Austin FC selected to host 2025 MLS all-star game

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The very best of Main League Soccer will play at Q2 Stadium subsequent 12 months.

MLS commissioner Don Garber, alongside Austin FC proprietor Anthony Precourt and Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, made the announcement Wednesday at Antone’s Nightclub forward of Verde and Black’s midweek match towards the Houston Dynamo.

“This can be a skilled main league sports activities city due to Austin FC,” Garber stated. “This can be a huge occasion, and Austin is a big-event city. This can have a worldwide viewers.”

Garber stated the sport’s opponent has but to be decided. The sport might be held in July with a extra particular date to return.

From 2005 to 2016, the sport featured the all-stars taking over a membership staff from Europe. In earlier editions, a conventional break up league format was used primarily based on conferences. In 2021 and 2022, the Liga MX all-stars made appearances within the recreation earlier than Arsenal got here again. The primary all-star recreation was held in 1996.

Austin has been in MLS since 2021 and can host the star-studded occasion for the primary time. It’s the second time the sport will come to Texas after the Dynamo hosted in 2010 when Manchester United thumped the MLS all-stars 5-2 at Reliant Stadium.

“Austin is now a giant worldwide metropolis,” Watson stated. “It has turn out to be a focus on the planet and folks look to us. The one factor that was lacking from Austin was skilled sports activities, and Austin FC gave that to us.”

Austin FC has offered out 60 consecutive house matches, the longest energetic sellout streak in MLS, one thing each Garber and Watson took nice pleasure in saying.

This 12 months’s all-star recreation might be at Decrease.com Subject in Columbus with the MLS all-stars taking over the Liga MX all-stars. In final 12 months’s recreation, Arsenal from the English Premier League clobbered the MLS all-stars 5-0 in Washington, D.C.

A report by ESPN on April 29 stated that Austin FC was “finalizing a deal” to host the all-star recreation.

Q2 Stadium has hosted quite a few United States Nationwide Workforce matches, each women and men, together with preseason matches between European golf equipment. The stadium’s capability is 20,738, which is about the identical dimension as Audi Subject and Decrease.com Subject, the newest stadiums to host the all-star recreation.