Houston Dynamo FC Taking Its Ball And Going Closer To Home
Houston’s Major League Soccer team is more than doubling its space and moving a block north of its PNC Stadium home into new headquarters set to open in about a year.
The Houston Dynamo Football Club has closed on a 26K SF office building at 413 Bastrop St. with plans to transfer all operations and staff from its current 10K SF operation housed inside the George R. Brown Convention Center, the Houston Business Journal reported.
The new HQ, which will also be home base for the professional women’s soccer team Houston Dash, will allow the club to transfer technical scouting and analytics staff currently working out of the team’s training center at Houston Sports Park, 10 miles from the stadium, and scale up its business and technical operations.
The stadium was a major catalyst for the revitalization of East Downtown Houston in the years following its 2012 opening — something Ted Segal, majority owner and chairman of the Houston Dynamo FC, hopes will continue.
"We have a lot more control over the environment within EaDo, and we want to be a fixture within EaDo," Segal told the HBJ.
Segal said the stadium-adjacent location would also provide the Dynamo and Dash another location to activate their brands with fans on game days.
The Dynamo and Dash have robust fan bases, a key factor in the decision to name Houston one of 16 U.S. cities to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber praised the club’s ambition in a statement to the HBJ.
"It's not like ownership needed to go out and buy a building to create something that will represent the brand and their purpose," he said.