COLUMBUS – The San Francisco-based owner of the Columbus Crew SC, the city’s Major League Soccer franchise, confirmed the company is considering moving the team to Texas after next year because remaining in Columbus is “not sustainable” due to poor attendance, slow season ticket sales and a lack of corporate support.
Anthony Precourt, CEO of Precourt Sports Ventures and chairman of Columbus Crew SC, said in a statement released Tuesday morning that his company, which bought the Crew SC in 2013, is “exploring strategic options to ensure the long-term viability of the Club, including remaining in Columbus at a new stadium or potentially relocating the Club to the city of Austin, Texas.”
“Our situation [in Columbus] is not sustainable. We need to get to a place where we can be successful and put out a good proc on and off the field,” Precourt told reporters Tuesday morning.
Precourt said the company was troubled by the “growing disparity in attendance and corporate support” compared to similar Major League Soccer markets like Kansas City, Orlando, Portland and Salt Lake City.
“Despite our investments and efforts, the current course is not sustainable. This Club has ambition to be a standard bearer in MLS, therefore we have no choice but to expand and explore all of our options. This includes a possible move to Austin, which is the largest metropolitan area in North America without a major league sports franchise.” –Anthony Precourt, CEO of Precourt Sports Ventures and chairman of Columbus Crew SC
Columbus officials are trying to find a way to keep the team in town, according to reports in the Columbus Dispatch and on WBNS 10-TV.
“We made an effort, and an offer, to both buy the team outright as well as go into a 50-50 partnership — an aggressive effort to do what we can to keep the team in Columbus,” Alex Fischer, president and CEO of the Columbus partnership, a group of local business leaders, told the newspaper.
Precourt would not comment on Fischer’s statement but said he had not received any promises of private financial support for what he said would be a “world class soccer-specific stadium” unless he was willing to provide more details.
“There was no serious offer made to me in regard to investment in the Crew,” Precourt said. “No investor in Columbus has ever given me a formal serious offer and they’ve all expressed they would not have an interest in investing in the team until we had a stadium plan.”
Precourt said the company was considering three downtown Columbus locations as potential sites for a future stadium to replace 20-year-old MAPFRE Stadium but did not name them
Columbus Crew SC was the first charter granted in Major League Soccer in 1996 and MAPFRE Stadium was the first stadium in the U.S. built specifically for professional soccer. Precourt vowed the team would remain in Columbus in 2018.