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In-Depth

Gen Z: Andy Loughnane

President, Austin FC

In January, Andy Loughnane was named club president of Austin FC, which will begin play as the 27th team in MLS in 2021. He previously worked as president of business operations for the Columbus Crew and also has had stints with the Detroit Pistons and Red Wings as well as the Columbus Blue Jackets.

— As told to Ian Thomas

 

I think we’re all trying to answer the question of how do college-age students, and younger, prefer to consume sports and content. We proactively engaged the University of Texas to participate in trying to answer this exact question. Last summer, we brought on 25 UT students as launch team members and liaisons. That led to a deeper relationship with UT where we participated directly in a class project that addressed data around that question, as well as gaining insights from those students themselves about what they’d really want to hear, read and see from a team. We’re still processing some of those results, but our goal is to put all of those into action.

Austin is a very culturally dynamic city, and to try to begin the process of integrating into the community, we want to make sure we’re extending our brand into art, music and style — things that are all very important to the Gen Z generation. We were very engaged with South by Southwest this year, and we partnered with Fader Fort, which is a very well-known celebration of all of those things.

Right now, we’re limited by certain things that will be much different when the club actually is playing in 2021. We haven’t fully built out a content-generation team that can develop that significant volume of interesting content that can speak to that Gen Z audience. We aren’t able to participate in the eMLS league platform. But we want to make sure we’re developing a strong database so that as we continue to evolve, we can directly communicate with those fans, especially in the areas that they’re most interested.

Andy Loughnane is tasked with attracting fans of all ages as Austin FC prepares to join MLS in 2021.getty images

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