into this building they have a great time and they feel welcome.

RB: What about the in-game entertainment? During the preseason, the performers were back on the court again. Will that continue?

FW: We are going back to full game entertainment. Of course, it will look a little different because of NBA protocols. You’ll see our entertainers on the court with masks on, but that’s part of the protocol. But we are trying to get back to as close to normal as we can, but still keep health and safety first. So you’ll see those additional things but we’ve got something choreographed every night. We have a choreographed halftime. We’ll have them during timeouts. It will be a full game experience for our fans just as we’ve offered in the past.

RB: You’ve set club merchandising records and said sales on HornetsFanShop.com are up 181%. Can you explain how bringing in a player with a huge following like LaMelo boosted revenue in that area?

FW: It elevates our entire brand and it gives our brand credibility. It gives us the opportunity to have our fans watch an exciting up-and-coming young star, but not have it all be about him. Just the way he plays the game and enjoys passing makes players want to gravitate to him and play with him. And it makes fans want to gravitate and watch him play because you never know where the next exciting play is going to come from.

And so for us, just watching the enjoyment that he has on the court and the way his teammates really gravitate to him and enjoy playing with him has, I think, boosted the interest in our organization because they realize he can be that potential young superstar that we can build around going into the future.