ATLANTA — For a year, it prompted boycotts, demonstrations, and economic fallout that helped dethrone a sitting governor. In the end, in a strange and profoundly American collision of polarized politics, big-time sports, commerce, and the culture wars, North Carolina’s notorious House Bill 2 was finally laid to rest on Thursday — though many were left wondering if some of its negative effects might linger.

Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed legislation repealing the law after it was approved by the Republican-controlled legislature. House Bill 2 had restricted the ability of municipalities to enact antidiscrimination policies and required transgender people in government public buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate.

The compromise agreement came amid a looming threat: The NCAA, which had already relocated a year’s worth of championship tournament games from North Carolina, was planning to eliminate more, including future men’s Division I basketball tournaments. It was met with bitter criticism from gay rights groups, who said it was barely a repeal at all, and from conservatives, who said it backtracked on protecting public safety and traditional values.

In a news conference on Thursday, Cooper said that the agreement would begin undoing the economic damage and that both sports events and development would begin coming back to the state. This week, the Associated Press calculated that North Carolina stood to lose more than $3.7 billion over the next dozen years if House Bill 2 were not repealed.

“This is not a perfect deal and it is not my preferred solution; it stops short of many things we need to do as a state,’’ he said. “In a perfect world, with a good General Assembly, we would have repealed HB2 fully today and added full statewide protections for LGBT North Carolinians.’’

Still, it remained to be seen if the deal would now lift what Cooper has called “the dark cloud hanging over our state.’’

The NCAA president, Mark Emmert, said Thursday that the league’s governing board would soon determine whether the changed law was “sufficient’’ for “the board to feel comfortable going back to North Carolina.’’ The National Basketball Association, which relocated its most recent All-Star Game to New Orleans to protest House Bill 2, did not comment on the new law.

Pope McCorkle III, a public policy professor at Duke, called the deal an “awkward compromise.’’ He said it would ultimately be judged by how many of the sports events, entertainers, and businesses who had turned on the state would eventually change their minds.

“There could be a split among the outside arbiters about whether this is good enough,’’ he said. “The deal is only as good as what it achieves in terms of the change in economic development perceptions nationally.’’

It appeared that the threat of losing even more big-time basketball games had much to do with the breakthrough. The agreement comes on the eve of basketball’s Final Four weekend, with the University of North Carolina men’s team facing off against Oregon on Saturday night in Phoenix.

Looming even larger, perhaps, was the broader threat of sustained business boycotts.

Yet despite these stakes, and in a sign of the deep fissures that continue to run through both the state and the nation, there was little celebration when the law finally died.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, a gay rights group, called the compromise a “fake’’ repeal bill that “keeps in place the most harmful parts of the law.’’ The Human Rights Campaign and other gay rights groups called the deal “shameful’’ and accused the governor and the legislature of engaging in a “sell out’’ of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Some religious and cultural conservatives denounced the removal of transgender bathroom provisions.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, based in Washington, said the compromise showed that “elected officials are ultimately willing to surrender to the courts and the NCAA on matters of safety and public policy.’’ Others argued that girls and women would be robbed of privacy and dignity if forced to confront biological men in restrooms.

In addition to repealing House Bill 2, the new law gives the General Assembly the sole power to regulate access to “multiple occupancy restrooms, showers or changing facilities.’’ The new law also creates a moratorium on local nondiscrimination ordinances through 2020.