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Columbus Crew SC (2008, 2020, 2023 MLS Champions)

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#SaveTheCrew Pens Open Letter to Future Columbus Crew SC Owners

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Since the news broke last fall that the Columbus Crew SC might be relocating to Austin, the future of the team has looked murky. Spurred by the enthusiasm behind the #SaveTheCrew movement, city leaders and MLS began negotiating ways to keep the Crew in Ohio, but the Crew owner Anthony Precourt was already staking out new stadiums in Texas. In March, the dispute entered the legal realm, with the State of Ohio and the City of Columbus jointly filing a lawsuit against Precourt Sports Ventures to keep the team from being relocated.

Now, #SaveTheCrew is looking for a new solution — a local investor who’ll swoop in, purchase the team, and keep them in Columbus. Following is their open letter to that potential investor:

Dear Future Owner of Columbus Crew SC,

We’d like to start by saying thank you. Thank you for standing up for our city. Thank you for believing, and investing, in the future of our soccer club. We will always and forever be grateful.

Over the last seven months our group has worked tirelessly with Crew fans everywhere to reach this pivotal moment. We’ve spread the message worldwide, rallied the local community together, and have actively worked on marketing promotions and brand building designed to strengthen the deep roots of our city’s team. In short, we’ve created the most effective grassroots movement in U.S. sports history.

Time after time, we’ve heard from the dedicated Crew fanbase, who feel they’ve been abandoned. Their voices ignored. Their community forgotten. Columbus Crew SC has never had majority local ownership, and thus has never fulfilled its true and glorious potential.

It all changes with you.

After you invest in this team, Save The Crew pledges to place the full might of this movement squarely behind you. We promise to support you completely. We will use every strategic tool at our disposal to ensure that the Crew is a massively successful franchise, on and off the field, in Columbus for generations to come.

To that end we recently announced an initiative to collect season ticket pledges for the 2019 season (savethecrew.com/project2019/pledge). More than 5,000 season tickets were pledged to a new, local, investor/operator within the first 48-hours. This list is part of our commitment to help you hit the ground running.

The shadow cast by history is a long one. When the book is written about how our entire community rallied to save this team, the final chapter will be about the local Columbus leaders who stepped in and Saved The Crew.

Respectfully,

Your friends at Save The Crew

Entire article: https://www.columbusunderground.com...-letter-to-future-columbus-crew-sc-owners-ls1
 
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The owners of Columbus Crew SC published a proposal to build a $200 million stadium in Austin, Texas, after a report from the city found the planned location to be a "suitable site."

Columbus Crew owners make MLS stadium proposal after Austin finds site suitable

Crew owners Precourt Sports Ventures (PSV) have been searching for a stadium site since announcing plans to potentially relocate the MLS club last October.

After being rebuffed from using various parks around the city, PSV settled on a city-owned 24-acre site at McKalla Place in north Austin near the Domain, and the city's report, with contributions from 14 departments, did not object to its use for a stadium.

"Overall, staff's assessment indicates that McKalla Place is a suitable site for a Major League Soccer stadium," the report said. "There is current compliant zoning, sufficient utility capacity, and daily on-site trips would be low."

That sparked PSV to file a 189-page proposal that laid out the benefits of bringing an MLS team to the city and asked for the land in exchange for constructing a privately financed stadium.

A 2017 appraisal lists the site's value at $9.645m, but the city's report also calls for nearly $30m in infrastructure costs, including $13m for a new MetroRail stadium, the costs of which could be negotiated.

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Rendering of potential MLS stadium at McKalla Place in Austin, Texas.

Entire article: http://www.espn.com/soccer/major-le...ium-proposal-after-austin-finds-site-suitable
 
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They gone...

Plans released for MLS stadium deal in Austin with Precourt Sports Ventures

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Austin City Council is going to have a special meeting next Wednesday, Aug. 1, to present potential agreements with Precourt Sports Ventures for a planned Major League Soccer stadium and team.

...

PSV will pay for construction and financing, but then donate the stadium to the city upon completion. The term sheet plans for just over 8 acres of green space, open space and performance areas next to the stadium that will be usable by the public year-round.
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https://www.nbc4i.com/news/details-of-mls-stadium-deal-at-mckalla-place-released/1330994094


I don't even like soccer and haven't watched a second of an MLS game before, but this level of duplicity and insincerity piss me off. Fuck Precourt and his merry band of fucktards. I don't know why anyone would spend another dime going to one of his games now.
 
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Mike80 said:
They gone...



https://www.nbc4i.com/news/details-of-mls-stadium-deal-at-mckalla-place-released/1330994094


I don't even like soccer and haven't watched a second of an MLS game before, but this level of duplicity and insincerity piss me off. Fuck Precourt and his merry band of fucktards. I don't know why anyone would spend another dime going to one of his games now.
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I went to the season opener to see some friends, and haven’t been back since for that very reason. Fuck Precourt, Fuck MLS for being in this trust fund twat’s corner since day one, and Fuck Austin City Council if they fall for this snake oil bullshit.
 
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TooTallMenardo said:
I went to the season opener to see some friends, and haven’t been back since for that very reason. Fuck Precourt, Fuck MLS for being in this trust fund twat’s corner since day one, and Fuck Austin City Council if they fall for this snake oil bullshit.
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And reading the through that document, snake oil it is. :lol:

Starts off with, we're gonna build a 200 million dollar stadium and give it to you. (Unless it's less than 200 million, in which case it won't be 200 million). Then we get to use it for our purposes... Then later we will pay rent, but you're gonna take most of that rent and put it in an improvement fund. Then you get to pay the upkeep beyond that and we will keep using it and keep all the profit, except the rent, that you have to give back to us.

And other fun stuff.
 
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AKAK said:
And reading the through that document, snake oil it is. :lol:

Starts off with, we're gonna build a 200 million dollar stadium and give it to you. (Unless it's less than 200 million, in which case it won't be 200 million). Then we get to use it for our purposes... Then later we will pay rent, but you're gonna take most of that rent and put it in an improvement fund. Then you get to pay the upkeep beyond that and we will keep using it and keep all the profit, except the rent, that you have to give back to us.

And other fun stuff.
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What could go wrong?

https://deadspin.com/is-mls-a-ponzi-scheme-1797509617
 
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TooTallMenardo said:
I went to the season opener to see some friends, and haven’t been back since for that very reason. Fuck Precourt, Fuck MLS for being in this trust fund twat’s corner since day one, and Fuck Austin City Council if they fall for this snake oil bullshit.
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Precourt will get out right before the TV negotiation failure of 2024 and right before Austin is left with a stadium they can’t pay for with a team that is relegated to the USL. And they will deserve all of it.
 
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Austin City Council postpone MLS stadium vote to August 15

Austin City Council put off until next week a vote on a stadium proposal that could trigger Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew to move to Texas as early as the 2019 season.

The council met for several hours Thursday night to vote on a plan to let Crew owner Anthony Precourt build a 20,000-seat, $200 million privately-funding stadium on city land.

Precourt has been exploring moving one of MLS' founding clubs to Austin since 2017. He earlier in the day urged council members to adopt what he called the "most favorable" stadium deal for any MLS city.

The Austin proposal is strongly supported by Mayor Steve Adler. But it has faced tough resistance from some council members who question whether the land could be better used for affordable housing or parks in Texas' booming capital city.

"We don't have very many events in this city that bring everybody together, that bring people of every walk of like together," Adler said. "That's a huge thing, a huge value for a city in desperate need of something like this. Not everything has to solve all of our problems."

Adler said he thought the plan had the votes to pass, but agreed to delay action until Aug. 15 after several council members said they wanted more time to review a flurry of late-filed amendments.

Austin City Council has been negotiating with Precourt for about 10 months. Richard Suttle, Precourt's lobbyist before the council, has said any delay makes it more difficult to move in time for the 2019 season.

Suttle said he's optimistic the votes are lining up to support the plan, despite the delay.

Entire article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/90min...pone-mls-stadium-vote-to-august-15-story.html
 
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http://www.columbuseaglesfc.com/wp/...ncil-regarding-psv-womens-soccer-savethecrew/

Our Letter to Austin City Council Regarding PSV, Women’s Soccer, #SaveTheCrew

POSTED ON AUGUST 14, 2018 BY GRANT BURKHARDT
From Mark Wise, Our CEO

To Whom It May Concern:

I have been following with keen interest your dealings and negotiations with Precourt Sports Ventures (PSV), as I am a long-time fan of Columbus Crew SC. As the owner of the Columbus Eagles, the Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL) team here in Columbus, Ohio, I was especially interested in recent developments where it appears PSV has offered to prove it cares about “Gender Equality” by funding and supporting a WPSL team there in Austin.

I felt compelled to write to you in the hopes that – while you are making this tough decision – you are fully aware of the facts regarding PSV’s support for women’s soccer.

When I created the Columbus Eagles in the fall of 2013, I reached out to Columbus Crew SC’s President of Business Operations to determine Crew SC’s interest in the women’s side of the game. It was important to me to talk to them first – I was concerned that should I invest in building a fan base for the women’s side, it would be quite simple for Crew SC to start their own women’s team and marginalize my efforts.

I was told, quite simply, that Columbus Crew SC (and therefore PSV) had no interest whatsoever in fielding a women’s side. This meeting proved to me that I should invest in the women’s game myself, and that PSV had no interest in doing so.

Over the past five years we have subsequently approached Crew SC many times asking for minimal levels of support. We asked for simple things like announcing our results, sending out a tweet or e-mail to let their fans know there was a women’s side in town. We even held three of our regular season games in MAPFRE Stadium, and we paid a large price to do so. We asked – simply – for a social media mention that we would be playing in their stadium just hours before one of Crew SC’s regular league matches. They would not. We even offered to pay for an ad on one of their in-stadium announcement boards and were told we would have to buy a minimum sponsorship in the neighborhood of $25,000 just to be able to run the ad.

So, you can see why it was quite surprising to me that PSV announced it would be supporting the women’s side in Austin via the Lonestar Soccer Club and its girls’ side.

I offer to you my opinion: That this offer of support for girl’s and women’s soccer is no more than a token offering so that PSV can – as a marketing tool only – claim gender equality. Their offer should be considered quite carefully, as it indicates a willingness to say whatever it takes to get the deal done, even if they never expect to follow through with their offer.

So, please consider carefully this offer of support for the women’s side of the game and see it for what it is: Someone asked PSV “What about the girls?” and only then did they provide a undisclosed offer of support for a co-ed soccer club (which also leads me to wonder what the boys-to-girls ratio is at Lonestar SC). PSV’s history of non-support for the women’s side of the game should speak very loudly within this discussion.

I have one last thought for you to consider: If PSV would attempt to make themselves look like they support the women’s game through this kind of undisclosed offer, what other claims have they made through this process that are – or will prove to be – also suspect?

I thank you for your time in considering what I have written here. I know these decisions are never easy and there are many things to consider. I just know that when offering such a valuable public resource to a community, if it were up to me, I would want to partner with someone I can rely on and trust.

Sincerely,

Mark L. Wise
Owner/CEO
COLUMBUS EAGLES FC, LLC
 
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Dryden said:
MAPFRE Stadium being 3 miles from downtown is unacceptable, so PSV wants to move to Austin where the McKalla Pl site proposal will be 10 miles from downtown.
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Not to mention traffic.... Mopac (major road to get there from south of that location) is horrible for traffic. I wont be making that 40 minute trek to watch a game thats for sure... Getting to and from that location will be a nightmare

It wont very long... if they do come it’ll be 2 or 3 years of increased attendance then it’ll start dropping off when they try to hold a Saturday afternoon game when its 100+ degrees outside..
 
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