Pro soccer coming back to Oklahoma City? Meet the Oklahoman tasked with getting it done
Court Jeske is the new president of Echo Soccer.
Court Jeske is an Oklahoma guy.
He's a soccer guy.
And now he's the guy tasked with bringing professional soccer back to Oklahoma City.
Court is the new president of Echo Soccer, the Oklahoma City bunch that bought a majority stake in Energy FC. He'll be front and center as Echo works to get a downtown stadium built in Oklahoma City, get Energy FC back on the field and maybe bring professional women's soccer to the city, too.
We'll talk to Court about all that and maybe a little college football, too — we hear he's a big fan — on The Jenni Carlson Show.
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Episode highlights
1:08: Echo Soccer has a lot on its to-do list. What’s at the top right now for Court?
3:41: What are the expectations for the downtown stadium being planned?
6:10: Why the new stadium in Oklahoma City might have a European feel.
7:45: How does the building of a stadium and the return of soccer mesh? And what about women’s soccer?
10:55: Is women’s soccer in OKC bound for the NWSL?
13:05: How did Court become soccer guy growing up in Oklahoma?
15:50: Is Court an unreasonable OU football fan?
17:19: Does Court’s involvement in bringing MLS to Nashville portend something that could be replicated in OKC?
22:35: How does pro soccer fit in the sports scene that already exists in and around OKC?
26:40: What can soccer fans expect to see over the next few years?
29:15: Could OKC actually host international matches? CONCACAF? Women’s World Cup?
Producer: Jacquelyn Musgrove
Creative Director: Michael Lane
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Transcript
Jenni: Court, can only imagine how busy you are right now. So first of all, thanks for joining me on the show today.
Court: Jenni, thank you so much for having me on.
Jenni: For sure. Well, we want to talk about your Oklahoma roots. We want to talk about your life in soccer. But before we get to that, let's talk about what's going on with Echo Soccer. I can't imagine your to-do list. What is at the top of the to-do list right now?
Court: Yeah, it's a long list, but we've got some good people and great leadership. And the best of all, I get to do this in state of Oklahoma. So that's a good place to start in my book. So Christian Kanady, the founder of Echo, which is a multifaceted investment company in Oklahoma City, has invested in the Oklahoma City Energy. And many of the listeners will know that that is the professional soccer team that was founded in 2013 and played its early years at some high school stadiums and then ultimately at Taft Stadium. Unfortunately due to the pandemic and due to the fact that the field did not meet the U.S. soccer requirements, it had to go on hiatus after the 2021 season.
So really Oklahoma City right now is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country without professional soccer of women or men, which we'll talk about a little bit. But for me, it's such a fantastic blank canvas. And I appreciate Christian's vision and the rest of the people at Echo as well as the other owners of the team, Bob Funk, Donna (Clark) and Tim (McLaughlin) that have all been there since Day 1. They've given us and the community a chance to paint a new picture and to re-imagine professional soccer in the city. The voters and the people with MAPS have also given us a fantastic canvas downtown, and so we are going to be able to build a multi-purpose stadium that not only suits soccer but a lot of other opportunities for sports, concerts, you name it in the area.
So you're right, the list is long right now. But again, when you're performing a labor of love and one that you feel really, really blessed and lucky to have in front of you, each day I wake up with a lot of energy and everyone else at Echo does as well. We're excited to bring professional soccer and sports of a different kind to Oklahoma City.
Jenni: Let's talk about that stadium for a second because obviously people here in the city have known this was coming in some iteration since we passed MAPS4, but the where and the what has always been a question. You mentioned Christian and obviously developers that he's brought into the loop are talking about a $1 billion stadium district. Court, I mean, this sounds different than just a standalone stadium.
We now know the where, just basically between the convention center and the extreme far end of the Bricktown Canal. But what can you tell us about how this is all going to play out?
Court: Yeah, look, this is probably one of the most exciting elements of the project, right? The foresight that the people of Oklahoma City have had with the maps program has led to this point where there's actually some infrastructure and entertainment options already there. And this 42 acres that you identified just south, for people that know it, it'll be just south of the Hawkins Theater. Literally, if you're in the Hawkins Theater and hit a pitching wedge, you'd probably land it at the middle of the soccer pitch. So there's 42 acres there. Christian and the people at Echo, we are going to donate nine acres back to the city.
That stadium, that icon, will go in the middle of the development. What happens around there, which we're very excited about, will be one of the largest and most true mixed use developments in the country, and certainly in this part of Oklahoma, nothing else like it. Like you said, it will be not just a place where there's a stadium, but it's gonna be a city with a community center in the middle that happens to be a soccer field. There will be restaurants, there will be open spaces, there will be parks that are shared, there'll be an amphitheater. There will be all kinds of elements that serve the community, not just those that live there but to drive more people downtown, right?
And then absolutely how blessed are we to be catty-corner from the new Thunder arena that will be built just after we are opening up the multi-purpose stadium.
Jenni: It sounds like it's way more than soccer. So it sounds like it's going to build out and basically extend what we already have in Bricktown.
Court: It'll be an extension of Bricktown. Where one starts and one begins, you won't know. But the thing I love, the way that all this will be north of the highway as well. So it'll be in that entire area that is kind of the central point of downtown now. Along and just to the east, you've got the Riversport area, right? Convention center and the Omni just to the west. Scissortail Park, it's all there in one of the most amazing setups that exist in the country.
Now, from my perspective, as someone who's worked in soccer for 25 years all over the globe, there's also a very cool European element to this. If you can imagine walking through some newly minted streets and roads and buildings and things, and at the end of the road, what you see is a stadium that pops right up, right? Very much like you would see in England, Italy or places where they are 125 years old and the stadium has been built on 30 times. So we get to have all the best of kind of the global sports landscape in this amazing new development in a great location with some phenomenal partners at the city and our neighbors as well between the Thunder, the folks at OKC baseball and the river. It's just great. We're very excited.
Jenni: So timing wise, obviously there's building the stadium, but there's also the bringing back of professional soccer.
How is all of that going to mesh? Because there's obviously the Energy FC piece and where do they relaunch or what does that look like? And women's soccer, Court, which I am stoked about the idea of a professional women's team potentially being in the mix. How does this all mesh up with this new stadium?
Court: Yeah, let's take it in reverse order, I think, because we're going to take this project with women and men in mind equally from Day 1. And for the listeners that don't, well, none of the listeners will know, but I have three daughters and my wife, and they keep me in line every day. That's not the reason we're doing this. We're doing this with this entire project because it's the right thing to do today, right?
And so we announced about a week ago, a couple of different things. One, we announced that with the Energy, we would be going through a brand review. And this is something that everyone kind of jumped to, ‘This must be a rebrand. You're going to change it. You're going change the name, the logo, the crest, everything.’ And we said, no. We sat down with about 125 supporters that came out a couple of different times. And we said, ‘This is a review because if we study what is the best brand, crest, embodiment of this city in 2024, and it is the Energy FC, that's where we'll land, right?’ This isn't about change. This is about making sure that what was created in 2013 is still right for 2024. And even moreover, I would say what was right 10 years ago may not be what Oklahoma City looks like going forward for the next 50 years. So we want to make sure that the club absolutely embodies every part of the city.
And part of that club being a holistic club is a tenant that we will have women's soccer involved. So in order to train ourselves and help train everyone else, everything we're doing, we're trying to say it will be purpose-built. The stadium. The club with women and men in mind. Because I think everyone knows that the Energy were a men's team and they were playing at Taft and that's what it was. But this new idea that a sports club can also speak to the other 50% of the population and give them an opportunity to play, work, cheer, participate is what really is gonna set us apart. So we will be a purpose-built club for women and men in a stadium that will be one of the first of its kind in the country where every decision we make from Day 1 will be built with women and men's sports equally in mind.
Jenni: It's exciting because we've heard about the women's league, the NWSL, here recently in the headlines, doing away with the draft. We've seen their growth. Is the idea to plug in there or what does that look like in terms of levels as women's soccer is added?
Court: So Jenni, there's a lot of options in soccer. Being people like myself that have worked in the industry for 25 years, I've had the fortune to work at the US Soccer Federation, I worked at Major League Soccer, founded a club in Nashville SC. We are sometimes our own worst enemy by the acronyms that we use, right? USSF. NWSL. USL. MLS. No one knows. What I remind everyone is the only acronym that matters in this process right now is OKC. We're going to build something together that is special to us, and it makes everyone else in the state and everyone else in the country and ultimately the globe stand up and say, ‘Wow, they're doing things different there.’
So I tell you that story because it's important because I don't know what league our women's team is going to play in. There are lot of great options out there. You mentioned in NWSL. There's the USL Super League that is a fully sanctioned Division I professional women's league that's off to a great start. And there's amateur and semi-pro options as well. A lot of people probably don't know, but the WPSL, another acronym, a national league with 200 women's teams is based right in Oklahoma City and has their national headquarters here.
There are a plethora of options. We're going to do the analysis and the work to see what the people of Oklahoma City want, what the fans want, and make sure that that piece of our club on the women's side is appropriate for the level that Oklahoma City is looking for.
Jenni: You mentioned some of your past work, I want to talk a little bit about your journey to this point. I want to dig into that a little bit because I think it's fascinating. First of all, you grew up in Broken Arrow. Go Tigers! When, though, did soccer become your thing? Because Court, when you were a kid, soccer in Oklahoma was very much in its infancy. So when did you become a soccer guy?
Court: Yeah, so great question. Yes, I grew up in Broken Arrow, played through essentially eighth, ninth grade, and that kind of ended there. Did go to plenty of Tulsa Roughnecks games growing up. So we were fortunate to win the Soccer Bowl when I was 4 years old. I'll never forget that moment.
But really actually, I was in college at the University of Oklahoma and fortunate that Joe Castiglione helped me get my first job in college athletics and still a friend to this day. But really was kind of making the decision what to do after college. And I had the chance to do a little bit of work in international sports and kind of thought to myself, ‘Look, working in college athletics is fantastic. What a dream job. You get to work in sports and get paid a little bit for it. It is a phenomenal opportunity.’ But then I started thinking about the road trips, really. And while Waco and Ames and Manhattan and Lawrence are all lovely places, the idea of going to different continents for Olympics or for FIFA World Cups or things like that was also an interesting one to me at the time.
So I took a job selling tickets for the Kansas City Wizards at the time. It was an MLS team playing in Arrowhead, 82,000 seat stadium that we were probably announcing 3,000 people to some of our games. But that kind of decision set me off on a path to be committed to the sport, committed to its success and the growth of it across the federation, as I mentioned, women's and men's soccer. Major League Soccer, I spent almost a decade and worked closely with lots of Hispanic groups, teams, etc, across the country.
And then ultimately, as I mentioned, had the chance to start Nashville SC, which was a bit of a dream job. You know, being the first employee, picking the colors, the coach, the crest. And now they ultimately play in MLS, which is a pretty fun journey. Now we're going to try to try to beat that success here in Oklahoma City.
Jenni: Before we talk more about that, you mentioned your OU connections and I read somewhere that you said your friends expect you to be entirely unreasonable about OU football every fall. So are you getting unreasonable, Court? Is this the time?
Court: Well, it's the time of the year that everyone's unreasonable, I think. No, look, I think I'm absolutely a sports fan at heart for all things for the Sooner State. Worth mentioning that although I went to undergraduate there at OU, I did have grandparents that went to Oklahoma A&M, so they very much taught me to root for them as well. So I'm the kind of person that pulls for both teams as long as they're not playing.
Working in the athletic department (at OU) gave me the opportunity not only to go to football game days, but what does volleyball look like? And what does wrestling and what are all those different sports that make up the mosaic of what Oklahomans love look like? And so that was an amazing opportunity. And yeah, we're gonna have quite a ride here in the SEC.
A lot of my old friends in Nashville have already been pinging me saying, ‘You know, this isn't going to go well for you.’ So I said, ‘We’ll just see. We'll see.’
Jenni: I love the optimism. This is the time, you're right, of year to be optimistic.
Court: Undefeated. Undefeated as we sit here.
Jenni: That's right. You mentioned before your time in Nashville, and I really want to unpack that even more because, you know, U.S. Soccer Federation, MLS, USL before joining Echo. But, you know, that Nashville time, you're hired to start it from scratch. It joins professional soccer at a lower level, but it’s MLS within four years of when you all started. How much of that could be replicated here? I don't want you to spill any beans, but I know that obviously Oklahoma City has become a major-league city with the NBA, but how could that look? Is that two pie-in-the-sky for Oklahoma City to think of MLS as a potential?
Court: Well, I think the first thing I would start with is, I didn't take this job and this opportunity to bring MLS to Oklahoma City. I took this job and this opportunity to build it with Christian and create something really special for Oklahoma City, regardless of the league that we play in.
There's another piece to that. As we do this podcast, I still live just outside of Manhattan in the Northeast. I can tell you MLS is not interested in expanding to Oklahoma City. So we may raise our hand, but right now they're not even expanding. They're not calling on anyone in the class. So there's kind of two points that I would just say that shouldn't be our focus. Again, we'll build OKC soccer, OKC for soccer to the best club that can be to compete at the highest levels.
So the experience in Nashville, what I learned that I look forward to really kind of creating differently in Oklahoma City was the club was its best and the sports team was its best when we let everyone in the city put their fingerprints on it. Whether it was the creatives in the music industry or even collaborating with the Nashville Predators of the NHL or the Tennessee Titans on the ways we could work together as fellow constituents in the city.
This is a pretty special opportunity, right? I think it's important for listeners to think of this as a fresh start and a blank canvas. Again, we won't have pro soccer in the market for four or five years by the time this team comes back. So what do we have? We have a downtown stadium that's going to be coming online in the groundbreaking next year that will be open by March ’27, hell or high water. And we also have an amazing run of international events coming to the US that will only accelerate the interest in the sport. Next year there's a FIFA Club World Cup coming to the US. The following year will be the FIFA World Cup 2026, which will be the largest sporting event on the history of the earth, all sports. It’s fortunate that we are sandwiched between Dallas and Kansas City, two of the hosting sites. And we're going to do a lot to make sure the momentum and the excitement around that event also hit Oklahoma City. So you'll see a lot from us on that.
And then, by the way, a couple of years later is the Olympics, which has a huge soccer component. It is coming to Oklahoma City, touch wood. And then I firmly believe there'll be a Women's World Cup come back to the US in 2031, which sounds far away, but it'll go quick. And I think Oklahoma City should be positioned on that list of consideration cities for something like that with this venue or others. So, there's a great opportunity for the city to tell a story here and for fans to tell a story and give their input because they're on Day 1 is essentially where we are. We will absolutely carry all the positives that the Energy had forward, and we're careful not to lose any of that. But I think of this as like, hey, if you have the chance to sit down in the first meeting with people in Barcelona before they started FC Barcelona or in Manchester before they started Manchester United, or pick a team, that's where we are. We're at Day 1, ground zero, about to reinvent the thing and make sure that the club isn't really about soccer solely. It’s about Oklahoma City. And this will be a chance for everyone to give input on the brand review, on what it's gonna be called, on what the colors are gonna be, the iconography, all kinds of different things that go along with the founding of a sports club. So that in 50 years, we'll all look back hopefully and say, ‘Wow, I was there. I was there on Day 1. I was a participant. I went to that meeting. I invited a friend to a game.’ That's pretty cool. And that doesn't happen too often.
Jenni: You mentioned some of the things about the city in terms of the Thunder. I mean, you obviously know OU, OSU. Where do you feel like soccer can fit in the sports scene in Oklahoma City and beyond? Because if you're talking about drawing in international matches or Women's World Cup potentially, obviously that's a draw beyond just the city. How does soccer and where can soccer fit in to the sports scene that is already existing here?
Court: Well, we have such a robust sports scene already, right? And people love to go watch and cheer for sports teams in the state of Oklahoma. That I know through and through. I think the opportunity we have is to make sure that we don't just grab the existing soccer fans, but we grab everyone else that maybe knows they kind of like this sport when the World Cup or Women's World Cup comes around, but they might not watch it on a regular basis. So there's that casual sports fan.
You know, Jenni, when I was at MLS, we did a study. People a lot smarter than I at Boston Consulting Group did a study. And they found that at that time, there was about 17 million what we called hardcore soccer fans in the US. But there was 89 million more fans that were sports fans that consider themselves casual or part-time soccer fans. Just those moments that I mentioned, right? A World Cup. A Women's World Cup. Team USA is in the neighborhood. Whatever. So our opportunity is to draw those people closer to us.
The second piece I'm really excited about, and I saw this in Nashville as well, soccer has the ability to unify people from all over the world because it is the top one, two and three sport in almost every country in the world. I'm fortunate I get to go teach a class for FIFA every year in Milan. And I remind them, the students, that, ‘Hey, you know, in the US, we have four or five different sports that are interesting.’ But when you're here in Italy, obviously they know this, the top three sports are soccer, soccer and soccer. And then there's a little bit of attention leftover for a few other things.
Now let's look at Oklahoma City. We've got nearly 300,000 Hispanic people that we don't have to teach them a thing about soccer. They'll teach us. We just need to give them a spot and the platform to make sure that they're part of Oklahoma City through soccer. We've got African-American populations. We've got African populations. We've got Asian populations.
First Nations people. There are so many different constituents that I think in this infancy of what we're building, we want to get input from and make sure we enroll them in the idea that this is their club.
We did something very cool in Nashville. Maybe we should replicate it. I don't know. But we had a slogan. It was ‘Our town, our club.’ And we translated that into the top six languages that were spoken. And of course, English and Spanish are some obvious ones. But there's Vietnamese, there's Kurdish, there's Chinese. There was all these different Arabic languages in different pockets spoken. Oklahoma City has that international mosaic as well. So trust me, all these different groups are already watching soccer. They just are watching it back in their home country or whatever. That's great. Do that in the morning, then come out and support OKC soccer in the afternoon.
Jenni: So what can soccer fans and maybe fringe soccer fans here in Oklahoma City expect to see over the next couple of years? I know that, like you said, groundbreaking and building and all those sorts of things with the stadium, but how is this going to play out as far as what people can get involved with as these next few years go on?
Court: Great question. So we've kind of written a script, and we're trying to follow that. There will be some ebbs and flows as we learn things. But the first thing I'll say is they can get involved today. So go to OKCForSoccer.com, and you can put in your information. You can go to the Energy FC handles as well across all of social media. Those are still be active. We're going to reignite those and really use those Instagram, Facebook, X channels as the place where we have a narrative. I think between the three of them, there's something like 60,000 or 70,000 followers already. So there's people interested. And we're gonna use those platforms to create conversation around the sport. And it won't just be about professional women's and men's soccer. It'll be about, ‘Good luck, Norman versus Mustang.’ And ‘Good luck to OU and OSU women as they're playing.’
By the way, I think one of the first games in this new stadium should be an Oklahoma River rivalry that is half orange of the Cowboy color and half crimson. And we'll do it just like in Dallas, right down the middle. And you could imagine, you know, roughly 6,000, 7,000 people on both sides. That'll be awesome. Awesome day when we have it.
Jenni: Love it.
Court: So it's gonna just be about the conversation and making sure that everyone's involved, women and men, all different backgrounds.
You know, ‘Best of luck to Daryl Dike, an Oklahoma City native that's playing over in England in some of the highest levels.’ So we just want to reignite that conversation and give people a chance there. So they should definitely follow along. There will be chances along the way to give input on the brand review that we have. And then next year at some point, we want to have one of the largest groundbreakings in the history of the world in terms of participation. So stay tuned for that. But we're figuring out ways that people can get involved at every turn.
Jenni: Hey, if there's a Women’s World Cup match in 2031 and I'm still here and you're still here, we're going to have to have a big ol’ handshake before that because wouldn't that be amazing? World Cup soccer in Oklahoma City? I can't imagine. I guessing Court growing up in Broken Arrow would have never thought that would ever happen.
Court: Now we're going to try, right? I think a lot of people that grew up here would say, ‘I never thought we'd host the Olympic events’ or ‘We’d ever have an NBA team’ or all the things that are happening. That's what's so exciting about this is it's going to add energy to what is already going on in the city and the state. And then the beauty of this is this brand gets to tell that message of who we are to the rest of the world because it is the global unifying sport that's out there. So yes, 2031 for the women and 2027 for those games right here in Oklahoma City. It'll be here before you know it.
Jenni: Well, Court, I hope this is just the first of many conversations we get to have. We can just update as we go. Can't wait for more information, but give people those websites again where they can go and plug in to get information.
Court: Yeah, very easy. Thank you, Jenni. Energy FC for any of your handles, X, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever they're called these days. I'm showing my age. And then they can learn more, probably the best way is okcforsoccer.com. And that will basically bring you over to the Energy area and you can put your information in. We'll send out updates about community events, town halls, upcoming soccer events, gonna have watch parties, whatever, just join the movement. OKC For Soccer.
Jenni: Court, thanks again for joining us. Hope that to-do list starts getting a little bit shorter maybe, but we'll see next time we talk where we are on that.
Court: Thanks so much for having me, Jenni, and thank you to everyone for listening.