Giant panda · No. 7 of 22
Atlanta Signs Two in Free Agency
Eighteen months after being emptied, the franchise gets its pandas back.
The Deal
The Grades
Zoo Atlanta
Went from zero pandas to a young breeding-age pair on a fresh ten-year agreement. Best incoming signing by a US franchise this cycle.
The Breakdown
In October 2024 Zoo Atlanta put Lun Lun, Yang Yang and two offspring on a plane to China and ended a 25-year partnership that had produced seven cubs. The panda habitat went dark.
Eighteen months later they are getting two more. Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, both born in 2020, are coming from the Chengdu Research Base under a new ten-year agreement. The announcement landed less than a month before a presidential visit to Beijing, which is the sort of scheduling coincidence that stops being a coincidence once you have watched this market for a while.
No arrival date has been announced, so this one sits in the announced column, not the completed column. Roughly one in three recommended transfers in this sport never happens. Pandas move on state-level agreements rather than SSP recommendations, so the odds are considerably better than that. But until there is a plane, there is no trade.
