It appears owning the Carolina Hurricanes has gone well for Tom Dundon.
The Dallas Billionaire who bought the team from Peter Karmanos back in 2018 has decided to get deeper into the sports game. First reported by Sportico, the estate of Paul Allen has agreed to sell the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers to a group led by Dundon.
The Canes confirmed that Dundon was making the move and posted a story about his success as an owner.
The move seemingly came out of nowhere, as the last NBA team to go through a sale—the Boston Celtics—went through a much more public process where potential buyers were leaked and guessed about. This sale was a lot quieter. It was announced in May, and since then not much has gotten out about the sale. Fans in Portland worried that this was a sign the NBA was looking for a buyer that might move the team to a new arena in Seattle or Las Vegas.
Instead, according Oregon Live the team will be staying in Portland. Unlike his purchase of the Canes where Dundon was able to eventually obtain 100% of the team, the price of an NBA club was significantly higher and Dundon needed to assemble a group to secure his purchase. That group includes the co-president of Blue Owl Capital, Marc Zahr, as well as Sheel Tyle. Tyle is a Portland-based CEO, and his wife Sejal Hathi is actually the director of the Oregon Health Authority which among other things helps with the Public Option for health insurance in the state.
The Oregon Live piece also notes that this group is emphatic about keeping the Trail Blazers in Portland. Fans of the Hurricanes know that Dundon has experience in a matters like this as the rumors of the Hurricanes being moved to various Canadian Cities had swirled around the team for years until his purchase of the squad. In fact they existed even after the purchase of the squad.
Under Dundon’s ownership, the Hurricanes have entered without question their most successful on-ice era in team history. His first partial year of ownership—2018—was the only season that the Hurricanes have not made the playoffs. That offseason saw the hiring of Rod Brind’Amour, the promotion of Don Waddell as President and CEO, the naming of Justin Williams as Captain, and a recommitment to fans in the area with aggressive ticket prices and deals to get fans back in the arena. The team quickly responded making a surprising run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019. Since then they’ve returned to the ECF in 2023 and 2025.
Dundon’s ownership has also seen the team navigate the COVID challenges that the entire league dealt with, while spending to the cap in every season. They have made blockbuster trades, and have become a model for a team embracing analytics. It has also seen the NHL bring an Outdoor Event to North Carolina for the first time, and Dundon has quickly established himself as an NHL owner who doesn’t sit idle. While he does have a reputation for being one of the more stingy owners in the league, that has tended to come with more off the ice matters instead of on the ice. In the last year even this has changed.
Since last summer, Dundon has secured the Canes future in Raleigh by extending the lease agreement with the Centennial Authority while coming to an agreement to get a badly-needed renovation to Lenovo Center that has started this summer. He also secured the ability to reimagine the area around Lenovo Center to turn it into entertainment, residential, and dining area. The idea is similar to The Battery in Atlanta. When Waddell left the Canes to go to Columbus, he hired three people to fill various jobs.
This delegation has made it to where Dundon has been a little less visible in Raleigh the past year, even though he and his group are further planting roots. It now appears he feels good enough about this structure to start focusing on another team, and fans of the Trail Blazers just have to look at the turn around of the Canes to feel hopeful about what sort of owner Dundon will be for the team.
Hurricane fans shouldn’t feel too worried by the move. With the above mentioned management structure in place plus the long-term deals signed of players as well as the investments in renovations to Lenovo Center, if anything this move means Dundon plans to let the current hockey team continue to do their thing with less, for lack of a better term, interference from him. The move should help raise the profile of the Canes as Dundon will cross into a different sport dynamic and increase brand awareness thanks to this.
We’ll see how long the sale takes to finalize and what Dundon has to say, but it’s amazing to think that a team that once had Peter Karmanos as an owner now has someone who owns multiple major sports teams.
