The connection between the Hurricanes and the tech hub just got even stronger, Lenovo Center is the new name of the Hurricanes arena.
The twelve-year history of the Carolina Hurricanes‘ home arena with the name PNC Arena is coming to an end. The stadium in west Raleigh will no longer bear the name of the Pennsylvania-based financial corporation. The first rumors arose last week due to the new name appearing in the NHL 25 trailer, and on Tuesday, workers were spotted removing the letters on the front of the building.
If you take a closer look at Raleigh and its neighborhoods, it’s easy to see why a name change for the NHL’s most high-profile stadium was only a matter of time.
Research Triangle
The Raleigh agglomeration, which also includes cities such as Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill and others, is one of the most educated places in the United States.
This is because of the campuses of three major research universities in close proximity: Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University.
Currently, these universities have a combined enrollment of 86,000 students, so the concentration of graduates from these three colleges in the region is prohibitive. In terms of educational quality (Duke is 26th in the world, N.C. State is 27th in the ranking of top engineering programs, and UNC is ranked among the “Public Ivy League”), the Raleigh metropolitan area leads the national rankings.
After World War II, North Carolina’s economy suffered as agriculture and textiles lost market share.
Researchers from UNC, NC State, and Duke proposed a park that would allow the universities to conduct collaborative research, capitalize on the region’s strengths, and retain graduates in the state.
In 1959, the authority decided to create a high-tech research park called Research Triangle Park (RTP). The growth of the Park began in 1965 when IT giant IBM announced the creation of a major campus at RTP.
The Triangle is now the second fastest growing technology center in the country. In addition to Lenovo and IBM, the Park is home to such well-known companies as Oracle, Cisco, Siemens, Hitachi, Epic Games, Dell and Microsoft.
Most recently, Apple revealed plans to invest $1 billion in the Triangle and build a campus. Google has also chosen RTP to build its engineering campus.
Since the pandemic began, the entire southeastern United States has been experiencing a kind of renaissance. Many people have given up living in big cities, so regions like Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill have become ideal for finding a new work-life balance.
That’s why Boston and New York teams always have such strong support at Carolina home games. In this regard, a meme was even born after one of last year’s regular season games: “sad Rangers fans coming home to Cary from the stadium.”
Partnering with Lenovo and SAS
Lenovo’s only headquarters outside of China is located in the heart of the Research Triangle, a city of Morrisville with a population of just 30,000.
In 2021, Lenovo became the title sponsor of the Carolina Hurricanes, placing their logo on players’ helmets. A year later, when asked about its impact on the region, Lenovo’s president cited supporting the local hockey team as the first thing he mentioned.
And earlier this year, through close collaboration, Carolina modernized its IT infrastructure with integrated solutions from Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Integrated Systems, tripling the performance of key analytics workloads to more quickly analyze puck and player movement data.
Another useful partnership Carolina has had for 15 years is with SAS, a statistical analysis software company headquartered literally five minutes from the stadium.
SAS provides all of Carolina’s game statistics, and since the previous season they have been making an interactive map of shots between periods right on the ice:
As you may have realized, statistics within the franchise are given special attention. There’s a reason new General Manager Eric Tulsky started with the Hurricanes as a hockey analyst.
Since the pandemic began, Carolina has landed two more curious partnerships with local tech companies: Data443, which specializes in data protection and privacy management, and Syneos Health, which provides clinical research services for biotech companies.
The stadium renaming has been long overdue, and with the Triangle growing so rapidly, we can expect to see Carolina enter into more and more partnerships with new Lenovo in the coming years.
