SHERMAN, Texas — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
Simon Keizer and Ben Watson didn't know their lives were about to change when they met at a wedding in Frisco in October 2022.
Watson, a Sherman native who at the time was living in New York and playing professional soccer, came home to attend his brother's wedding. He happened to meet Keizer, an England native who was living in Virginia but has spent much of his life in Texas. They hit it off almost immediately when they started talking about soccer.
Three years later, the duo now find themselves getting ready to launch Texoma FC, the newest professional sports team in North Texas. The team will compete in USL League One, a third-division league operated by the United Soccer League. The league is two tiers below Major League Soccer.
Watson, president of Texoma, and Keizer, the club's CEO, believe it will be successful because of the growing passion for soccer in the region. In Sherman, they see an opportunity for Texoma to carve out a niche as the primary professional sports team representing its namesake region north of Dallas to the Red River.
Their long-term vision also goes well beyond sports. Watson and Keizer plan to build a 7,000-seat stadium in Sherman that could anchor a 65-acre mixed-use sports and entertainment district. It would have room for Texoma FC's youth academy complex, a hotel, restaurants and retail.
"It's a shared vision for youth, for families and for the community with the sport just being the vehicle to drive the difference," Watson said.
Such a development would continue the economic renaissance occurring in Sherman. Texas Instruments Inc. is investing billions in new semiconductor wafer fabrication plants while Taiwanese tech giant GlobalWafers Co. is constructing a $5 billion silicon wafer manufacturing factory. Those projects are expected to create around 4,500 total jobs.
Elsewhere in Grayson County, developer David Craig is spearheading the 3,100-acre Preston Harbor project on the shores of Lake Texoma that will be anchored by a $100 million Margaritaville resort and create an estimated $6 billion in property value. Home values are climbing and Realtors, retailers and real estate developers are all taking notice of this once-quiet slice of the state.
Plans for the stadium and surrounding development are still in the early stages, and Texoma FC will play at least its first two seasons at Bearcat Stadium, the home venue for Sherman High School.
Texoma FC announced in August it is partnering with Clearwater, Florida-based Sports Facilities Cos., one of the largest managers of sports, recreation and event properties in the U.S., on the new stadium. Architecture firm Gensler is doing design work.
If all goes to plan, club leaders hope to break ground on the new stadium in the first or second quarter of 2025 and have it ready for the 2027 season.
"That's an aggressive timeline for us, but that's our ideal," Keizer said.
Texoma FC has some interesting backers, most notably the Gronkowski family. Yes, that's the Gronkowski family known for former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Rob Gronkowski. Local investors include members of the West family of Denison and Sarang Desai, an orthopedic surgeon in Allen who is also a minority investor in the Dallas Sidekicks professional indoor soccer team.
'Recipe for success'
For Watson and Keizer, there's no better time than the present to bring a professional soccer team to Sherman.
DFW used to have a USL League One team. North Texas SC, which plays at Choctaw Stadium in Arlington, was a founding member of the league in 2019 and won the inaugural championship that year. But North Texas SC, which is owned by and operates as a reserve team for Major League Soccer's FC Dallas, and several other MLS-affiliated teams in 2021 left USL League One to join MLS Next Pro. The new league, which began play in 2022, acts as a feeder to the MLS, similar to the minor league system in baseball.
The exodus left USL League One highly concentrated in the Southeastern U.S. and without a presence in Texas. The league, which currently has 12 teams, is now embarking on expansion with seven new teams planned for the 2025 season, including Texoma FC. A team in Corpus Christi is scheduled to begin playing in 2026.
USL League One originally considered other areas in DFW. It took a pitch from Watson and Keizer to convince league officials that the Texoma region would be the best fit. Watson said the league wants to put teams in minor metro areas that are "sports deserts." Sherman fit the bill, he said.
"There's not five other teams we're competing with [in Sherman,]" Watson said. "It's an open market where you can come in and you can build community and you can build a brand where you can be successful. If we were sitting in Arlington, we wouldn't be that successful competing with the Cowboys and the Rangers."
The league's expansion happens to coincide with a time when the Texoma region is booming economically and interest in soccer across the U.S. continues to soar.
AT&T Stadium in Arlington will host nine games when the FIFA World Cup comes to the U.S. in 2026, the most of any site. The number of games speaks to how popular soccer has become in North Texas, and the entire DFW metroplex is expected to benefit.
Sherman's population has grown to almost 50,000 and is projected to double in five years. Keizer said the "catchment area" around Sherman has around 325,000 people and counting.
"Geography is vital, but also timing," Keizer said. "If we had taken on this project five or 10 years ago, the maturity of the league wouldn't be ready, but also the maturity of the exponential growth of the region. ... So, geography, yes. Timing, yes. And then it's a community that's still small enough that we are the first true pro sports franchise that Texoma can call its own. So we feel like those three elements are a massive recipe for success."
