Austin's tortuous path to pro soccer

Anthony Precourt was entering the final stage of his plan to move Columbus Crew SC to Austin, and he knew the man sitting across the table would do everything in his power to foil the deal.

Precourt met Bobby Epstein on May 23, 2018, nearly a year after both learned they were on a collision course. Precourt said he initiated the interaction because he wanted to introduce himself. Epstein told the American-Statesman that Precourt wanted him to back off of his soccer ambitions.

Over breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel, Austin’s future soccer team owners searched for common ground. They left having found none.

Just a year earlier, the scenario would have seemed absurd to even the most ardent soccer supporters in the Texas capital. There hadn’t been a professional team since 2015 — making Austin the largest market without one. But by 2021, the city could go from zero teams to two.

Austin Bold FC, the first-year United Soccer League team owned by Epstein, has already played two matches and will take the pitch for its home opener later this month at Circuit of the Americas. The long-term future of that franchise is uncertain, mostly because a new Major League Soccer team owned by Precourt, Austin FC, has secured a 2021 start date and is set to begin construction of a 20,000-seat stadium in North Austin.

Rewind to the middle of 2017, and there were at least three groups fixated on bringing MLS to Austin. Text messages and emails obtained via open records requests, and other correspondence obtained by the Statesman, along with interviews, show how those concurrent efforts came to a head in late 2017 and Precourt emerged with his stadium deal in 2018.

‘It won’t happen’

“I’ve known there was some connection between the Crew and Austin for awhile, but I didn’t know what that actually meant in real life.”

Sean Foley is familiar with the line between hypothetical and real. He spent the better part of 2017 trying to thread that needle, with a vision to transform Rodeo Austin at the Travis County Exposition Center. Renderings for the project, called the East Austin District, drew an estimated 43 million online views before joining the unbuilt stadium rendering hall of fame.

“Our pursuit (at the Expo Center) is finished,” he told the American-Statesman in January, referring to the proposed 40,000-seat stadium adjacent to a 15,000-seat arena, designed to include office space, a convention area, medical facilities, eight courtyards and retail.

Foley, a former University of Texas swimmer and business manager for Michael Phelps, cut his teeth as a sports executive with Raptor Group, a firm owned by billionaire investor Jim Pallotta that co-owns Italian soccer club A.S. Roma. Foley helped oversee development of the Stadio della Roma, a nearly $2 billion stadium project that will debut next year in Rome.

He moved back to Austin in late 2016 and launched Nine Banded Whiskey, at the same time partnering with sports and media entrepreneur Andrew Nestor in pursuit of a world-class sporting venue in East Austin. An MLS team as an anchor tenant seemed like a no-brainer. As they’d soon learn, they weren’t alone in that idea.

If there was ever a beginning, the beginning of the project’s end came on Oct. 16, 2017. That night, Foley’s suspicions became public knowledge when Sports Illustrated reporter Grant Wahl tweeted that Precourt was exploring Austin as a new home for the Crew.

“The narrative that we had always gotten, and that we had continued to get, was that (MLS in Austin) is complicated,” Foley said.

When the pair first unveiled the renderings on July 19, 2017, during a private event at the Contemporary Austin art museum, it set off alarm bells. Lobbyist Richard Suttle, who had already been working on MLS in Austin for several months, quickly tried to quell the excitement.

“I would steer clear of the Austin Sports Entertainment Group/purported MLS deal,” Suttle wrote in a July 18 text message to Mayor Steve Adler, obtained by the Statesman via an open records request.

In August, MLS Commissioner Don Garber signed a letter stating that Suttle was the only person authorized to represent the league in Austin. Then the Wahl tweet dropped in October, followed by rumors — since validated by Garber — that Precourt had, in his 2013 purchase of the Crew, secured franchise rights to the Austin market.

“We were extremely focused on building our own MLS club in Austin,” Precourt told the Statesman earlier this month. “We had the rights, preapproved by the board of Major League Soccer to bring a club to Austin if we could find the right stadium solution. I didn’t really worry too much about alternatives in the marketplace.”

Foley quickly got in touch with Adler and the league office, both of whom helped facilitate a meeting with Precourt in late 2017. But a text message from Suttle to Adler on Oct. 17 summed up the indifference Foley said he felt from Precourt throughout a lengthy stadium search.

“Damn. I don’t know what to say,” Suttle wrote, in reference to the Expo Center plans. “Truth is it won’t happen.”

Bringing Bold

Around the same time the Expo Center renderings were first displayed, Adler was visiting Epstein at the COTA chairman’s vacation home in Aspen, Colo., a visit that both the mayor and Epstein confirmed took place in July 2017.

Epstein had exciting news — pro soccer was coming back to Austin. After a yearlong battle with the USL to re-secure franchise rights, planning was underway to put a team at the Formula One racetrack. The mayor didn’t have the eager reaction Epstein was hoping for. Adler held information that he knew would devastate Epstein.

“I knew that MLS was thinking about the city, but I wasn’t in a position where I could tell anybody about my conversations with MLS,” Adler told the Statesman. “That included everybody. That included (Epstein).”

Epstein rejects the premise that Adler treated the parties as equals.

“He could have talked to everybody,” Epstein said. “He could have said, ‘I’m interested in bringing pro soccer here. I don’t know which one of you is going to make it to the finish line, but I sure want to nurture it.’

“Instead I think he tried to pick (Precourt) and make that one his winner.”

The mayor encouraged Epstein to contact Suttle. By the time he went ahead with a USL Austin announcement in August, the COTA investor knew the risk he was taking. He figured he had come too far, and spent too much money, to give up his goal of bringing top-flight pro soccer to Austin without a fight.

Epstein bought into the USL in 2014 when he joined the ownership group for the Austin Aztex. The third-year amateur Premier Development League club was gearing up for a jump to the USL, a league that was then designated the third division of U.S. Soccer. Epstein joined founder David Markley and lead investor Rene Van De Zande as a minority investor, with an announcement at City Hall.

Epstein “wanted to get to MLS,” Van De Zande told the Statesman in February. “We all know that requires a lot of capital. Well, Bobby is in that league.”

In the short term, Van De Zande would continue to foot the majority of the operation costs. Epstein and his business partner Paul Thornton, also an Aztex minority investor, began scouting stadium sites. Nick Moulinet, then a senior vice president at civil engineering firm Bury, helped determine feasibility. He estimates that the group knew about every viable piece of land within the borders of MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1), Texas 45 North, U.S. 183 and as far south as Kyle.

“Find something (on a map) that looks like it’s about 15 to 20 acres, and I can promise you we looked at it,” Moulinet told the Statesman.

The stadium search lasted nearly two years.

Epstein favored multiple sites in the vicinity of the Domain, including a parcel of Robinson Ranch near where Texas 45 North crosses Parmer Lane, and a site near Top Golf east of Burnet Road between MoPac and Kramer Lane. An email sent from Thornton to Epstein, Van De Zande and Markley, obtained by the Statesman, reads like something that could have appeared in Precourt’s proposal for McKalla — which wouldn’t appear for another four years.

“Being at the Domain site would really lend to the whole game day experience,” Thornton wrote in June 2014. “With bars, restaurants, shops, hotels, etc., the pre-game and post-game (opportunities) are abundant and that really makes the experience so much better as an event more than just a game. … I would think MLS would consider that still part of the downtown core. And lots of parking options already all around that would help spread the parking needs.”

Rebuffed by landowners near the Domain, the Aztex investors shifted their gaze toward a site east of downtown owned by Capital Metro, near Pleasant Valley Road and Fifth Street. Epstein spoke with Linda Watson, who was then the transportation authority’s president and CEO, in April 2015 and sent her pictures of MLS stadiums in Houston; Montreal; Kansas City, Kan.; and Harrison, N.J..

“I have to say that you certainly did spark some interest in having further discussions,” Watson wrote back in an email.

Mike Martinez, a former Austin City Council member, also helped with the stadium search. On Sept. 2, 2016, he wrote an email to Bobby Epstein and current Bold General Manager Roberto Silva with the subject line: “I found a unicorn.” He was referring to the site now known as McKalla Place where Precourt’s stadium will be built.

“The city has tried to sell this site in the past and faced a lot of opposition from the ‘neighborhood,’ ” Martinez wrote in the email. “I think I can get it done with strategic partnerships.”

Martinez told the Statesman in January, “McKalla was still out there as a potential site. There wasn’t much of a conversation to be had. When MLS announced its expansion franchise list (in February 2017), we weren’t on that list.”

Epstein paid two visits to MLS headquarters in New York. At the first, in August 2014, he and Van De Zande met with Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott and Vice President Charles Altchek. Epstein returned in September 2015 for a more formal conversation with Garber.

“They were clear that Austin was not going to be a good expansion candidate until it showed that soccer could be supported here at the USL level,” Epstein said.

By then, the decision had already been made to shutter the Aztex at the end of the 2015 season. The team’s first professional campaign had brought with it steep financial losses that led Epstein to become majority owner. Major flooding at House Park in May 2015 required a midseason move to Kelly Reeves Athletic Complex on Parmer Lane in far Northwest Austin. With no permanent stadium solution in sight, Epstein reached an agreement with the USL in July to, in his words, “go dark.”

For the second time in five years, pro soccer had vacated Austin. Those involved knew that, no matter the public perception, the city was never short of suitors.

“The entire time I was running a PDL team here, there were always sharks in the water,” said Markley, who founded both versions of the Aztex in 2008 and 2012.

Meetings that started jovial would sometimes go silent, he recalled, when potential sponsors realized Markley wasn’t representing a different group with Austin soccer ambitions. When Phil Rawlins moved the original Aztex franchise to Orlando, Fla., in 2010, the North American Soccer League (then second division) flew Markley to Miami to discuss putting a new team in Austin.

Given the backdrop, he thought a partnership with the Columbus Crew seemed innocent.

Markley said he first met Dave Greeley at the 2013 USL league meetings in Tampa, Fla. Precourt had purchased the Crew that summer, as the Aztex were having their best season in franchise history. Greeley, who’d been hired as president of Precourt Sports Ventures, watched Aztex leaders shuttle back and forth from the awards stand. He invited Markley to lunch and expressed interest in a partnership if and when the franchised jumped to the USL.

“Knowing what I know now, I understand a little bit more why they might have been interested in partnering with us,” Markley told the Statesman.

The Crew and Aztex were partners in 2015, an agreement that allowed Columbus reserves to play in Austin and, theoretically, provided a path for Aztex players to MLS. Defender Kalen Ryden and forward Adam Bedell came to Austin that season on loan. In February, the Aztex hosted an MLS preseason tournament called the ATX Pro Challenge. Over two days, the Crew, FC Dallas, DC United and the Aztex competed for an armadillo trophy at Myers Stadium on the University of Texas campus.

“We paid a lot of money to make that happen,” said Van De Zande, who now owns a minority stake in the Bold.

In the end, hosting the Crew brass for a week might have cost Epstein even more.

“It just sucked that we tell them everything about the city, and our partner never said, ‘By the way, guys, if it works and you’re successful, we’re going to come in and run you over,’ ” Epstein said. “In their defense, they also didn’t tell Columbus.”

Checkmate

Epstein maintains that he kept MLS updated as he was planning to bring the USL back to Austin. On July 19, 2017, the same day Foley’s group presented its renderings at the Contemporary Austin, Epstein sent an email notifying MLS officials that he was close to announcing a team for the 2019 season. In August, he decided to go public.

Perhaps the only person who knew intimate details of what all three groups were planning was Adler. In addition to his conversations with Epstein and MLS executives, he’d been approached by Foley, who was trying to garner City Council support for the East Austin proposal. Even after the MLS veil was lifted in October, there were certain details he couldn’t share with either group.

“It’s kind of awkward because I was hearing stuff from Sean that I couldn’t share with Precourt,” Adler said. “I was hearing stuff from Precourt that I couldn’t share with Sean. I come from a background as a lawyer, and I’ve done that my whole career, where I’ve had information that was privileged or protected for somebody that I couldn’t share with somebody else.”

From his vantage point, what the mayor witnessed was less a race than a game of chess. Early on, MLS favored downtown sites over what Foley offered at the Expo Center. Confident he had a plan that would garner political support, Foley decided to stick it out. The hope was that Precourt would run out of options and be forced to consider a partnership.

“We have no reason to position ourselves as competitive,” Foley said. “We were positioning ourselves as a solution to a pursuit.”

Precourt said he never seriously considered the plan.

“The architectural firm had some very attractive designs,” he said. “It was important for us to be in the right location in Austin, and we think McKalla Place is much more attractive than the Expo Center.”

Meanwhile, Epstein spent the end of 2017 watching and waiting. Under pressure from the USL to either launch the franchise or lose it for good, he weighed his options. By January 2018, Precourt had started a political firestorm with his proposal to build a stadium on parkland.

Precourt Sports Ventures “said they were exploring moving to Austin,” Epstein said. “Just because somebody is exploring doesn’t mean you stop your pursuits also.”

The decision to forge ahead led to the May breakfast with Precourt at the Four Seasons.

In the months since, Epstein has launched a full-fledged campaign against the MLS stadium agreement. Records show he donated more than $128,000 for a petition effort aimed at thwarting the contract between the city of Austin and Precourt. Epstein claims he’s less concerned with Austin FC’s arrival than he is with the structure of the deal, which calls for no public investment in the stadium but exempts Precourt from paying property taxes on the city-owned structure.

“I don’t think it’s right that one business pays property taxes and another business wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re thereby asking the one that pays to pay both guys’ shares. These are tax dollars that (the Austin) school district badly needs.

“The petition attempted to address that inequity.”

Hardcore Austin FC fans have responded by boycotting the Bold, potentially cutting into already thin profit margins for the fledgling minor league franchise.

“You’ve got to be careful when you start getting yourself involved in things that aren’t your business,” said Martinez, a proponent of the MLS deal. “When you try to get political, it can hurt you just as much as it might be able to help you.”

As for whether Epstein intends to continue his efforts in support of a potential referendum in November, he said it depends on whether the City Council elects to put such an item on the ballot.

“I think you’ll have to ask me that a little closer to November,” he said.

For now, he insists his focus is on making the Bold last. Epstein dismisses speculation that he intends to sell the USL franchise once MLS arrives and accepts that the team is likely to lose money year after year. It fits in within the overall mission for COTA, which is to become a tourist destination for more than just motorsports and music.

Epstein also has an affinity for soccer, having played the sport growing up and throughout his adult life. He still hosts, and plays in, pickup games every Wednesday at his Austin home.

“This one is so simple,” he said, comparing the Bold to his other investments. “It’s just going to be fun. You don’t go into this looking at a model that makes a profit, but you better enjoy it. So we intend to.”

While the Bold might have a head start on the field, Precourt is beginning to build Austin FC with a growing front office and a fully funded youth academy that will play its first matches in August. The club will be the 27th MLS franchise after the league found new owners in Columbus, allowing the Crew to remain in Ohio. Stadium construction is scheduled to begin this fall.

“I’m hugely passionate about the opportunity to build an MLS club in Austin,” Precourt said. “For years we thought that Austin would be an amazing market. I am so bullish on where the league is going and so excited to be part of Major League Soccer.”

For the past 18 months, the absurdity of Austin’s soccer and political scenes has been displayed for a national audience. From the outside, fingers pointed at failed PDL and USL franchises as reasons the market would never work. Locally, excuses were made about past ownership and stadium situations. All those claims are about to be tested.

“We all made our mistakes along the way and would have done certain things different,” Van De Zande said. “But now look where we are. You never know how things go. The successes and the failures all have taken part in where we are today.”