Crew SC owner considers moving team to Austin, Texas
- Thread starter ferrarinycfc
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Source for him saying he would finance either? Press has been saying the opposite.
Interesting tidbits from this article.
https://deadspin.com/columbus-crew-welcome-to-the-stadium-extortion-racket-1819608903
Apparently when Precourt bought the team, it contained a promise to keep the team in Columbus for at least 10 years; it also included an escape clause in the case Precourt wanted to move it to Austin.
This is the one downside of american sport. Owners moving teams for bigger paydays for themselves.
The problem I have is that Phil Rawlins moved his team from Austin to Orlando, so how good of a market could it be?
Expansion wise, it also hurts San Antonio's chances but it does play into FC Cincinnatti's hands.
https://deadspin.com/columbus-crew-welcome-to-the-stadium-extortion-racket-1819608903
Apparently when Precourt bought the team, it contained a promise to keep the team in Columbus for at least 10 years; it also included an escape clause in the case Precourt wanted to move it to Austin.
This is the one downside of american sport. Owners moving teams for bigger paydays for themselves.
The problem I have is that Phil Rawlins moved his team from Austin to Orlando, so how good of a market could it be?
Expansion wise, it also hurts San Antonio's chances but it does play into FC Cincinnatti's hands.
I like the move though it definitely helps the league grow. But the league now needs to move a team out of Texas, FC Dallas is a useless shit show where they are, move them.
Way too many good youth players to leave Dallas metro untapped. They have a solid youth system, which continues to grow, and will likely have key national teamers representing for generations to come.
lol what ? no. FC Dallas is the only one that actually has a good youth set up and facilities....in the first team it may suck attendance wise ( due to their poor marketing etc).
If you get rid of them, i dont want to hear people saying that "we need more good youth set ups from MLS teams" when US dont qualify to a world cup at any level.
also i dont see how Austin helps the league grow ( its roughly the same size of columbus)....it allegedly is a growing city in terms of population but that does not automatically mean its ready to be fully supportive of a soccer team.
apparently the reason was that the stadium they played at could not sell beer so not many people went...other time it was mother nature as i think the other stadium they played at got flooded and damaged badly.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say that the Aztex ultimate fate indicates much about the market’s basic potential.
the stadium situation is key....but if the reports are to believed he wants the team to play where the UT soccer team plays but apparently MLS doesnt like that....so it all seems like a shit show still.
Sounds like he has a contractual option to move the team to Austin with little to no further restrictions. He wants to hastily exercise the option, and the league is scrambling.
MLS needs better lawyers.
Maybe? Garber was pretty clear that the move won’t happen without a stadium deal in place. So you’ve got that whole scramble, but it’s compartmentalized. It’s Precourt’s problem. If it doesn’t work out, hey, the Crew stay put. Not the same as playing in a temp venue indefinitely with no deal in sight. So I wouldn’t call it a shitshow just yet (at least in terms of a stadium search).
I don't think the league is scrambling. Garber has been in Austin a lot, which was weird without any investor seemingly in the picture. He even visited AFTER the expansion bids were submitted and Austin did not submit a bid. What was he doing there when he had twelve actual bids to sift through? Well we found out yesterday.
As far as I know, there is little to no completed ground work in Austin. Garber obviously knew of the likelihood and was doing his best to help facilitate, but are there any fruits of that?
What do you mean by fruits? This seems like it has been planned for awhile. MLS filed trademarks earlier this summer for MLS team names in Austin. It has also been exposed that the MLS2Austin group is owned by Precourt.
For starters, the stadium situation is a mess. Austin folks are saying there's nowhere for a downtown stadium, and their rumored temp venue looks worthy of NASL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_A._Myers_Stadium
Other than "we're moving to Austin," there's no plan that's been made public.
I don't think that is true. If you look at the releases for the stadium of the Austin USL team that has just gotten big leagued, there is this juicy quote about their stadium being outside of town: "“Our first choice would be a municipal stadium located in the heart of town,” Epstein said in an open letter to Violet Crown Soccer. “Near the Palmer Events Center or Convention Center would be our first choice, within walking distance of bars and restaurants. That takes tens of millions of dollars. It’s just not an option for 2019 and this team.”
This doesn't sound good:
A source with knowledge of the situation told SI.com the league expects Austin will have votes in December and again in June 2018 on a soccer stadium in that city. (The city of Austin and Columbus dispute that assertion.)
https://www.si.com/soccer/2017/10/16/columbus-crew-austin-texas-anthony-precourt-stadium
This is the kind of missing ground work I'm talking about. It seems like all parties (Precourt, Garber, Columbus, and Austin) are on different pages.
Another thing, can we talk about how ugly the shade of green they are currently using is?
http://mls2atx.com/
Doesn't seem very "Texas" to me. In fact, with their location in the capital, they could have looked to go with "Texas FC" or something and tried to grab West Texas too. Though I think Precourt's angle is to tap into the uniqueness of Austin relative to the rest of Texas.
http://mls2atx.com/
Doesn't seem very "Texas" to me. In fact, with their location in the capital, they could have looked to go with "Texas FC" or something and tried to grab West Texas too. Though I think Precourt's angle is to tap into the uniqueness of Austin relative to the rest of Texas.
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