Another Pro Sports Team is Kinda-Sorta Asking Dallas to Build Them Something

Owners of Dallas Trinity FC, the professional women’s soccer team that has spent two seasons kicking off in the Cotton Bowl, spoke to the city council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention Monday afternoon and suggested that now might be the right time to mention a few of the challenges the team has faced in their entrance to Dallas’ sports scene — and how the city can help make those issues hurt a bit less.  

The briefing was a standard one that covered the team’s attendance records, community outreach efforts and commitment to local recruiting. But a quick read between the lines suggests that, at a time when seemingly every other professional sports team in Dallas is jockeying for a piece of the city’s pie, women’s soccer would like a bite too, please. 

Charlie Neil, president of the club and a member of the Neil family that helped bring the team to Dallas, told council members that the last few years at the Cotton Bowl have presented challenges for the team due to factors outside of the ownership’s control, such as the price of parking and concessions at Fair Park and the venue’s ticketing partner. Other issues, like the ousting of Fair Park’s former manager, Oak View Group, have complicated the team’s ability to make the facility their own, Neil suggested. 

“We love the Cotton Bowl, first and foremost, but it’s worth calling out that we’ve had some real challenges in the last two seasons,” Neil said. “This is the right time to be calling out the good and the bad.” 

When Dallas Trinity FC came to town in 2023, they signed a two-year contract for Fair Park with the option to renew for a third season. Contract negotiations for the third year are now underway, city staff said on Monday, and the soccer team has found itself negotiating with a city that is much more desperate to keep teams in Dallas than it was just a few years ago. 

In recent months, speculation surrounding the Dallas Mavericks’ and the Dallas Stars’ future in, well, Dallas, has come into question. Both teams’ leases with the American Airlines Center will expire in 2031, and both teams have dropped hints that Dallas may not be where they want to sign a new contract. The owners of the Mavericks have scooped up land in Las Colinas, and the Stars are reportedly courting Collin County for a stadium development deal. 

The fervor surrounding the situation has reached such heights that Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson addressed the rumors in his 2025 State of the City address, stating that the city would “take all reasonable and necessary steps” to retain the teams. 

“While we won’t be negotiating these deals in public, I will say this to any professional sports team owner who may be listening: if you’re truly serious about the ‘Dallas’ on your uniforms, we’re serious about keeping you here at home in our city,” Johnson said. 

Trinity FC may have been listening. 

While Neil spent the majority of his presentation to the council committee highlighting the team’s successes over the past two years, he concluded by discussing what the future of women’s soccer could look like in Dallas, with the city’s support. The club president presented a schematic design of a proposed training facility that the team hopes to build at Joey Georgusis Park in west Oak Cliff. 

The proposed facility would neighbor the new Dallas Wings practice facility, and the design was developed by Gensler, the same design architect who planned the $50 million women’s basketball facility, which broke ground in September. Dual training compounds, a sports medicine clinic, grass and turf fields, a trail system and public soccer fields fill the park in the drawing.

“We are falling behind some of our suburban neighbors when it comes to facilities, when it comes to coaching, things that players gravitate toward,” Neil said. (Not a total threat to leave Dallas, but not exactly reassuring either.) “It’s worth calling out that facilities are, if not the highest priority, one of our top priorities. It’s the one thing that [was brought up] when we asked our players for end-of-season feedback at the end of last year.” 

Putting the Dallas Wings’ and Trinity FC’s facilities together would make the park a “focal point” of women’s sports, Neil said. Team ownership is “open to” discussing other locations, such as around Fair Park, but Joey Georgusis Park is their first choice 

Neil added that Trinity FC players currently practice at the Hockaday School, which requires the team to schedule around the campus’s open hours and practices. 

“It’s not a professional experience. These players are believing in us, they’re putting their faith in us, but we need to show as a community that we’re [investing in them],” Neil said. 

While the Neils did not present any hard figures on the cost of their master plan or how much they’d like the city to contribute, council member Paula Blackmon asked whether Trinity FC would be able to share the new Wings facility once it is built. “Money is tight around here,” she said. 

Jim Neil, CEO of the team, said that he’d hoped to build alongside the Wings to help align each team’s projects, but that the timeline hadn’t worked out because the Wings were too far into negotiations with the city. 

“I think there will be some synergies that could occur, but not as many as I would have preferred if we could have [built together],” Jim Neil said. 

Blackmon also added that MoneyGram Park would “probably come up” at some point if the conversation about a public soccer field park moved forward. The soccer facility in northwestern Dallas has made headlines this year after the city terminated FC Dallas’ management contract, and after the City Council voted to deny the development of a neighboring concrete batch plant due to pollution concerns, despite the surrounding area being zoned for industrial use.

(While the area surrounding Joey Georgusis Park is also industrial, it is zoned for light industrial, which means industry and production are done within warehouses, helping to limit exposure.) 

Council member Chad West noted that, amid all the speculation surrounding the Stars and Mavericks, “we have a responsibility as the council to treat our women athletes with the same amount of respect.” West also encouraged Dallas Trinity FC leadership to engage the Park Department in conversations about concession and parking prices at Fair Park during contract negotiations.

“I appreciate [Trinity FC] putting it out there what it is that you’re advocating for, and for [allowing] us to come to the table,” he said.