OKLAHOMA CITY — The proposed new city-funded, $71 million stadium approved in MAPS 4 is just one part of plans to completely relaunch professional soccer “from scratch” in OKC, according to team leaders.
That’s following a shakeup in ownership and a number of community engagement initiatives aimed at generating interest, as well as potential new questions about the stadium’s intended size and required budget.
The group OKC for Soccer, alongside city and investment leaders, held a flag-raising event Monday on the future site of the stadium south of Bricktown, staking out and marking the space even before designs are approved, attempting to generate early interest in the sport years before the relaunch.
When the stadium was first approved as part of 2019’s MAPS 4 package, it was expected to be the new home of the OKC Energy soccer team.
But changes in ownership, an indefinitely extended hiatus, and the decision to completely rename and rebrand the team with public input have franchise leaders saying that the era of the Energy is in the past and that fans should instead be ready for something entirely new going forward.
‘Expanded’ ownership
“This is about basically starting from scratch,” Echo Soccer president Court Jeske told Free Press via video call this week.
Jeske – a two-decade veteran of Major League Soccer and the United Soccer League – is the newly appointed head of soccer operations for multimillion dollar, OKC-based investment firm Echo, who purchased majority control of the team formerly known as the OKC Energy in July of last year.
Along with that change in ownership came new movement in the long-in-development stadium project that had pumped the brakes on Energy play and led to the team’s hiatus from the United Soccer League (USL) in which the team competes.
“This will be a four or five year departure from the previous effort,” Jeske said. “New stadium, new ownership group…”
Jeske then paused and reconsidered his wording in order to more accurately represent the team’s new ownership structure, which still retains the original ownership team led by Bob Funk Jr., albeit in a greatly reduced role.
“Let me rephrase,” he said. “A new stadium, expanded ownership group, and a new vision for what can be and what aligns with the future of Oklahoma City and the future of soccer in this country.”
Stadium numbers
The reasons given for Funk and company’s decision to sell their majority stake were primarily about Funk’s taking of a greater role in his staffing company, Express Employment Professionals.
But the sale also came after years of stagnating progress on the MAPS 4 stadium project, for which Energy team owners were contracted to secure, purchase, and donate the land to the City before construction.
Echo announced the purchase and donation of that land in November, granting nine acres of the former Producers Co-op area to the City on which to build the stadium and retaining ownership of the remaining acreage for a potential billion-dollar sports and recreation district south of Bricktown.
That all came less than a year after the City Council’s approval for increasing the stadium project’s funding from the $41 million allocated in MAPS 4 to more than $70 million utilizing TIF funds redirected from debt coverage for the Omni Hotel.
Project leaders said that increase was necessary to expand the stadium’s seating capacity from the original proposed 8,000 to 10,000.
A City press release issued alongside Monday’s flag-raising event now claims the stadium’s seating capacity could be as much as 12,300.
“The size of it is still being determined by [design firm] Populous and in the group,” Jeske told Free Press. “There’s been a release with 12,300, there’s been a release with 10,000. It’s still very much in a design phase where we can’t say for sure.”
There’s no word yet on whether increasing the proposed capacity to more than 12,000 seats would require another funding increase from the City.
Generating interest
Whether 10,000 seats or 12,000, the new stadium will boast a significant increase in facility quality from the Energy’s old home at Taft Stadium, where the team often struggled to fill seats.
Throughout 2021 – the Energy’s final season of play – average attendance was reported at less than 3000.
But, that was not always the case. In earlier years, very active, passionate, noisy fans filled Taft Stadium as we reported in 2017.
It’s fallen to Jeske and the OKC for Soccer group, then, to start early in attempts to generate as much interest and awareness for the new “from scratch” soccer franchise as possible before the eyed launch in the 2027 USL season.
In addition to the large, easily visible flags now occupying the future stadium site that read, by turns, “OKC for Soccer” and “OKC es Futbol,” the group has also run two major citywide surveys. The first was to hear what fans would like to see from the new stadium and the second was a highly publicized suggestion form to allow fans and OKC residents to help choose the new team’s name and colors.
“We had over 10,000 responses to our team name contest, which is phenomenal,” Jeske told Free Press. “Our mission from day one is to listen to the community, and we’ve done that through the naming process and the stadium survey, and that will continue to be the goal as long as the club exists.”
Jeske said that fans can expect an announcement about the new team’s name, logo, and colors sometime in the coming spring, but he’s confident that it will be representative of the full scope of OKC’s population, an angle he believes is integral to securing support for soccer.
“I look at the fact that we’ve got such strong immigrant communities in Oklahoma City, especially our Hispanic community,” he said. “20% of Oklahoma City comes from countries where soccer is the number one, two, and three sport. So we don’t have to teach them anything about soccer. They’re going to teach us.”
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
