Columbus Crew to Austin unless new stadium deal is reach

[ensco]

Austin has had issues supporting any team in the past

The past is a different world in these markets.

I think the big revelation in pro sports is the discovery of the urban south.

Oklahoma City, Vegas, Nashville, Austin... no way any of these were pro sports towns 20 years ago. Atlanta pre Olympics was the worst pro sports market in North America. In the 1980s, the Braves were drawing 10,000 people a game (I went to a game with 3,000 people at it in 1988), the Hawks 5,000.

Now these places are in the vanguard.

btw Austin is bigger than Columbus. Check out its population growth rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...tistical_Areas

[Gazza_55]

They are gone. Precourt is on the expansion committee. He knows he can't compete with a team in Cincinatti.

Actually he's not on the expansion committee anymore. Hasn't been for awhile now.

[Gazza_55]

This is just another example of a rich dude trying to get the public to pay for his stadium. When he doesn't get his way, he threatens to leave.

First stadium in Columbus was paid 100% by Hunt. Upgrades were also 100% privately financed. No indication yet Precourt wants taxpayer funds.

[Auzzy]

Austin mayor is apparently also saying he won't help finance a stadium.

Despite Austin being far from the other Texas MLS sites, the summer weather is pretty brutal there as well. Austin is a bit better than Dallas & Houston, but not much. "Among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, Austin comes in at No. 5 on the index. Ahead of it are Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston." http://austin.culturemap.com/news/ci...rtime-hotspot/

It's great to have teams doing well in places like Atlanta and Orlando, but it's all adding more difficulty to a league that is already very tough in terms of travel and environment. Not happy to have a third team in Texas. Maybe they should move the Frisco, Texas MLS team to Austin instead.

[OgtheDim]

Been reading through the Big soccer forum on this one and the verifiable stuff is pretty scummy.

• Precourt bought the team with a 10 year do not move clause....unless he took the team to Austin
• Crew linked up a few years ago with Austin as their affiliate team and sent many key staff down there
• Players were not told prior to today's points
• Last payment for next year's season seats were made yesterday
• When sold off a few years ago, 3 bids were made for the Crew, 2 by locals, 1 by Precourt - his was an overbid by a large amount
• Local businesses in the last 6 months have tried to buy the team outright, 50/50 or even 51/49 so Precourt feels he is still in charge - all rebuffed without even being listened to
• the local MLS to Austin group has links to Precourt
• the local MLS to Austin group announced they will be doing watch parties of Crew games

Of note:

• Austin pols do not want to spend a dime on this and are being lobbied by Columbus business people to make this as difficult for Precourt as possible, in order to make the move untenable
• Rumour has it Garber will allow Precourt to take the Crew records with him, including the Star for their MLS Cup win
• Bill Archer is a racist ass
• there are a lot of good people losing a whole chunk of their lives in all this

[OgtheDim]

First stadium in Columbus was paid 100% by Hunt. Upgrades were also 100% privately financed. No indication yet Precourt wants taxpayer funds.

He has asked for it in Columbus. He has suggested they build on city land in Austin, where he has said he will need some help beyond his own funds.

[OgtheDim]

Oh, and lets just add that MLS trademarked two potential Austin team names back in August.

http://www.mystatesman.com/sports/so...fwMjpYYywBXZL/

[mistercorporate]

I understand what MLS is doing, purge the barely alive struggling teams/brands/markets and enter the more high potential ones. Noone shed any tears for Chivas, now teams in dying cities like Columbus are being superseded, not sure Austin is that much of an upgrade though. We shall see. Time for MLS to up its game, MLS 4.0 is less than 5 years away.

[Red4ever]

[*]Bill Archer is a racist ass
[/LIST]

Hahahahaha

[OgtheDim]

My issue in Columbus is there is a local ownership option which could move the club out of its MLS 1.0 doldrums to something more like Minnesota.

My issue with Austin is Precourt, not a local there either, with a team there is not as good as the San Antonio bid with their ownership. Pissing off the most consistent and successful NBA franchise of the last 10 years is not a good idea.

[Oldtimer]

From the SI article:

A source with knowledge of the situation said Columbus has been in the bottom three teams of nearly every MLS business metric for a decade.

It's a terrible market compared to the best MLS cities. Sucks for their supporters, but I am not surprised. I remember talking to some tourists from Columbus visiting Toronto the year after they had won the cup, and they had never heard of any pro soccer team in their city.

It's possible that the right owner might have turned it around, but it looks like MLS the business decided to go in a different direction. With the extensive MLS revenue sharing costing all the owners, and places like Atlanta doing so well, patience is probably wearing thin with these old weaker MLS 1.0 markets. Getting rid of Chivas was addition by subtraction, and I'm sure they view Columbus the same way.

If the team is moved, the USL should look into expanding there. A budget team might do ok.

[Auzzy]

Yes it could be that a move out of Columbus makes economic sense, but the info that OgtheDim posted makes it looks like they (MLS & Precourt) are doing this in a much more scummy fashion than necessary.

[dupont]

I am not cool with this at all. TFC fans and Crew fans have their differences but this team is from the old tough era of MLS and ripping apart the history is awful to me

[DIEHARDTFC]

In the NBA I was not happy at all to see the SuperSonics leave a city they had been in for over 40 years and won a title in, leave for OKC. Similarly, I am not a fan of seeing one of the original MLS franchises and a team that has won a championship in that city just up and leave.

It just goes to show how shitty management/ownership can really drastically change the course of a franchise. We're on top of the league now, but had the bloody big deal and the aftershocks of that not happened on Liewickie's watch and we had remained as god awful as we were, I dread to think at how quickly ML$E would have started have backroom conversations about how TFC and and BMO Field were hurting their bottom line and ROI. It might seem farfetched to think that drastically, and obviously Toronto is head and shoulders above Columbus in every aspect of an urban city, but this still serves as a rude reminder of how fast ownership will sell fans down the river to fill their fat pockets.

[nonc]

What is FC Dallas punishment for having the lowest attendance? Oh wait no they get a bonus point in a game they should have forfeited instead...

[Redcoe15]

This.

Which is why Cincy & Nashville & Sacramento are all getting teams announced in December (I think)

Detroit will have something to say about that.

[mistercorporate]

In some ways, Crew should self-relegate themselves to USL and maintain the brand. Austin can setup a new identity. Win-win for all involved.

[Kaz]

As much as I'd prefer fewer texan teams (3-4 seems high)

Austin is a very different city than it once was. SXSW is a fairly major youth festival and the population is among the most liberal in the state (iirc). 76% of the population is under 44 and 49% of the population is between 20-44 with a median age 2 years younger than Columbus.

A downtown location in Austin could work well.

The major issue is trying to build a stadium. 10 years ago would have been fairly easy. Today it will be much more difficult. Most of the land that could have been easily obtained has been already redeveloped, and the land available though in a better spot than Columbus isn't in the urban area that is desirable.

[Fort York Redcoat]

Agreed on the money for a stadium (although TFC has a major bucks owner and benefited from public contribution to the stadium). But I don't think a team leaving should be celebrated. Maybe not 120 but they're 20 years there. Sad.

Were they not the first team announced? The first Soccer specific stadium in this league? Lemar Hunt help build this league centered from a little talked about city.

That has nothing to do with how I feel about his club or their fans but to ignore the rest is a disservice.

[Couchy81]

Been reading through the Big soccer forum on this one and the verifiable stuff is pretty scummy.

• Precourt bought the team with a 10 year do not move clause....unless he took the team to Austin
• Crew linked up a few years ago with Austin as their affiliate team and sent many key staff down there
• Players were not told prior to today's points
• Last payment for next year's season seats were made yesterday
• When sold off a few years ago, 3 bids were made for the Crew, 2 by locals, 1 by Precourt - his was an overbid by a large amount
• Local businesses in the last 6 months have tried to buy the team outright, 50/50 or even 51/49 so Precourt feels he is still in charge - all rebuffed without even being listened to
• the local MLS to Austin group has links to Precourt
• the local MLS to Austin group announced they will be doing watch parties of Crew games

Of note:

• Austin pols do not want to spend a dime on this and are being lobbied by Columbus business people to make this as difficult for Precourt as possible, in order to make the move untenable
• Rumour has it Garber will allow Precourt to take the Crew records with him, including the Star for their MLS Cup win
• Bill Archer is a racist ass
• there are a lot of good people losing a whole chunk of their lives in all this

So did he end up bidding less than what an expansion fee would have been for a fresh Austin team? Because that is what this looks like. Get rid of the crappy team with the incentive of not paying the expansion fee. Win-win for MLS and Precourt.

[Red CB Toronto]

So did he end up bidding less than what an expansion fee would have been for a fresh Austin team? Because that is what this looks like. Get rid of the crappy team with the incentive of not paying the expansion fee. Win-win for MLS and Precourt.

Yes, less than half.$68M to exact for both the stadium and team.

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcom...www.google.ca/

[fergiejr]

Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/BadMLSComics/status/920678742028181504

[ensco]

Were they not the first team announced? The first Soccer specific stadium in this league? Lemar Hunt help build this league centered from a little talked about city.

That has nothing to do with how I feel about his club or their fans but to ignore the rest is a disservice.

I dunno. It happens. The Montreal Maroons and New York Americans were foundational NHL franchises, too.

[OgtheDim]

So did he end up bidding less than what an expansion fee would have been for a fresh Austin team? Because that is what this looks like. Get rid of the crappy team with the incentive of not paying the expansion fee. Win-win for MLS and Precourt.

Yeah, except

a) they are poisoning a relatively mature market that is within a few hundred miles of a probable new team

b) Austin this way screws San Antonio, which is as likely to be a viable market as Austin, with a proven ownership group


I think Austin is not as good as most of the current expansion possibilities.


And absolutely nothing in his makeup indicates Precourt is a decent owner who will make Austin into something more then an MLS 2.0 team.

[OgtheDim]

So been planned for over a year

https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus...n.html?ana=twt

[Heart of Stone]

Great hangover meals at White Castle and Cracker Barrel will be missed.

[Auzzy]

We all love to hate Columbus & the Crew, that's understandable. But the more I hear about this situation, the more it pisses me off. Ensco said it right: it's only 10 minutes by car (about 8 km) from downtown Columbus to MAPFRE stadium. Even by transit it's only 30 minutes, which is amazing since Columbus transit mostly sucks -- and not really relevant since so few take it. BTW MAPFRE is walking distance from Ohio State, with a student body of 66k, and over 35k employees.

Why would they want a stadium closer to downtown? It seems like a ruse to just get out of there. Lamar Hunt was a decent MLS 1.0 owner; first soccer-specific stadium, but it needs an upgrade that Precourt doesn't want to pay for. And from what I've read, it seems that since the sale to Precourt, general marketing, or specific attempts to attract an OSU or other distinct crowd, have been absolutely minimal. No guarantee that this specific owner will do any better in Austin.

Remember that Columbus is the largest city in Ohio: City population of almost 1 million, and metro over 2 million. If the owner cared or had a clue, why can't they be as successful as the Cincinnati team hopes to be? (Cincy city pop of 300k; metro over 2 million -- even more decentralized and sprawling than Columbus.)

BTW Salt Lake City is far smaller than Columbus (200k/1.1 million metro), with the stadium in Sandy Utah 23 km from downtown SLC. They do quite well with a good ownership group.

Everything about this seems scummy and weird, from timing, to multi-year preparation, impact on an organic San Antonio bid, and so much more. Of course the team in Frisco, Texas should move first, but they're getting the US Soccer Hall of Fame out there in the middle of nowhere, probably securing the MLS team location for a while.

[Fort York Redcoat]

I dunno. It happens. The Montreal Maroons and New York Americans were foundational NHL franchises, too.

Right. And although i didn't know that I did know and appreciate some cool old hockey teams.(Remember those old sweaters they began to sell again?).



I get they aren't even gone yet but I hope once they are peeps can at least place them in history of the league. Rowdies, Fusion, Chivas etc.

[Areathrasher]

Are the SG's planning on any "SavetheCrew" banners or fuck you precourt chants?

[Oldtimer]

Are the SG's planning on any "SavetheCrew" banners or fuck you precourt chants?

I don't know what the Crews groups are doing. I tend to avoid them. #xenophobic #billarcherfans

Maybe Phil has heard something from the supporters union?