Sporting JAX President and CEO Steve Livingstone shows one of the billboards that will promote Jacksonville's first professional women's sports team. | News4Jax
Published on December 3, 2024 at 4:48 pm
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Jacksonville’s first professional women’s sports team — the Sporting Jax soccer club — will kick off in August 2025.
Sporting Jax’s new women’s team will be part of the Division 1 USL Super League. It will join eight others teams with 220 players representing 24 countries.
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Team and league officials announced the Jacksonville team and its interim home, Hodges Stadium at the University of North Florida, on Tuesday at UNF. Also present were Mayor Donna Deegan and UNF President Moez Limayem.
Deegan called it “an incredible leap forward” for the city’s sports community.
“This is a perfect place for this to happen, and it means so much for Jacksonville to have another major league team here and even more so that Sporting Jax will be that first franchise for women,” Deegan said. “It really is a testament to fostering an environment that all athletes regardless of gender can thrive. The Sporting Jax soccer team embodies the spirit of our city — diverse, resilient and united.”
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The new women’s team also creates the first local pathway for young athletes to achieve their professional dreams in their hometown, said USL Super League President Amanda Vandervort.
“To UNF and everybody here, thank you for this incredible opportunity and this partnership,” Vandervort said. “We are quite proud of that development pipeline and the vision of this club to be a leader in the community here in Jacksonville and rally aspiring to be a leader in the world of soccer, not just women’s soccer.
“We really do believe that what the Super League is, and what we are building towards, is truly transformational for women’s sports.”
Sporting Club Jacksonville was founded in 2020 with an ownership group includes Tim Tebow and Fred Taylor.
Hodges Stadium will serve as the home for the team through spring 2026. The team will have a fall season between August to December and a spring season from January to April, with playoffs in May. Plans are underway for a permanent stadium for the Sporting Jax women’s and men’s teams.
Soccer stadium updates
Steve Livingstone, Sporting Jax president and CEO, called Hodges Stadium “a fantastic venue to play at,” although some changes will be coming before games start.
“They have a great playing surface, a fantastic video board, broadcast quality lighting and a solid infrastructure that will support players and fan,” Livingstone said.
The league will work with UNF to install 1,800 chairs in the central sections of the stadium to create a new club section and 100 premium field seats on the east side line to brings fans as close to the action as possible, Livingstone said.
New hospitality areas also will be built, and a pre-match fan zone will entertain fans before kickoff, Livingstone said.
Sporting Jax announced that tickets for the club’s inaugural season are now available for purchase. Prices are $15 for general admission and $10 for students. Premium seats will be $25 per game.
Season ticket holders will receive the lowest per-game ticket prices and inaugural season women’s pro team scarf when purchasing season tickets before the end of this year.
A “robust” marketing campaign to promote the new league will get underway soon, Livingstone said. It will includes a TV commercial as well as billboards, one with a countdown clock to the first game.
A portion of proceeds from the inaugural women’s team scarf will be donated to HerSong and Hubbard House, two nonprofits that seek to protect and empower women in the community.
For information on season tickets and benefits, go to SportingJax.com/Tickets.
Just a week ago, Sporting Jax and its nonprofit wing, Sporting Jax Foundation, announced that had joined forces with Florida Elite Soccer Academy to create Sporting Jax Soccer Academy, which they claled one of the largest and most comprehensive youth-to-pro soccer pathways in the country.
