Sabates On Possible New Panthers Stadium Locations

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Felix Sabates, wearing black and blue, denied that he intentionally dressed in Carolina Panthers colors: “That was not by design!” But Sabates does have designs to buy the football team.

The consumate car dealer was coy about the details, telling WCCB News @ Ten anchor Morgan Fogarty that Dell Curry and Muhsin Muhammad are two potential partners, as well as two current unnamed Panthers minority owners.

Sabates says, “Growing to seven (members), and I probably have eight or nine other qualified people that have called that want to join our group.”

The day after Jerry Richardson announced the franchise would be put up for sale, Sabates says he got to work assembling an ownership group. He hasn’t talked to the Big Cat, but Sabates says he has consulted with Michael Jordan, as well as bankers, attorneys, another NFL owner he declined to name, and more on this in a moment: he tells Fogarty he talked with the architect who built the Minnesota Viking’s new stadium. Sabates says, “We feel whoever is coming in after us to bid, is gonna have to catch up.”

The “whoevers” could include former San Francisco 49ers owner Ed DeBartolo: “I could not imagine, they’ve run Eddie DeBartolo out of the league once, I could not imagine they’d let him come back into the league,” says Sabates.

Or Puff Daddy: “No way Puff Daddy’s ever gonna (buy the team). This is not a joke and he’s just joking.”

Or Bruton Smith: “You know, Bruton is 91 years old. The sons would like to do something and if they want to join our group, by God, we’d take them in a second.”

What it’ll take, besides league approval, for Sabates and his group to view the Panthers purchase as a smart investment, is a new stadium capable of hosting more than just nine or ten football games a year.

Sabates says, “We’re not doing anything without a new arena.”

One with a dome, one with more luxury suites, and one with more land, for parking, than Uptown can currently offer. Sabates, gesturing around him, says, “You gotta lotta land around here. You got (the) Fort Mill area. The whole Carowinds (area), there’s a lotta land there. The new park at the airport, facing 485, that’d be a wonderful location.”

Sabates, a fixture in the world of race car driving, tells Fogarty he’s been going 130 miles an hour on the Panthers purchase project, and he expects government leaders to rally behind the push to keep the cats in town. He says, “I think city council and county commission and the mayor, they will jump through hoops to make sure that it stays in North Carolina, and the city of Charlotte in North Carolina.”

Some have valued the Carolina Panthers at $3 billion. Sabates says his group wouldn’t pay that price, but that $2 billion would be “easy.” Fogarty asked if he’d change anything about the team, besides a new stadium. He said he’s only interested in changing the revenue by increasing the number of events the team’s stadium could host.