Stephon Castle had been enjoying for a skilled sports activities team for under a few months final 12 months when the then-20-year-old started contemplating proudly owning a piece of one other.
A 6-foot-6 guard, Castle was ending his first season with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs final spring when his agent, Joe Smith, and father, Stacey, ran an funding alternative previous him. Such approaches are frequent for newly minted millionaires, akin to NBA rookies. But this one felt completely different.
Andre Swanston, one of solely a handful of Black majority team homeowners in all of North American skilled sports activities, wished Castle to affix the possession group for a new soccer franchise in Connecticut. Castle was raised in Georgia however had dedicated to play at the University of Connecticut earlier than his junior 12 months of highschool, and in 2024 gained an NCAA championship in his lone collegiate season. The state has turn into a “second home,” he stated.
“Everything kind of happened fast from there,” Castle stated.
By December, Castle’s Spurs teammates, many of them critical soccer followers, realized that their level guard was not solely final season’s NBA Rookie of the Year, but additionally one of a number of minority homeowners of CT United of Major League Soccer’s developmental second division, known as Next Pro. CT United started its first season this month.
“We got a lot of soccer fans on our team,” Castle stated, “so it started some trash talk, kind of instantly.”
He had turn into the newest basketball star to turn into an owner in one other sport — and particularly soccer. LeBron James purchased a minority stake in Liverpool of the Premier League in 2011. As MLS grew to 30 groups, James Harden joined the possession of the Houston Dynamo in 2019, and Kevin Durant purchased a piece of the Philadelphia Union in 2020. Five years later, Durant purchased into Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain too.
Athletes are more and more excited about proudly owning fairness in groups or manufacturers, stated Smith, Castle’s agent, but he described Castle as an outlier. At the time James, Harden and Durant bought their stakes, every was already an NBA veteran on a profitable contract. Castle was solely 21 and a rising star nonetheless on his rookie contract when his minority possession in CT United — he declined to say the proportion of his possession stake — grew to become official in December.
The resolution was not out of character for Castle, Smith stated. The two met when Castle was nonetheless in highschool, and Smith stated he was struck by how a lot the teenager was already contemplating his “legacy,” Smith stated. Castle by no means switched excessive faculties or flipped his faculty dedication, each rarities amongst high prospects.
“I feel like that’s just the way me and all my siblings were raised, just to think smart, think ahead and try and not to skip steps,” Castle stated.
As he based CT United from scratch, the 44-year-old Swanston additionally wasn’t seeking to skip steps, understanding the soccer membership would wish to show to MLS leaders that it was worthy of inclusion in the sport’s high home league.
“To show that we can be the first team to actually grow from within the Major League Soccer ecosystem from an academy team to a minor league team to major league team is, I think, earning it in a way that no one else can say they’ve ever done,” he stated.
United’s placement in Connecticut is no accident.
Raised in the Bronx, Swanston attended boarding faculty in Connecticut and later went to the University of Connecticut, the place he was a triple jumper on the faculty’s observe team. While there, he realized that UConn’s wildly profitable males’s and ladies’s basketball applications weren’t the solely uber-popular groups on campus. The ladies’s soccer team performed for a nationwide championship in 2003, whereas the males gained the title in 2000 and commonly topped NCAA attendance rankings.
“On a Friday night, thousands of people, everybody, went to soccer matches,” Swanston stated.
As just lately as final fall, the males nonetheless drew the fifth-highest attendance common in the NCAA. Such a built-in fan base was half of Swanston’s calculus for wanting a team in the state, an thought he stated first took maintain in 2018 and have become extra potential in 2020, when the information firm he based bought for 9 figures, he stated.
Not lengthy after, he heard that MLS was beginning a second division as half of a plan to develop youthful gamers, staffers, executives and even take a look at on-field guidelines in markets the place there weren’t already MLS groups, like Chattanooga, Tennessee, and High Point, North Carolina.
“Connecticut is the most densely populated, affluent market in America with none of the top five major sporting leagues, right?” Swanston stated. “A billion dollars a year pretty much goes to subsidize New York and Boston out of Connecticut.”
In 2021, Swanston met with Ali Curtis, the president of MLS Next Pro. Curtis had began as the common supervisor of Toronto, making him the first Black common supervisor in league historical past, earlier than rising via the ranks. Swanston can speak at size about soccer prospects and enjoying kinds, and believes that data helped MLS officers take him severely.
Curtis was impressed by Swanston’s ambition and confidence. And, “as a person of color,” Curtis added, “you don’t always meet a prospect that is also a person of color that is going to be a potential owner within the league.”
MLS doesn’t preserve demographic information on its groups’ possession teams, a spokeswoman stated. The league describes Swanston as “one of only a few Black majority team owners in the history of U.S. pro sports.” There are at the moment no Black majority homeowners of MLB, NBA, NHL or NFL groups.
MLS has league guidelines for vetting potential team homeowners, who’re the league’s de facto enterprise companions, Curtis stated, calling it “probably the first and the last point that you focus on. What’s the ownership group going to be? Who are they? What are their values? What are their principles?”
As valuations of U.S. professional groups have spiked over the final decade, there is additionally the query of what number of people find the money for to purchase groups. Leagues rigorously overview the wealth of a controlling owner, however Swanston believes minority illustration might develop if extra worth have been positioned on an possession group’s mixed wealth.
“If you talk about four groups or four families worth $2 billion instead of one [family], you’ve dramatically increased the potential for minority ownership and female ownership,” Swanston stated. “I think in the meantime, where we’re gonna see diversity and ownership is in minority positions, with people owning 1% to 10% of clubs, and I think we have seen a huge jump in that over the last decade.”
Swanston and his spouse, Michelle, the team’s co-owner, have deliberately saved CT United’s id native. They began a free youth academy. Eight wolf’s tails in the team brand symbolize one for every of Connecticut’s counties. The sponsor on the entrance of the jersey is headquartered in Stamford; the jersey was designed by a Bridgeport-based firm. As the team waits to construct a stadium in Bridgeport, its dwelling video games this season can be held round the state in a barnstorming tour.
And to fill out his possession group, he started speaking with Smith and Castle’s father about together with Stephon, partly as a result of of his function on the 2024 Connecticut team that gained an NCAA basketball championship. It was Castle’s shared affinity for Connecticut that mattered to Swanston, not his soccer data — “I know he likes winning,” Swanston stated.
Castle knew about the lack of Black possession when he agreed to affix.
“I wouldn’t say that was a sole reason why I think I made that decision, but it definitely played a factor for sure,” he stated.
Castle was drawn extra to conserving his connection to Connecticut and being half of a team from its inception. He additionally appreciates soccer, even when he doesn’t compete himself. He has lengthy performed soccer video video games — usually as established powers Liverpool and Manchester City — and he attended a sport at Barcelona’s famed Camp Nou stadium in 2023 on a journey with the UConn basketball team.
Castle envisions being concerned and desires to construct relationships with United gamers, many of whom are related in age. But that should wait; the Spurs this season have turn into in a single day NBA title contenders and will play deep into June. He may attempt to strike up a dialog with the Spurs’ homeowners to get recommendation, he stated.
For now, he retains CT United jerseys and a scarf at his Texas dwelling. He’s been half of the membership for lower than six months but already believes this gained’t be his final funding in professional sports activities.
“Just being able to connect with people on that [ownership] level is obviously a big thing for me. So just that in itself I feel like is a success,” he stated. “So later down the line, even after my career, I’m probably definitely going to look into doing this again.”