What the Sale of Toyota Field Means for Soccer in San Antonio, SS&E and the Scorpions

Being one of the largest cities in the US, it’s rather puzzling that San Antonio has only one major league professional sports team and no noteworthy college teams. As recently as this year, the NFL and MLB have flirted with the city, but to no avail. The NBA’s Spurs remain the only major league team in the nation’s seventh-largest city.

Ever since the San Antonio Scorpions were founded in 2010 by Gordon Hartman, there has been talk of the team making the jump to Major League Soccer, giving the city its second major league team. They’ve played four years in the second-division NASL and won the championship in 2014. Since 2013, they have played in Toyota Field, an 8,000-seat soccer-specific stadium.

During initial construction of that stadium, extra support structures were added that will make expansion to the MLS standard of 18,000 seats easier. This has distinguished the Scorpions from other MLS expansion hopefuls, most of whom can check all the boxes except the soccer-specific stadium.

What has held the Scorpions back, however, is that their owner does not have deep enough pockets to pay the $100 million MLS expansion fee. Adding further complication, the Scorpions were founded as a non-profit organization with all proceeds going to Morgan’s Wonderland, an amusement park designed to accommodate those with special needs. Hartman would like for any sale of the team to still benefit the park. That stipulation has made selling the Scorpions to a deeper-pocketed owner much more complicated.

However, any potential for the Scorpions to make the jump to MLS may now have disappeared. On November 4, it was announced that Toyota Field will be jointly purchased and owned by the City of San Antonio and Bexar County, with Spurs Sports & Entertainment (SS&E) leasing the stadium for 20 years. Both the city and county will pay $9 million each to Hartman, with SS&E adding $3 million.

A view of Toyota Field, which will now be jointly owned by Bexar County and the City of San Antonio (Image via Marvin Pfeiffer, San Antonio Express-News)

While there’s no guarantee, SS&E have already stated their commitment to delivering MLS to San Antonio. Furthermore, their contract with the city and county requires them to secure an expansion franchise within six years. If they fail to strike a deal with MLS by then, they must pay the city and county $2.5 million in installments for every additional year they go without a deal.

Until then though, they’ll field a team in the third-division USL, which many believe presents a better chance at moving to MLS. Expansion franchises have been “promoted” from both the NASL and USL. However, the former’s aspirations to receive USSF first division sanctioning and compete with MLS have caused no shortage of hatred between the top two leagues in the pyramid. Additionally, USL has a strong partnership already in place with MLS, including ten MLS reserve sides.

So, everybody wins, right? SS&E expands their sporting influence in San Antonio, the city and county gain ownership of a relatively new and easily expandable venue, local soccer fans have a better shot than ever at their city landing MLS and Morgan’s Wonderland receives $21 million dollars.

The one entity that does miss out is the Scorpions. Not much is known on that front, and not everyone is on the same page. The front office is acting like it’s business as usual, as if the 2016 season will be just like any other for the Scorpions. The day after Toyota Field’s sale was announced, however, Hartman issued this statement:

Statement from Gordon Hartman, Founder of Soccer for a Cause and Owner of the San Antonio Scorpions: pic.twitter.com/aAEk8kHrJb

— SA Scorpions (@SAScorpions) November 5, 2015

Not much can be gleaned from that. If it’s supposed to be business as usual for the team next year, then there probably shouldn’t be much of a need for such secrecy. With no stadium and a much-needed overhaul ahead of them after a disappointing 2015 season, there would be no better or likelier time for the Scorpions to fade away and pass the torch to SS&E when it comes to soccer in San Antonio.

According to an interview with Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, one of the reasons the sale of Toyota Field needed to be rushed was so that Hartman could “(notify) the North American Soccer League that he will not continue.” That statement makes it pretty clear; the city and county governments involved in this deal don’t expect the Scorpions to be returning.

Of course, there is the possibility that the Scorpions could be taken under SS&E’s wing and be moved to the USL. If that were the case though, why couldn’t they just announce it along with the stadium?

The future of soccer in San Antonio is full of uncertainty at the moment. The Scorpions’ future doesn’t look too bright, but the SS&E USL team must hurry if they want to field a respectable USL team in 2016. This year’s Scorpions team showed us how catastrophic the consequences can be if your team isn’t given a chance to build decent chemistry.

At this point, there’s not much else we can do besides wait and watch how everything unfolds. SS&E will need to hurry to get a USL team in order, while the Scorpions would need to figure out their stadium situation to compete in the NASL. For all we know, Corinthians FC of San Antonio could provide the highest level of soccer in the city next year, and they’re only a semi-pro team.