MLS Commissioner and Crew Ownership are playing the waiting game.
Major League Soccer’s expansion plan and a relocation attempt keeps running into hurdles. The owner of the Columbus Crew, Precourt Sports Ventures or PSV, wanted to move the team to Austin, Texas. But Austin elected officials are making difficult for the Crew’s owner to get land in the city to build the stadium. The Austin City Council has decided that two other groups will be allowed to bid on the city owned property that PSV wants.  The Austin elected officials will address the issue again on August 9. PSV had hoped to wrap up the deal by June 30. The three proposals are different. PSV wants to build a 20,000 seat stadium  Another group wants to build a 1,500 residential unit place along with office space, a six acre park and a rail station.  Local developers want to purchase the land for $22.5 million or lease the land for $2.2 million per year. They are offering to build 500 income-accessible housing units along with studios for artists, a grocery store, s wellness hub, an educational workforce, seven acres of parkland and a rail station.
The MLS has stumbled in a few cities. David Beckham has a Miami team but it has not found a suitable place to build a stadium. In 2017, the league decided to add four teams to the business and looked for cities that had money people and a willingness from elected officials to put up public money to build soccer venues. But league officials found out quickly that some cities such as St. Louis and Charlotte were not interested in spending public money to help fund stadiums. The league eventually found governments that agreed that landing an MLS team and investing money into buildings was the right thing to do in Nashville and in Cincinnati. Meanwhile Columbus and some Ohio elected officials want to hang onto a team whose owner wants to leave.
