The city of Austin, Texas, and its metropolitan area has only one major professional sports league team. The city's professional soccer team, Austin FC, competes in Major League Soccer. Austin is also home to the University of Texas Longhorns and to several minor-league sports teams.
Many Austinites support the athletic programs of the University of Texas at Austin known as the Texas Longhorns. During the 2005–06 academic term, the Longhorns football team was named the NCAA Division I FBS National Football Champion and the Longhorns baseball team won the College World Series. [2] [3] The Texas Longhorns football team plays its home games in the state's second-largest sports stadium, Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium, seating over 101,000 fans. [4] Baseball games are played at UFCU Disch–Falk Field which underwent renovation in 1996 with an increased capacity to 6,756 seats plus 11 stadium suites.
Before Austin FC's arrival in 2021, Austin was the largest city in the United States without a club in a major professional sports league. [5] Minor-league professional sports came to Austin in 1996, when the Austin Ice Bats began playing at the Travis County Expo Center. [6] Since then, the Austin Ice Bats have been replaced by the Texas Stars [7] of the American Hockey League. Other teams have come to Austin including the Austin Spurs of the NBA Development League (later rebranded as the NBA G League), as well as the Spurs themselves starting to play regular season games at Moody Center since 2023. The Austin Huns Rugby Football Club [8] entered into their first year as a professional sports entity in 2016. The Round Rock Express Baseball Club [9] the Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers, play at Dell Diamond. The Express are owned and operated by Ryan Sanders Sports and Entertainment, which is led by Baseball Hall-of-Famer, Nolan Ryan. [10]
In October 2017, Precourt Sports Ventures announced a plan to move the Columbus Crew SC soccer franchise from Columbus, Ohio to Austin. [11] Precourt reached an arrangement with the City of Austin to construct a new courthouse $200 million stadium on public land at 10414 McKalla Place. [12] However, in October 2018, Jimmy Haslam, owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League, along with Columbus businessman Pete Edwards Jr., announced plans to acquire the Crew to keep the club in central Ohio and Precourt was instead granted an expansion club to operate in Austin. [13] Austin FC was then announced as planning to start play in the 2021 season. [14] [15] [16]
Natural features like the bicycle-friendly Texas Hill Country, limestone rock formations, and generally mild climate work with the centrally located Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail, and local pools like Barton Springs to make Austin the home of several endurance and multi-sport races and communities. The Capitol 10,000 is the largest 10 K race in Texas, and approximately fifth largest in the United States. [17] The Austin Marathon has been run in the city every year since 1992. The Austin-founded American Swimming Association hosts an open water swimming event, the Cap 2 K, and other closed-course, open water, and cable swim races around town.
Austin is also the hometown of several cycling groups and the former seven-time Tour de France champion cyclist [18] Lance Armstrong, as well as environmentally and economically minded bicycle commuters. Combining these three disciplines is a growing crop of triathlons, including the Capital of Texas Triathlon held every Memorial Day on and around Lady Bird Lake, Auditorium Shores, and Downtown Austin. [19] Local cyclists also compete in the Driveway Series, a weekly bicycle criterium held at Driveway Austin. [20]
In June 2010 it was announced by the Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone that the Austin area would host the Formula One, United States Grand Prix, from 2012 until 2021. The effort was aided by State Comptroller Susan Combs. The State has pledged to put up $25 million in public funds annually for 10 years to pay the sanctioning fees for the race. [21] The event was last held in 2007 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. [22] A Formula One circuit will need to be built at an estimated cost of $250 to $300 million, paid for by private investors, and is expected to be located just east of the Austin Bergstrom International Airport. The Austin investor group is headed by Tavo Hellmund, [23] President of Full Throttle Productions, LP. Hellmund, of Austin, is himself a former race car owner and driver. [24] Circuit of the Americas has also played host to MotoGP World Championships from 2013. Lewis Hamilton won the inaugural 2012 United States Grand Prix at Austin on November 18.
Driveway Austin was a motorsports track and racing school within the city, although not hosting sanctioned races and closing in 2021 to be annexed into a city park. Harris Hill Raceway in San Marcos hosts several racing series.
In July 2013 ESPN announced the X Games would relocate from Los Angeles to Austin, where the city served as one of six stops on the Global X Games circuit from 2014 to 2018 at the Circuit of the Americas. [25]
Austin is also considered the birthplace of all-women's flat track roller derby. [26] In 2003, the Texas Rollergirls formed as the first league to play modern flat-track roller derby [27] and, in 2005, were instrumental in the rule-setting and track design used by the Women's Flat Track Derby Association. [28]
In March 2022, Austin was awarded a 250 level women's tennis event, the ATX Open. [29] It started in February 2023.
Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the United States and 3 in Canada—since the 2023 season. MLS is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.
The Columbus Crew is an American professional soccer club based in Columbus, Ohio. The Crew competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference and began play in 1996 as one of the 10 charter clubs of the league. The team is currently operated by an ownership group led by the Haslam family and former team physician Pete Edwards. The Haslam/Edwards group is the third ownership group in club history.
Joshua David Wolff is an American soccer coach and former player.
In Major League Soccer, several teams annually compete for secondary rivalry cups that are usually contested by only two teams, with the only exceptions being the Cascadia Cup and the new Copa Tejas, which are contested by three MLS teams, each. Each cup or trophy is awarded to the eligible team with the better regular season record and are comparable to minor trophies played for in college football rivalries. Most cups are deliberately conceived as local derbies between teams in the same region. Rivalry cups are considered a tradition to most MLS fans and players alike. Out of the ten original MLS teams only three have not competed in these rivalry cups: Sporting Kansas City, New England Revolution, and the defunct Tampa Bay Mutiny. The Texas Derby is the only MLS rivalry where the winner does not walk away with a cup trophy but instead they play for "El Capitán", a replica 18th century mountain howitzer cannon. Some derbies only contest for bragging rights of rival supporters groups.
Texas is home of several national sports league franchises among other professional sports, being the second most populated U.S. state. Since the state is located in the South Central United States, most teams are part of the Central / South or West league divisions, with the notable exception of the NFL Dallas Cowboys, which is an NFC East franchise.
Major League Soccer has expanded several times since the league began play in 1996. Major League Soccer was established as the top level of professional soccer in the United States in 1993 with 10 teams and began play in 1996. It has expanded several times since 1998 into new markets across the United States and, since 2006, Canada.
The Austin Aztex were a soccer team based in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 2011 as a member of the Premier Development League, the team played the 2015 season in the United Soccer League, the second tier of the United States soccer pyramid. This was the second team to carry the name Austin Aztex; the first were founded in 2008 and relocated to Orlando in 2010, with that ownership group eventually being awarded an MLS franchise of the same name in that city.
Circuit of the Americas (COTA) is a Grade 1 FIA-specification 3.426-mile (5.514 km) motor racing track and facilities located in Austin, Texas, in the United States. The facility is home to the Formula One United States Grand Prix, NASCAR's Texas Grand Prix, and the Motorcycle Grand Prix of the Americas, a round in MotoGP and the FIA World Endurance Championship with the Lone Star Le Mans. It previously hosted the Australian V8 Supercars, the Americas Rallycross Championship, the American Le Mans Series, the Rolex Sports Car Series, the IMSA SportsCar Championship and the IndyCar Classic.
Kekuta Manneh is a professional soccer player who plays as a winger. In 2016, he obtained his American citizenship and has previously been called up to the United States national team, although he has not made an appearance.
The History of Major League Soccer began in 1988, when the United States Soccer Federation pledged to create a Division 1 professional soccer league as a condition to FIFA awarding the 1994 FIFA World Cup to the United States. Major League Soccer was officially formed in 1995. The league began play in 1996 with 10 teams, and in 1998 grew to 12 teams. MLS experienced some difficulties in its first seasons, with the league losing money in the early years, resulting in two teams folding after the 2001 season. MLS has rebounded since then, with increased attendance and the development of soccer-specific stadiums. With an average attendance of over 20,000 per game, MLS has the third highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S. after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB), and is the seventh highest attended professional soccer league worldwide. MLS currently has 29 teams, with further expansion to 30 teams planned with the addition of San Diego FC in 2025. As of 2023, MLS is the largest first division professional soccer league in the world by number of clubs.
Jay Anthony Precourt Jr. is an American investor and sports team owner. He is the CEO of Two Oak Ventures, a group that owns Major League Soccer club Austin FC and formerly owned the Columbus Crew. He is also a managing partner of Precourt Capital Management, a private investment management firm based in San Francisco, California.
The 2018 Columbus Crew SC season was the club's twenty-third season of existence, and their twenty-third consecutive season in Major League Soccer, the top flight of American soccer. Columbus also competed in the U.S. Open Cup, and took part in the Pacific Rim Cup and Carolina Challenge Cup during preseason. The season covered the period from November 30, 2017, to the start of the 2019 Major League Soccer season.
Austin Bold FC was an American professional soccer team located in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2017, the team made its debut in the USL Championship in 2019. In 2021, Austin Bold FC announced it would be moving to Fort Worth, Texas leaving Circuit of the Americas at the end of the season but may have to wait until 2023, depending on the construction of their stadium. As of August 2024, the team remains inactive.
Q2 Stadium is a soccer-specific stadium located in the North Burnet section of North Austin, Texas, United States. It is the home of Austin FC, a Major League Soccer (MLS) team that began play in 2021. The stadium hosted its first event on June 16, 2021, an international friendly between the United States women's national team and Nigeria.
Austin FC is an American professional men's soccer club based in Austin, Texas. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Western Conference. Founded in 2018, the club began play in the 2021 season. Their home stadium is Q2 Stadium in north Austin. They are the first major professional sports league team to play in Texas' capital, which prior to 2021 was the largest city in the United States without such a team.
Hell Is Real is a rivalry between the two Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs based in Ohio: the Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati. Under current MLS regular season scheduling, the series occurs twice per season as both teams are members of the Eastern Conference. The teams first met in 2017 in the U.S. Open Cup before Cincinnati joined MLS in 2019.
Damian Jan Las is an American professional soccer player who plays as a goalkeeper for Louisville City FC in the USL Championship, on loan from Major League Soccer club Austin FC.
MLS Next Pro (MLSNP) is a men's professional soccer league in the United States and Canada that is affiliated with Major League Soccer. It launched in 2022 with 21 teams and now comprises 27 reserve sides of MLS clubs and 2 independent clubs. MLS Next Pro is classified as part of the third tier of the United States soccer league system.