Austin FC announced that David Booth and Garheng Kong have acquired non-controlling minority stakes in the club and joined its ownership group. The move brings two Austin-based investors into the fold while Anthony Precourt keeps majority ownership and operating control.
For Booth, the timing carries a personal edge. He has been an Austin FC season ticket holder since Q2 Stadium opened, and now he is moving from the stands into the ownership structure of a club he has followed from the start. Booth is the Founder and Chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, the Austin-based firm that has grown under his leadership into a global business managing more than $1 trillion in assets.
The addition of Booth and Kong gives Austin FC another layer of local backing at a moment when the club is trying to deepen its footing in the city. The two investors bought their stakes from Pixiu Sports, and the club said Pixiu Sports and the pre-existing owners remain part of the ownership group. That means the club is expanding its bench without changing who is steering it day to day.
The terms were not disclosed, including how large the stakes are, but the structure leaves the important pieces in place. Precourt remains the club’s majority owner and the person with operating control. He will continue as the appointed Governor within Major League Soccer’s Board of Governors, while Matt Hulsizer stays on as Alternate Governor. In other words, Austin FC has added new capital and new names, but not a new power center.
Booth’s background is steeped in finance and university philanthropy. He helped create one of the first index funds in the 1970s, earned degrees in economics and business from the University of Kansas, later completed an MBA at the University of Chicago, and has backed major gifts at the University of Kansas, including the largest in the school’s history. Kong brings a different profile. He founded HealthQuest Capital in 2012, leads the healthcare-focused firm as Managing Partner, and has spent more than two decades investing in healthcare companies.
Kong also sits on boards tied to health care and education, including Labcorp, Smith & Nephew, Xeris Biopharma, IKS Health, Duke University Health System, the Duke University Board of Trustees and Dell Children’s Foundation. For Austin FC, the mix matters because the club is not simply adding money; it is adding investors with different networks and experience who are now tied to the team’s future while leaving control unchanged. That balance is the point of the deal and the source of its restraint: growth without a handover.
The next question is not who runs Austin FC, because that part is settled. It is how much these new owners intend to shape the club beyond the balance sheet, and whether this addition becomes the first step toward a broader local ownership story or simply a measured expansion of the group already in place.
