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by: Will Anderson, Austin Business Journal
Posted: Jun 11, 2021 / 7:48 am CDT CD
Updated: 6/11/2021 / 7:50 a.m. CDT
AUSTIN (Austin Business Journal) – After years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars to build, hundreds of new hires, dozens of players and coaches and countless hours of work, the time has come: the first Austin FC home game begins.
Ticket holders count the days until the Major League Soccer Club takes on the San Jose Earthquakes on June 19 at Q2 Stadium. Sponsors who have invested substantial sums of money behind the club are looking forward to its glamorous debut under majority owner Anthony Precourt.
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The focus is on Andy Loughnane, President of Austin FC. Loughnane joined another MLS team, the Columbus Crew, in January 2019, where he was President of Business Operations under Precourt. Loughnane has been in the sports business for more than a decade, starting out as an Account Executive with the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League in 1996. After a stint in the corporate world, he returned to the sport in 2012 as vice president of corporate partnerships for the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons.
Now he is steering the 27th MLS team to its first game in the Q2 stadium, which will be fully occupied with around 20,500 seats. In just a few short years, Austin FC has built relationships with some of the biggest names in Central Texas, from St. David’s HealthCare to Yeti Coolers. Loughnane said the club has more than 100 employees – a deliberately diverse group, around 50% of whom identify as non-whites – and will require “several hundred” part-time workers during the events, from security to catering to housekeeping.
You can read the rest of the story on the Austin Business Journal website.
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