{"id":207651,"date":"2025-09-07T13:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207651\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T13:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:00:10","slug":"new-college-basketball-event-lands-big-sponsor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207651\/","title":{"rendered":"New college basketball event lands big sponsor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Charlotte Sports Foundation and ESPN Events went shopping for a college basketball lead sponsor and landed on locally based department store chain Belk Inc., the companies confirmed to CBJ this week.<\/p>\n<p>Belk will be the presenting sponsor of the inaugural Dick Vitale Invitational at Spectrum Center on Nov. 4. The neutral-site men\u2019s college basketball game will honor Vitale, who, at age 86, remains active as one of the network\u2019s game analysts \u2014 a role he has held since ESPN debuted in 1979. He\u2019s also a longtime philanthropist, raising money and awareness to fight cancer and pediatric cancer.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN Events is part of ESPN, the sports media giant owned by Walt Disney Co.<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/charlotte\/news\/2025\/09\/03\/belk-espn-dick-vitale-invitational-spectrum-center.html?utm_source=sy&amp;utm_medium=ptr&amp;utm_campaign=wsoc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:here;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>WATCH: Panthers RB Hubbard optimistic after strong finish to 2024 season<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Charlotte Sports Foundation and ESPN Events went shopping for a college basketball lead sponsor and landed on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":207652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,2076,114036,114035,5723,1317,1337,1338,114034,114037,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-207651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-department-store-chain","11":"tag-dick-vitale","12":"tag-espn","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaabasketball","16":"tag-presenting-sponsor","17":"tag-spectrum-center","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115163144109671946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}