In February 2022, I wrote a cover story about Frisco and its pathway toward becoming the most powerful sports suburb in America. The particulars are too many to detail here—they involve an arcane tax law, the Frisco Independent School District, and visionary city manager George Purefoy—but even with Purefoy’s retirement last year, Frisco is well positioned to keep adding to its sports portfolio for years to come.
The next phase of that comes in tennis, when the Ford Center at The Star will take over hosting the Dallas Open from SMU in 2025. The move aligns neatly with the 2-year-old event being bumped up from an ATP 250 event to an ATP 500: there are only 16 of those events worldwide, and with increased cachet comes a bigger prize pool plus a deeper field. It only follows that the event would explore upgraded digs, too, and the 12,000-seat Ford Center, with all the trimmings and trappings of The Star, fits the bill.
Frisco’s gain is Dallas’ loss, which probably sticks in the craw of Mayor Eric Johnson, who presumably uses that phrase on the daily now that he’s a Cowboy Hat Guy. We are a year and a half removed from his establishing The Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention, which was always going to be more bluster than results and looks even more like the former in a moment when the most prominent new Dallas sporting event in years has, uh, not been retained.
Johnson and Co. do have a fresh win under their big-buckle belt in the form of the National Cricket League, which will hold its inaugural tournament in South Dallas in May. But a one-in, one-out approach doth not a successful committee make, and we’re some time (and some significant legislature changes) away from Johnson’s inevitable attempt to hoover up credit for the Mavericks arena-casino-resort that Mark Cuban’s sale of the team to the Adelson family now facilitates.
So we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more pro sports moves coming to Dallas. Because after next year, anyone looking for ATP tennis will be driving up the Tollway.
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