Feature Story Sports
community. It’s the common denominator
that bridges political, socioeconomic and
cultural divide.”
The City of Arlington, located between
Dallas and Fort Worth, is home to the Rangers
and Cowboys. The Rangers, led by Japan-native
Yu Darvish, capped its 2012 season by setting
a club-record for attendance at 3.46 million in
81 games at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
The Dallas Cowboys, often referred to as
America’s Team, led the NFL in average home
attendance at more than 85,000 fans per game.
The team plays at Cowboys Stadium, one of the
premier venues in the country, home to Super
Bowl XLV and the annual Cotton Bowl Classic.
Maher Maso, Frisco’s mayor, knows firsthand how sports can impact a city’s economy
and profile. With civic leaders aware that a
city’s property and sales tax revenues “tend to
flatten as age goes up,” they turned to sports,
Maso said. Creating a sports complex to draw
franchises and tournaments would create a
third revenue stream to keep the city vibrant.
So Frisco has methodically created the infrastructure and facilities to house everything
from a professional sports franchise to a minor
league team, from an Olympics-level gymnastic training company to a burgeoning cricket
association. Throw in standard youth offerings
such as aquatics, soccer, baseball and softball,
and you have a veritable sports mecca.
The city vision is working. In spring of
2011, Men’s Journal named Frisco the best
place to raise an athlete. And to date, three of
the city’s sports facilities house several major
and minor league teams.
The last three years, the NCAA Football
championship subdivision game has been
held at the FC Stadium in Frisco.
International Leagues
Any wonder Brit