The idea behind Dallas Trinity FC, the city's newest professional sports team, began taking shape last year after the Neil family's years-long search to find the right business opportunity.
Charlie Neil, president of the professional women's soccer team, said his family has always either actively played sports or talked about sports in some way, and he has worked on the business side of sports organizations. So it made sense that they would combine their interest with their business, making the Neil family the latest North Texas clan to own a sports team.
With the team that will belong to the United Soccer League's USL Super League, the planned Division I professional women's soccer league, the Neils follow in the footsteps of the Jones family, who own the Dallas Cowboys, and the Hunt bloodline, who own FC Dallas and the Kansas City Chiefs.
"This is something my family has thought about for a long time," Neil told CoStar News. "We officially started down the path with the USL Super League last year. The launch ... is a culmination of years of work trying to find the right opportunity" that is now bringing professional women's soccer to Dallas.
When it comes to the Neil family, Charlie Neil's father, Jim Neil, co-founder and CEO of real estate investment brokerage Churchill Capital, is the team's CEO, and Charlie Neil's brother, Trip Neil, is chief operating officer. He also serves as a partner at Churchill Capital.
Dallas Trinity FC is one of eight teams joining the USL Super League that's expected to kick off the new women's soccer league in August. The Dallas team is set to play at Cotton Bowl Stadium, a venue that dates to 1930 after the city of Dallas approved a deal to subsidize the sports team in an effort to promote tourism and hospitality.
Teams in the league are backed by individuals and various sports groups that have plans for their teams to play in existing or newly built stadiums.
Appealing Venue
The deal with the nostalgic Cotton Bowl Stadium could be instrumental in whatever success Dallas Trinity FC experiences in the coming months, and it already has begun to help it recruit players, Charlie Neil said.
"Players we've spoken with tell us they are over the moon at being able to play at the venue, with the Cotton Bowl's grass surface helping recruit those players who want to play on real grass," said Charlie Neil, who prior to joining the team had a career in sports business that included working with the Texas Rangers and Major League Baseball and at a startup based on building fan affinity in sports. "This is an iconic venue, and we are going to do our best to fill it up."
The dinner table at the Neil household was always lively with sports talk, with Charlie Neil, his brother and two sisters having grown up playing soccer in Dallas, with his parents taking on active roles from coaching and managing teams to cheering along the sidelines, he said.
Both Charlie and Trip played at St. Mark's, a private school in Dallas. Their sisters, Dori and Jenny, brought that same competition of play to soccer matches at Ursuline Academy of Dallas. The brothers continued their athletic careers in college, with Trip playing soccer at Johns Hopkins and Charlie being a two-sport athlete at Yale who played baseball and soccer.
The family, who still comes together every Sunday for dinner, said that the talk about one day owning a sports team was easier than finding an existing franchise to buy because few sellers want to part from their ownership stake in professional sports.
"It naturally came together with women's soccer," he said. "The sport has exploded on a professional level and there's far too little opportunities to play professionally."
Charlie said he and his family are on the hunt to find a new corporate headquarters for the team. Churchill Capital has an existing partnership with Boxer Property, and the company has brokers at the ready to help find the right space, he added.
"We're still figuring out where our headquarters will be, but we have some potential targets," Neil said. He declined to disclose details.