There has been a rise of American businessmen in the boardrooms at Scottish football clubs in recent years, with the arrival of Ron Gordon at Hibernian, John Nelms at Dundee and Mark Ogren down the street at Dundee United. It is not all one-way traffic, however. For the past two decades Steve Livingstone has been the Scot dispensing his wisdom on the other side of the Atlantic, and now he is planning to bring a little bit of Celtic – a club dear to his heart – to US soccer.
Before he was a sports executive, Livingstone was a well-kent face on the sports desks of Scottish newspapers. Later still, he was general manager of the Scottish Claymores before his association with the franchise took him into the corridors of power at the NFL in the US with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
North Florida has been his home for 20 years during which time he has held a number of positions including as a senior consultant to Celtic from 2016 to 2020. For all of his experience in a cutthroat world, he has lost none of his down-to-earth manner or avuncular demeanour. Something else which remains intact is his sense of where he came from and so when he gives an example of something it usually has a Glaswegian reference point.
Take his latest sports project: the launch of a new soccer team in Jacksonville – known by the working title JAX-USL – which is scheduled to play its first match in the United Soccer League, the equivalent of our Championship (or perhaps more accurately, the Championship in England) in 2025.
The earliest days of JAX-USL have been concerned with identifying sites for a new stadium but like all good sports franchise launches in the modern era, there is a famous face to front the campaign. That duty has fallen upon Tim Tebow, the former Denver Broncos quarterback, Jacksonville Jaguars tight end and a college football legend from his time with the Florida Gators. Tebow, who has huge local and national pull, is a good friend of JAX-USL's majority investor Ricky Caplin, the head of private equity firm Caplin Ventures and Livingstone calls the decision to bring him on board “a masterstroke”. Tebow has often been cast as a polarising character in American public life, an outspoken Christian and pro-life activist, he previously drew criticism from his former Broncos team-mates for what they called his “self-centred” beliefs but he has also been praised for the charity work he has done with young people, particularly the disadvantaged. He has, at least in this latter sense, something of the Brother Walfrid about him.
“I didn't know Tim until about two or three months ago, and I had my own kind of perceptions of what he was like as an athlete. But since I've got to know him, he's a phenomenal person. I can understand why he has such a following and a fan base. In terms of Florida, and North-east Florida, he’s a sporting legend. I guess it would be the equivalent of bringing Kenny Dalglish or some kind of mythical figure on board as part of your ownership team. It was really a masterstroke in terms of Ricky bringing him to the table. One thing he's really big about is community and from that, he sees a great opportunity to give back to the community. Our facility won't just only be for soccer, it will be a mixed-use facility, hosting other sports, everything from high school American football to lacrosse and rugby. Tim has a foundation called the Tim Tebow Foundation and he has got this big thing every year called Night To Shine where he identifies special ability kids and puts on a prom for them. It's a huge and really great thing. I think part of his involvement in this has been to champion that special needs community which is under-served.
“I keep reminding Tim and Ricky about how soccer clubs have traditionally started in Europe,” adds Livingstone. “And oftentimes, there's been a huge social dimension to the club starting. My club in Scotland was Celtic and obviously we know the origins of Celtic and we've been kind of looking for a cause like that to back. The cause found us when we brought Tim Tebow on board. We'll be a big champion for special needs and unified sports.”
Livingstone’s most recent attempt at helping to bring professional soccer to the region ended when he left Jacksonville Armada in 2016. That team – who joined the North American Soccer League in 2015 – failed as a professional team largely as a result of the club not having its own stadium.
Since then, Livingstone has had a gnawing feeling, a sense of unfinished business. It's an itch that becomes more apparent when people ask him about his plans to give another go at bringing professional soccer back to the region. Part of his motivation is borne from having watched a talent drain in the region in recent years. His kids grew up playing soccer and he knows of plenty of others who had to go elsewhere to make it in the game.
“You know, everybody I've bumped into in the last five years said to me, when are you going to bring pro soccer back to Jacksonville? It definitely is unfinished business, that is definitely a motivating factor, there's no doubt about it. With the amount of research we've done, we are convinced this community loves to participate in professional soccer. And, you know, I live in the community, I've lived here for the last 20 years, watched my kids grow up and play soccer here. And it's a frustration that we have that disconnected pathway to professionalism. We are developing some pretty good soccer players in North-east Florida, they are having to go somewhere else to [play at the next level].”
“You're talking about a market the size of Glasgow, maybe even beyond that that just isn't represented at the professional level and that had to change here. I think where we came up short on the Armada was on the long term sustainability and I know the ownership at the time were looking at the options of developing a stadium, but just never really got to it. And the thing kind of petered out before it kind of got off the ground.
The success and stability of USL, Livingstone says, has convinced him that this new entity has much brighter prospects.
“One thing about the United Soccer League is that with the expansion clubs, they're kind of insistent on meeting certain criteria before they'll admit you to the league. We're following the USL's blueprint for the development of an expansion club. The key ingredients are having your own facility to play out off. That's something that has dogged the development of professional soccer in the US. You have new clubs springing up all the time but they don't have the kind of infrastructure, nor the business plan to support the club, particularly when they're renting out of a facility, and potentially shedding concession and parking revenues. That seems to have been the unravelling of many a team here. In addition, the USL are keen on seeing some kind of commercial development happen at the same time – maybe next to the stadium or on the campus and the third part of the three-legged stool, as I call it, is to make sure that you're aligned properly with the youth market and are developing a pathway to professionalism.”
The Armada still remain in existence and while they sit much lower down the pyramid these days they are believed to have applied to join the third-tier Major League Soccer Next Pro league. So what has changed this time around and why does Livingstone think this attempt will be more successful than what happened at Armada?
“I think there's a few differences,” he says. “I think the league has definitely got smarter as it's developed and the USL in particular has done a fantastic job in the last five to 10 years of really establishing itself as a stable league. At the same time, it's got things right, like putting minimum standards in and expectations for the expansion clubs. They've done a really fantastic job of building the broadcast and digital platforms. Games have been aired on ESPN and ESPN plus. And when they do admit a new club to the league, they provide an awful lot of support, support that really wasn't around when we started the Armada in the modern version of the NASL. We were very successful on the business side of the Armada. We made quite a lot of money. I think it was roughly $2 million in profit in that first year. It was exceptional, but unfortunately, we exceeded the budget on the playing side by a considerable amount.”
Livingstone once described starting a sports franchise as “a pretty ballsy thing to do”. Second time around, he’s ready to give it his best shot.
