From meeting minutes:
22. Approve a resolution directing the City Manager to work with appropriate stakeholders to research the feasibility of a Major League Soccer franchise locating in Austin. (Notes: SPONSOR: Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole CO 1: Mayor Lee Leffingwell CO 2: Council Member William Spelman) Resolution No. 20140306-022 was approved on consent on Council Member Spelman’s motion, Council Member Morrison’s second on a 6-0 vote. Mayor Leffingwell was absent.
Meeting transcript:
Item number 22, jane morgan? James morgan. >> Good morning, everybody. I’m here to discuss about austin possibly taking the bid for mls. Mls is probably one of the most intariking sports in america at the moment for one specific reason. It’s growing. And it’s growing rapidly. It creates a specific environment where the great cities can actually embrace their creativities, become part of the activity and embrace a sport culture that is progressive and moving. I think the city of austin would a perfect city for this growth. If you look at our demographics, we have two key factors that have — two key factors that really help succeed for any of the professional sports teams, like cities of portland and seattle we have a growing tech culture and a more youthful culture, which is pushing for them to — pushing between 30,000 and 64,000 fans showing up for each game. We actually have the same demographics of that, but we also have a large hispanic based backgrounds that pushes teams like dallas and in houston to actually fill the stadium. But point of that, saying that we can fill a stadium and fill the fan base, is that we can have a chance to really build more strong leaderships within the east austin community. And that’s where I really see this as a real chance for our culture to do. We have in east and north austin we have a large hispanic population who need positive role models and soccer is one of the main key successes that we can really use to build proper leadership roles because unlike most other sports, the collegiate college players who actually become mls players generally come from schools such as duke, harvard, yale. They generally have zero criminal backgrounds or criminal accidents such as you see in the n.F.L. And other major sports. And they really have a chance to build these positive role models that you can proceed by going through education and pursuing sports and combining the two together to become a bright citizen. I see this a possibility and a chance really for austin to help mobilize our disadvantaged youth and hopefully bring a professional sports team to austin, texas. >> Cole: Thank you. I appreciate your comments. We also have signed up clayton matthews, michael wilkes and brandon balladin, not desiring to speak, but registered in favor of the item. Council, that concludes our consent agenda.
City Council Minutes (PDF) – see item 22
City Council Meeting Transcript (PDF) – search for “soccer”