Charlotte Sports Foundation CEO Danny Morrison moves to a new role. Who will lead next?
There’s a changing of the guard at Charlotte’s top sports tourism organization.
The Charlotte Sports Foundation, the nonprofit that has recruited several of the city’s biggest sports events over the past several years, announced Wednesday that its CEO since 2019, Danny Morrison, is moving to a new role within the organization. Morrison will stay on as an executive adviser.
Will Pitts, who most recently served as the organization’s chief operating officer, will succeed him as the organization’s CEO.
Pitts will start April 1, according to a news release.
“I am very grateful for this opportunity,” Pitts said in a statement Wednesday. “As someone who grew up in Charlotte and has been working on CSF’s events for most of my career, I am unbelievably excited to be named CEO.”
He added: “I look forward to continuing to build on the successes we have seen as an organization and as a city.”
Morrison’s move to a full-time advisory role with the foundation will certainly help with the job transition. Morrison took over as the CSF head in 2019, succeeding Will Webb, who remains on the CSF board as a consultant.
Morrison, who’d previously served as the president of the Carolina Panthers from 2009 to 2017, said in a statement that Wednesday marked “an exciting day for the Charlotte Sports Foundation.”
“The naming of Will Pitts as CEO is not only well-deserved with his terrific talent and experience, but also is part of a well-thought-out process together with the Executive Committee of the Board,” Morrison, 71, said. “Simply put, Will is ready. I am so grateful for my time working with him and our engaged staff and am excited about the future of the organization.”
In the past six years alone, Morrison and Pitts have teamed up to introduce new events to Charlotte, in addition to keeping old events like the ACC Championship football game in the city.
Among those new events:
▪ The Duke’s Mayo Classic and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl games.
▪ The Ally Tipoff, a women’s basketball regular-season game that featured the supernova that is Caitlin Clark one year and the national champion South Carolina Gamecocks the next.
▪ The Jumpman Invitational, another college basketball event that pitted the men’s and women’s programs of Florida, Oklahoma, Michigan and UNC against one another. This was a three-year deal that ended this winter.
▪ The Charlotte Invitational, an event that pitted some of pro tennis’ biggest stars in exhibition matches in Spectrum Center in 2024.
▪ The Savannah Bananas, the professional “banana ball” team that mixes baseball with outrageous dancing/hijinks, coming in June.
Charlotte Sports Foundation in April 2024 announced that its 2023 events yielded an economic impact of $79.7 million.
Meet Charlotte Sports Foundation’s new CEO
Pitts, 39, was named COO of the nonprofit in February 2023. He’s been with CSF for 15 years.
He was born in Atlanta but moved to Charlotte when he was in elementary school. He attended Charlotte Country Day from fourth grade to 12th grade, and then attended Rhodes College in Memphis, where he competed in track and field (and participated in the decathlon).
He moved back to Charlotte after college and got his start in the medical device industry. He knew long-term that he wanted to be in the sports industry, though, and found that opportunity in 2010, when he joined the Charlotte Sports Foundation’s predecessor organization, Charlotte Collegiate Football, before CSF was formed in 2013.
By the time he joined the organization — as the director of sponsorship sales — Pitts had seen much of Charlotte’s growth first hand. He said he arrived to Charlotte “right around the time” of the 1994 Final Four at the old Charlotte Coliseum off Billy Graham Parkway, he said.
“With the Hornets, with the Final Four, and then leading to the Panthers moving to Charlotte, to me those were really the catalysts for driving sports tourism,” Pitts said in an interview with The Observer. “And really, I think in a lot of ways, (they were) the catalysts for driving the business community and the vitalization of the Uptown area that you see today.”
Pitts said he’s excited to continue building on what the foundation has already done — and called Morrison’s leadership “invaluable and instrumental” over the past six years.
“He’ll continue to be an incredible resource and contributor and supporter to the organization’s growth moving forward,” Pitts said. “His perspective, his insights, his experiences are incredibly invaluable to the organization and to me, and I’m so grateful for his leadership and his mentorship.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 11:00 AM.
