Welcoming Soccer’s Newest Club to Northern Colorado: Q&A with Casey Katofsky
As a lifelong sports fan, Casey Katofsky has forever had one idea in his mind: “I’ve always got more fingers for more rings,” he said. Katofsky is the Executive Director of Operations and Co-Owner for Northern Colorado FC, the newest addition to the United States Soccer League (USL) League One. He has previously been involved in the ownership groups of other professional minor league sports teams, including the Northern Colorado Owlz baseball team.
Katofsky and I spoke over the phone about the new Northern Colorado FC and its impacts on the local community.
A native of the Los Angeles, California area, Katofsky’s base of operations has now become Fort Collins. He’s fallen in love with the area and the surrounding community that makes up Northern Colorado.
Kicking off their inaugural season in 2022, Northern Colorado FC will call the Future Legends complex in Windsor, Colorado home.
Meyer:
Can you just tell me about little of your background within soccer?
Katofsky:
Absolutely. So in general, we’ve been a family that has been within professional sports entertainment, you know, resale for a long time. And so we’ve always been a fan of sports and we’ve owned different professional teams. We’ve always wanted to find an opportunity for us to own a professional soccer team, and building a complex, already having a stadium built within it, you know, the opportunity arose where we were able to kind of shop with the USL. We found an opportunity to expand and bring that third professional team to Colorado. With the Rapids in Denver and the Switchbacks out of Colorado Springs, to bring Northern Colorado a professional soccer team, well, everything worked out. We were able to do that and, you know, the rest is history.
Meyer:
What about the Northern Colorado area drew you to think, “this is the place that we can bring a soccer team successfully into”?
Katofsky:
Northern Colorado, as you might know, it’s one of the more unique communities in the entire country. There’s a lot of people and it’s spread out, but it’s all community focused. You know, everybody knows everybody, everybody is very sports-oriented and outdoorsy. So it’s a very unique area and living here for the past year, you see it firsthand. People love their sports, people love to be outside. and soccer is a big part of that. You know, it’s family oriented, there’s a lot of stuff to do. No one likes to be inside. So it seems like a perfect fit. Obviously, a lot of professional sports teams in recent years have been looking to come here and with the Colorado Eagles hockey, you know, we figured with the soccer market already being so big up here that we felt bringing that professional team here makes so much sense.
Meyer:
Can you walk me through the process of what it’s actually like to form a USL expansion team?
Katofsky:
It’s a lot of sleepless nights, my man, but it’s worth it. The process is a lot of different work. It’s a lot of meetings that take a long time to get. A lot of flying back and forth pre-COVID, obviously, seeing how to figure out logistics, making sure that we have the right market and we have the right complex, right stadium, the right people. It took a long time, but all that stuff was relatively seamless because we were prepared and they were prepared and they had mutual interests with us that this location is exactly where they want to be. And so things just kind of worked out exactly how we wanted so far. Obviously now we’re focused on creating the best environment for our fans and players, coaches, and front office for our first season, which is 2022, a year from now.
Meyer:
That leads me then to what you think the next steps are for this team and for soccer in this area?
Katofsky:
Right now we’re finalizing our plan. We’ve got to hire our coaches, players, front office, along with the branding, the marketing, all that stuff. With a year out, you know, you have a little bit of time. Really trying to prepare as much as you can to attack each element with as much efficiency and strategy as we can. And if not, then you really only get one chance to do this. You only get to open up an expansion team one time. So we don’t want to rush anything. We want to get as much input from the community as we can. So that’s what we have being a year out, but you know, a month before the season, more focus on players, coaches, getting the names on jerseys.
Meyer:
You mentioned the importance of community to this team and to this area. So how has Northern Colorado FC been planning to incorporate the community?
Katofsky:
Great question. So we have multiple different ways that we get input or collaborate with the local community or the greater community in ways to, you know, make the brand the best thing that I can, to be resembling what people actually want. And then what we think is best. You know, originally we’re from California, a good amount of our team wasn’t born and raised in Colorado. We do have members of our team that have been, but, you know, I’d rather hear from the people that live here of what they want and what are the things that are important to them outside of me just telling them what they want. So different focus groups, input data, emails, talking to people directly. Just being available to people, finding out different pieces of information to gather as much of it as we can, and then utilizing that to our advantage to create an experience for the future that is exactly what they’re asking for.
Meyer:
You previously mentioned the pandemic and obviously the timing is not ideal for creating anything. So how has the pandemic itself really affected this process of getting a new team started?
Katofsky:
We try to look at things glass half full. The pandemic is not something that we can control, so instead of sitting here and worrying about, we’re trying to figure out, well obviously you want to keep everybody healthy, but how do I use it to our advantage? You know, luckily we start in 2022 and you’d hope by that time frame that things are a little bit better, more normal. And people really are itching to go outside and do, you know, things with family, then it’s almost the best case scenario for us because people will want to go out to the game when they haven’t been able to do so in the last year or two years. So timeline-wise, it’s a struggle now trying to schedule meetings, planning everything, and doing what we need for construction. It’s the glass half full approach because of the pandemic and people not being able to go outside, you know, well we’ll be ready for them.
Meyer:
Could you encapsulate what future you kind of see for the team itself and just for the community? Just how you envision the future really looking once everything is settled and the team is on the field and fans are in the stadium.
Katofsky:
Again, what we pride ourselves on is that the experience of the fan comes first and within that is the team on the field and that they’re winning games. It’s very important to us that we have a highly competitive team. As I mentioned, we’ve owned different minor league teams in the past for different sports and I have fingers that need rings on them, let’s put it that way. We have plenty of rings, but I’ve always got more fingers for more rings. If I run out of fingers, I have toes. So we’ve got to make sure we put a competitive team on the field for as long as we can. It’s our priority, but also making sure that the experience for everybody to come in from the community is low cost and everything that they want to do. We can really build that community advocacy because it’s Northern Colorado’s own team. They don’t necessarily have to go down to Denver for a professional sporting event outside of hockey.
Meyer:
Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about that you think would be relevant information to this?
Katofsky:
One of the things that we like to preach is transparency, right? Not only are we an ownership group, we’re also fans of sports. So we also need to ask ourselves when we look at our sports teams, our local communities, what we want. We want to be as transparent as possible, we want to provide as much information to the public as we can and be honest about it. Whether it’s good or bad, as long as we’re honest, and as long as we’re transparent, I feel like that creates the comradery between the ownership group and the fans, and the players and coaches, to be honest. And so that’s very important to us to try and do that.
For the full interview transcript, please contact lmey998@rams.colostate.edu
