By Amy Tennery
(Reuters) – Major League Soccer’s (MLS) expansion franchise St. Louis City SC make their regular-season debut on Saturday, with the league’s first-ever female majority owner in Carolyn Kindle.
The self-described soccer newcomer joins the ranks of only a handful of female majority owners across professional sports, after the franchise shelled out a reported $200 million in expansion fees on the path to become the 29th MLS team.
Kindle, who also leads a majority female ownership group, told Reuters it was an “epic journey” from launching the expansion plan in 2018, after previous attempts to bring a men’s professional club to the soccer-mad city fell through.
Kindle, the granddaughter of Enterprise Rent-A-Car founder Jack Taylor, said it started as an idea to give back to the St. Louis community.
“I don’t really think soccer was in there in the top five originally,” said Kindle, who climbed up the ranks of Enterprise Holdings, the parent company for Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
“But then as we started doing some research, we came to realize it would be a great, great thing for the city of St. Louis.”
American executive Meg Whitman, a part owner of FC Cincinnati, and Columbus Crew co-owner Dee Haslam are among the women with existing stakes in MLS clubs.
“We’re a league for a new America,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber told Reuters.
“We want to have more diversity in our ownership groups so that we have diversity of thought, not just diversity of our fan base and of our coaching ranks and our administration, but diversity around our board table.”
St. Louis’s MLS debut follows the departure of the National Football League’s (NFL) Rams, who skipped town and relocated to Los Angeles following the 2015 season.
The MLS franchise makes St. Louis a three-team town again along with Major League Baseball’s Cardinals and the National Hockey League’s Blues.
“It goes back to one thing that I’ve always wanted to do, and that’s put St. Louis back on the international map. And what better way to do that than with a global sport,” said Kindle.
She is well aware of the hurdles the new franchise will have to overcome on the pitch, as they bring together players and coaches for the first time.
And with Garber planning to name a 30th team before the year’s end, St. Louis City have scarce time to seize the spotlight.
“As far as any sort of expectation or prediction, I want them to have fun. I want them to play well. I want them to bring excitement that everybody’s talked about,” said Kindle.
“But I have a feeling, knowing the coaches in the sporting department, failure is not an option.”
St. Louis begin the season at Austin FC on Saturday and play their home opener at the 22,500-seat Citypark March 4 against Charlotte FC.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Toby Davis)
