New Dallas women’s soccer team unveils name, logo ahead of Cotton Bowl Stadium debut

North Texas’ newest professional soccer team will be named Dallas Trinity FC and begin play the week of Aug. 16 at Cotton Bowl Stadium at Fair Park, team officials announced Thursday.

The women’s soccer club, which plays in the newly formed USL Super League, unveiled its name, crest and other branding at Klyde Warren Park on Thursday. The announcement came one day after the Dallas City Council approved a two-year, $592,000 grant for Fair Park’s operators to secure a deal with the team to play at Cotton Bowl Stadium.

“Dallas, we are honored and excited to bring a new chapter of professional women’s soccer to the greatest sports city in the world,” Dallas Trinity FC CEO Jim Neal, whose family owns the team, told a crowd of several hundred at Klyde Warren Park. “We are committed to making the city proud of this great new club.”

Team president Charlie Neal said the team’s name is a reference to the Trinity River that runs through North Texas, the team’s logo is a Pegasus, the city’s unofficial mascot, and the team’s colors are maroon and gold in homage to the Texas sunrise and prairies.

Among the crowd of several hundred people who gathered for the unveiling were Mayor Eric Johnson, Interim Mayor Kimberly Biser Tolbert, USL Super League president Amanda Vandervoort, Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall and at least seven City Council members.

The USL Super League is a new women’s professional soccer league that will launch in August with eight teams and is set to expand with at least two more teams in its second year. The new league will compete with the National Women’s Soccer League, which was founded in 2012. The only Texas team in the NWSL is based in Houston.

The USL Super League schedule sees matches played from August through December, with a mid-season break until January, then more matches played from February through May.

The USL Super League has already announced other teams in Brooklyn, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Lexington, Kentucky; Spokane, Washington; Tampa, Florida and Washington, D.C.

A dream come true

Jim Neal announced that Chris Petruccelli, who was fired as head coach of the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars in October, has been named general manager of Dallas Trinity FC. No players were signed prior to the brand announcement. Neal called the team a “dream come true.”

“There’s no denying that women’s sports is on a roll right now,” he said, “and Dallas, as the premier sports city in America, is perfectly positioned to support and embrace a new women’s professional soccer team.”

Neal told city council members on Wednesday that the team is in negotiations with the University of Dallas for space at a practice facility. The team aims to host youth clinics and tournaments, plans to have more than half of its employees be women and wants to have a minority team owner who is a woman or a person of color, he said.

Under the approved city proposal, Dallas would provide a subsidy to Fair Park’s management company, Oak View Group, which would continue to book the stadium on days when it’s not booked for a football team. The resolution proposed ahead of Wednesday’s vote outlined the $296,000 annual event subsidy of $18,500 per game, but it wasn’t immediately clear what the full terms of the agreements for teams to play at the stadium were or if the city was offering any other incentives.

The Cotton Bowl Stadium is undergoing a roughly $140 million renovation that is expected to be completed by the State Fair of Texas in 2025. Plans for the stadium’s renovations include improvements to restrooms, concessions, seating and new escalators. Work began in March.

This is the second time in recent months that the City Council has approved a deal to bring a professional women’s sports team to Dallas. On April 24, the City Council approved a 15-year, $19 million deal for the WNBA’s Dallas Wings to relocate from Arlington to downtown Dallas. The proposal, which is still awaiting approval from the WNBA Board of Governors, would see the Wings play games at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium beginning in 2026.

Johnson said professional sports have the power to attract tourists, bolster the city’s economic portfolio and drive economic development, and said the city is committed to supporting professional sports.

“Attracting new sports teams to Dallas is important to continuing our positive momentum as a world-class city and will show people around the world that this city is thriving,” the mayor said.