Playing the ponies

You may have thought that North Carolina, being in the South and the ACC, would be a place where football and basketball were placed about all other sporting events, but according to one of its leading politicians, such is not the case.

HB2 supporters say its costs have been tiny compared with an economy estimated at more than $500 billion a year, roughly the size of Sweden’s. They say they’re willing to absorb those costs if the law prevents sexual predators posing as transgender people from entering private spaces to molest women and girls — acts the law’s detractors say are imagined.

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, one of the strongest supporters, accused news organizations of creating a false picture of economic upheaval. A global equestrian competition that’s coming to North Carolina in 2018 despite HB2 is projected to have an economic impact bigger than the sporting events that have canceled, Forest said. The Swiss-based group behind the event estimated its spending poured about $250 million into the French region of Normandy the last time it was held — 2014. The organization said the figure came from a study by consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, but the Federation Equestre Internationale declined to release the report.  [Emphasis added.]

Take that, NCAA and ACC, if you dare.  No doubt an unpublished report is about as authoritative as it gets these days.