Momentum gaining for more professional organizations
An Austin sports market long dominated by Longhorn collegiate athletics may soon go pro.
"Of course UT sports have been a big boon for the city of Austin for a long time," Mayor Lee Leffingwell said. "In a lot of ways it's like having our own professional team."
The University of Texas football program is often considered Austin's alternative to a traditional sports franchise—a team from the National Football League, National Basketball League, Major League Baseball or National Hockey League. Austin remains the largest city in the nation to not host a team from any of those four leagues, but the city is garnering interest from other pro sports.
An international spotlight first shined on Austin two years ago when the new Circuit of the Americas racetrack hosted the Formula One United States Grand Prix. The venue has since hosted multiple other motorsports events, and beginning June 5 it will become the new home of ESPN's Summer X Games.
Adding to that momentum, the Austin Aztex soccer organization is seeking to upgrade leagues as early as 2015 en route to potentially becoming a Major League Soccer franchise, and the Austin Aces pro tennis team will debut in early July at the Cedar Park Center. Discussions are also ongoing to develop a PGA Tour–quality golf course that could someday host a pro event, Leffingwell said.
The two-term mayor called Major League Soccer, or MLS, a logical starting point to grow Austin's pro sports credentials, but he also believes the city could accommodate the highest levels of football and baseball.
"We don't want to think too small around here," Leffingwell said. "Should an NFL franchise become available, Austin is big enough to handle that."
Pro sports goals
The NFL is not coming to Austin any time soon, said Matthew Payne, Austin Sports Commission executive director, but pro soccer could.
"I don't think we necessarily have to have one of the top four major league pro teams to put us on the map—we're already on the map," said Payne, who leads the city's sports marketing efforts. "I just have a feeling an MLS franchise could do really well here."
Austin City Council on March 6 approved a resolution in support of starting an Austin-based MLS team. The Aztex organization is working on upgrading leagues as early as 2015, team spokesman Jeffrey Burns said. Team officials are considering a move, he said, from the Premier Development League to the United Soccer Leagues Pro Division—one tier above the team's current amateur league and two tiers below MLS.
"We're going to continue growing that fan base organically," Burns said. Aztex attendance nearly doubled from 2012 to last year, he said, when the team won its league title.
Burns said the team must work its way up the pro tiers, and the city must host an international match before MLS will seriously consider expanding to Austin.
MLS spokesman Dan Courtemanche said multiple cities are in consideration for three league expansion opportunities, including Austin and San Antonio, which already has a second-tier pro team and a stadium capable of expanding to MLS standards. San Antonio may not represent direct competition to Austin's pursuit of an MLS team, said Courtemanche, who cited many soccer rivalries that stemmed from close geographic ties.
The University of Texas also does not deter MLS from establishing in Austin, he said, pointing to the success of the Columbus Crew.
"Last I checked, there is a pretty powerful university named The Ohio State University in that market," he said. "I think that stands for itself that we're certainly open to having teams in markets where there are large academic institutions."
Perhaps more of a deterrent may be the soccer league's desire to have a centrally located stadium in new markets. The current Aztex home, Austin ISD's House Park, does not meet MLS stadium size requirements. AISD officials said the school district has not been contacted about upgrading the public facility.
Eric DeJernett, a commercial real estate broker at CBRE Group Inc.'s Austin office, said there are no vacant sites for sale big enough to meet MLS new stadium standards near downtown, where land is 10 times more expensive than the city's outskirts.
"Any tract of land that big in the central core I think would be prohibitively expensive and there would be other priority uses for it," said Leffingwell, who also suggested such a downtown venue would only exacerbate congestion. "It's something to try to avoid, if we could."
Leffingwell instead recommended a South Austin or suburban location for a possible pro sports venue. On the other end of the metro area, the success of the Round Rock Express has prompted the Austin suburb to show interest in hosting an MLB franchise. Reid Ryan, Express co-founder and current Houston Astros president of business operations, said the Austin area is more likely to obtain an existing franchise rather than a new expansion team.
"You have to have a viable plan in place because when these things do happen, it is normally the team and the city that are most prepared and ready to go that end up getting it," said Ryan, whose father is Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan.
The Ryan family would be the likeliest group to gain MLB's attention, Payne said. Still, a sport such as PGA Tour pro golf is more likely in the short term to establish in Austin, he said.
Leffingwell visited with PGA officials in late March during a tour stop in San Antonio to discuss such a possibility. The mayor suggested developing a PGA-quality golf course on city-owned land in East Austin by Decker Lake near the Travis County Expo Center.
"It'd be an amenity not only for PGA golf but for other uses as well," Leffingwell said, recommending a public-private partnership be put into place. "It's just something we're taking a closer look at right now."
Building Austin's sports brand
Hosting F1 has helped make the city one of the hottest and most unique sports destinations in the nation, Payne said.
"COTA was a real game-changer for Austin, in our eyes," he said. "They came right out of the gate with one of the largest sporting events in the world, and now they get a chance to start filling up the calendar."
X Games comes to the racetrack after a well-organized plea from city and COTA officials. After 11 years in Los Angeles, ESPN picked Austin over finalists Chicago, Detroit and Charlotte, N.C.
"They put a lot of trust and confidence into our city to host that event, and the team at COTA pulled that off," Payne said.
Once a field three years ago, COTA has quickly transformed into a venue that hosts more than 200 events per year, said Jason Dial, who took over as CEO of the racetrack in October. Sports Business Journal this year nominated COTA as the "Pro Sports Facility of the Year," joining New York City's Madison Square Garden, among other nominees.
While F1 attracts an international audience—last year's event drew visitors from more than 40 nations, X Games will be a more regional and national draw, Dial said.
"X Games fit very well with the things Austin stands for," he said. "It's got great appeal."
The X Games continue a trend of nontraditional sports in Austin, said Lara Bell, a.k.a. Lucille Brawl of the Texas Rollergirls organization. Roller derby has evolved drastically as a sport since Bell started 12 years ago, she said.
"We were like the punk rock band that didn't want to sell out," she said.
Fortunately for the organization, the move to downtown has paid off, making the Rollergirls and Aztex the only non-college sports teams to compete in Central Austin.
"In some ways, we're breaking the mold," Bell said. "Other sports are going to the suburbs. We didn't want to go to the suburbs. We wanted to be where the action is."
The Austin Aces considered other locations before committing to the 5,500-seat Cedar Park Center—one of the largest venues in the Mylan World Team Tennis League, Aces General Manager Kerry Schneider said.
"We were looking at places we would consider more Central Austin," she said. "That facility from a tennis perspective right now doesn't exist for our particular brand of tennis."
Instead, the Aces will be among three of seven league teams to play indoor. Austin native Andy Roddick will lead the expansion franchise after helping to draw the team here from Orange County, Calif.
"Andy is a hometown hero," Schneider said. "We're really hoping people that just might want to support [Roddick] will come as well and end up really liking what they see on the court." Additional reporting by JP Eichmiller
