A green rubber dinosaur propped open the door last week to Minnesota Aurora FC’s corporate office, in an industrial park in Eagan, not far from TCO Stadium.
Aurora moved here from its original St. Paul location this past June. The office itself is bare bones — one airy conference room, another room for Aurora’s three full-time employees, a pro shop with green artificial turf, and lots of storage in the back for merchandise and assorted gear.
In the conference room, on a shelf beneath the windows, rests a silver plate with one word in the middle: “Finalist.” That’s the runner-up trophy Aurora received after its 2022 inaugural season, when it lost the USL W League championship match to South Georgia Tormenta FC — its only loss that charmed summer.
“For the longest time, that second-place trophy was hiding in the other office because none of us wanted to see it,” said Andrea Yoch, one of Aurora’s co-founders. “I still don’t even like looking at it.”
It’s probably fortunate, then, that there’s no visible evidence of amateur Aurora’s unsuccessful bid last year to join the professional National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). To Yoch and fellow co-founders Allie Schmidt and Wes Burdine, that one still stings.
U.S. Soccer Federation standards required a deep-pockets investor with a net worth at least $15 million to own 35% of any potential NWSL expansion team. That was a problem for Aurora, launched to great fanfare with about 3,000 community owners. Yoch said Aurora had a lead investor lined up, but that person (the club never identified the individual) backed out, forcing the club to withdraw its bid.
“Honesty, the end of the NWSL bid was a crusher for us,” said Schmidt, the former University of Minnesota soccer standout who chairs the club’s board of directors.
So what now? Regroup, reset and move on. Absorb the lessons of the bid process while focusing on Aurora’s fourth USL W season, which begins in May.
“Our pursuit of NWSL wasn’t all for nothing,” said Burdine, who owns The Black Hart of Saint Paul soccer bar. “It allowed us to build a really big spreadsheet of people who aren’t going to be the lead investor, but have big pocketbooks. They believe in what we’ve built.
“We can continue that conversation and figure out, what is the future of the club going to be? If it’s NWSL, then we have certain things to do. If it’s not going to be NWSL, the most important thing is that we find a path forward for this club that allows us be successful and put on amazing game days where we get to cheer fantastic players. That can be done outside of NWSL. Our priority is making sure Aurora flourishes.”
Already, Aurora is a remarkable women’s soccer success story. In three seasons, it has never lost a regular season game (33-0-3), capturing two league regular season and three Heartland Division titles before losing in the playoffs each time. Aurora outdrew three NWSL teams in its first season, averaging 5,350 per match. Last year it averaged a club record 5,799 at 7,000-capacity TCO Stadium.
But Aurora needed an infusion of cash this fall after exhausting the $1 million it raised in 2021 through its initial round of community ownership. A new WeFunder campaign, which closed Jan. 31, generated $892,765 from 2,668 investors, including media personality Sarah Spain and some of her listeners.
The founders also need to figure out how to generate more revenue beyond three primary sources — gate receipts, sponsorships and merchandise sales.
With only six regular season home games and TCO Stadium capacity just about maxed out, options are limited. Single-game ticket prices remain the same as last year, from $50 at midfield to $17 for general admission, plus a $2.50 handling fee per ticket.
This past weekend Aurora hosted a warehouse sale to move merchandise left over from last season. (Yoch said this season’s kits will have a new front-of-the-jersey sponsor, to be announced soon.) Schmidt anticipates a record year for sponsorships.
On the business side, the club never replaced president and chief operating officer Jessica Poole, an accomplished college administrator who left this past June after 15 months on the job. Yoch, Schmidt and Burdine took on most of Poole’s duties. Aurora is currently trying to hire an operations coordinator for logistics and fund-raising support.
In January, Aurora added two business executives to its board of directors – Irene Quarshie, a senior vice president of Target Corp., and Ida Kane, formerly the chief financial officer of two software companies. Both provide a measure of high-level financial acumen the founding group lacked, which Yoch expects to help the next time the NWSL solicits expansion bids. (Kane’s daughter Taylor, a goalie at the University of Iowa, played three seasons for Aurora.)
“The learning curve was so steep,” Yoch said. “The three of us as original founders and still in the day-to-day, there are giant things we don’t know. The board members coming in have new areas of expertise. Ida Kane is just a financial superstar. By adding in those pieces, it’s really going to help us court big investors. So that when we actually get into those conversations, we can move them along quickly because we have all the financial documents ready. And we’ll know better when to start, how far ahead we need to be, and how locked in these people are so we don’t have them dropping out again at the last minute.”
With expansion fees for the NWSL skyrocketing from $2 million for the Utah Royals in 2022 to $110 million for the new Denver franchise in 2026, Aurora already may be priced out of contention.
Even if Aurora comes up with the ante, Yoch believes future bids will require clubs to build a practice facility and perhaps a stadium. Playing at Minnesota United FC’s Allianz Field seems unlikely, Yoch said, because NWSL and Major League Soccer seasons overlap.
But there’s another, less costly option — the USL Super League, USL W’s pro venture.
“As soon as we get the word from the NWSL that they’re going expand again, we’ll probably go again,” Yoch said. “But we’ll talk about it as a board. Meanwhile, we’ll talk about the Super League and other leagues (and) keep our options open. It’s going to be our tighten-everything-up year so when the opportunity comes again, we are ready to go.”
But there’s something still bugging Burdine. That “Finalist” plate, and what it represents.
“This is the year we win the championship,” he said. “We’re getting tired of having these seasons (where) we’ve never lost, and then it doesn’t work out in the playoffs. With Jen Larrick, our (new) head coach, we’re feeling very good, and feeling like we want to be those holding the cup at the end.”
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