USL Austin Team to Return in 2019

What a difference a few weeks make. This morning, the USL Austin ownership group announced they will bring a team back in USL D2 in 2019 at Circuit of the Americas.

So, first off, we were a little wrong. We’ll own that. In our last article, the data supported that the current USL Austin group was done and building a stadium locally would be a non-starter for a new ownership group staring down the barrel of a potential MLS franchise coming to town.

• Clearly they made up with USL
• Ownership finally decided to put up money to build a stadium. Since it’s on the CotA grounds, the investment cost and risk is much lower in a future where MLS comes to town.

We were never against USL returning, just maintained that almost any other scenario wouldn’t have made sense for USL investment in Austin right now.

Now onto the news…

What We Know About What Was Announced

Josh, the founder of MLS in Austin (we have like 3 Josh’s on the team now), had dinner with Austin USL co-owner René van de Zande last night and had breakfast with Roberto Pinto da Silva Jr., COTA’s Special Projects Director, early this morning. Most of this context is from chatting with Roberto as René mostly just teased having to wait.

According to him, since USL wanted this information tightly controlled, our friend Kevin Lyttle at the Statesman was the only other outside person with advanced knowledge of the announcement. We were next to get the news.

Some of this is repeated in the article, but these were some of the main discussion points…

Why Now?

• There was a lot of negotiation and discussion to be had between the club and league that took quite some time
• The market has changed
• USL has changed and grown: More teams, match broadcasts, etc.

Not the Aztex

• This is a new club with a fresh start
  (Note: This needed to happen. RIP AzTeX)
• Bobby Epstein will move to the major ownership role as a condition of keeping the franchise. Rest of ownership group is still TBD and will be worked out in the near future.
• Team name, colors, brand will be addressed next year. “USL Austin” will be the reference in the meantime.

Why CotA

• Bobby is the CEO of Circuit of the Americas
• A lot of land and infrastructure in place
• They already built the field for the partnership with FC Barcelona Training Academy. This reduces the investment cost needed for a USL-compliant stadium.
• Feel that the CotA location can now work for a USL stadium. They didn’t feel that was the case previously.
• The stadium capacity can be expandable from 5000 to about 12–13,000k, but not for MLS which would need to be around 22k+.
• Still a big open question on public transportation options for fans out to CotA
• CotA is trying to transform itself into an entertainment destination. This is another part of that plan.

MLS Aspirations

• Roberto says they are still there with the USL Austin group
• USL Austin could go across the street at CotA and build a bigger stadium for MLS or there are other ways/locations to get a MLS Soccer Specific Stadium
• The USL Austin team could be moved to another market and the CotA USL stadium could serve as a training facility for the MLS club or have other uses.

Supporter Engagement

• The ownership group wanted to reach out directly to MLS in Austin to communicate the news and to build a strategy to work closely together to support USL — which of course we will. One meeting involved beers, the other involved breakfast tacos – so they are off to a good start.
• They are very aware of the collateral damage caused over the past few years and will look to build more productive and healthy relationships with the supporter community.
• USL is currently running the new social media handles. It’ll be a bit before the FO is spun-up.

What does all this mean for MLS in Austin

These are our thoughts…

• Nothing’s changed regarding our mission or goals to reach MLS and advocate for Austin soccer supporters…
• …We’ll now also have a USL team to support again as part of our mission
• USL returning is exciting also as it helps build local support for the sport, which helps build our case for MLS.
• The USL Austin group isn’t the only active party interested in MLS here. So now there’s just one more potential group helping to move toward bringing a Division 1 team in Austin.
• We fully intend to continue having close relationship with the stakeholders involved at all levels of soccer and continue to advocate for supporter engagement.
  There is no more margin for error for our market with professional soccer.
• If you haven’t already joined us; now’s a great time! Come supporting with us!

Many more questions will surface and we’re happy to try and answer whatever we can. Reach out!

Thanks to everyone for their support!

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