Verde! Listos!

Josh and Aaron discuss how FVF became the Official Injury Attorneys of Austin FC and why they think it’s such a great fit for the firm.

Listen here or read the transcript below. FVF’s Summary Judgment podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and more.

0:00:00.0 Josh: Hey, Aaron.

0:00:01.6 Aaron: Hey, Josh.

0:00:02.9 Josh: I want you to hit the rewind button on time and go back to 1994. Imagine me approximately the same weight, 8-10 inches shorter.

0:00:17.0 Aaron: Okay.

0:00:19.1 Josh: Okay? A little confused about where things are going but extraordinarily excited to attend a hockey match at Travis County’s Rodeo Center to watch the Austin Ice Bats play.

0:00:38.0 Aaron: How long do I have to talk to this kid?

0:00:41.3 Josh: The music comes on.

0:00:42.3 Aaron: Okay.

[vocalization]

0:00:57.9 Josh: Getting the picture.

0:01:00.8 Aaron: Very clear.

0:01:00.9 Josh: Okay. Got the cat and the hat on.

0:01:02.3 Aaron: [laughter] No.

0:01:05.1 Josh: Up on the glass. Getting thrown out of the game.

0:01:09.3 Aaron: Wait, I…

0:01:09.8 Josh: For heckling the players.

0:01:12.5 Aaron: Hang on. At first I didn’t know where we were going. Now I really am like this. I need to know, did you get thrown out of a hockey game?

0:01:21.2 Josh: No.

0:01:22.5 Aaron: Have you been there trying to make up for it ever since in this whole idea of like serving Austin and being a good personal injury lawyer and helping people, this is all just to make up for all the times when you were a derelict at hockey games?

0:01:35.1 Josh: Multiple hockey games.

0:01:36.8 Aaron: [laughter] If I got kicked out of a hockey game, I’d probably be proud of that.

0:01:42.1 Josh: Multiple hockey games. Very proud.

0:01:43.9 Aaron: Yeah. I’m proud of you. I’m just joking a little bit. I’m proud of you.

0:01:47.9 Josh: Thank you so much.

0:01:48.6 Aaron: Yeah. Good job.

0:01:51.6 Josh: So Austin has a little bit of a history with professional and semi-professional sports.

0:01:58.7 Aaron: Yes.

0:02:00.5 Josh: Right?

0:02:00.9 Aaron: Yes.

0:02:00.9 Josh: And growing up here…

0:02:01.2 Aaron: It’s been, but it’s there.

0:02:02.6 Josh: It’s then, it’s there but growing up here for the very longest time we had the University of Texas. Just a phenomenal program. If you’re gonna have a sports program in your community, University of Texas is a phenomenal one to have, but it’s also a little bit exclusive.

0:02:21.7 Aaron: Yeah.

0:02:22.1 Josh: Right?

0:02:22.8 Aaron: Yeah.

0:02:23.5 Josh: And you kind of have a sense that a team that is more representative of the city rather than of the university is always something that this community would embrace. And growing up here, I watched the city go through different ideas about what to do with professional sports and how to sort of expand that footprint. And I remember vividly growing up, there was an attempt to bring a semi-professional baseball team here. This was of course before the Run Rock Express. It was gonna be called the Austin Swing. That didn’t happen. Round Rock Express came and that was great. The Austin Ice Bats came and went. And that was just such a vivid part of my childhood.

0:03:12.1 Aaron: You and your brothers?

0:03:13.7 Josh: Of course, me and my brothers. And so when it became official that Austin was going to have a major league soccer team, that was something that was really exciting. Not just to me, of course, but I think to the city as a whole. So we’re here a little bit to talk about how we became the official personal injury law firm of Austin FC, how that partnership has developed over time and really what it means to us.

0:03:48.1 Aaron: You know where I thought you were gonna go with 1994.

0:03:51.6 Josh: I really wanna know.

0:03:53.1 Aaron: Well, because I also was in 1994 once, and I also had a connection to sports at that moment that was really important to me. And it was at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas watching Germany play South Korea in the actual honest to God World Cup.

0:04:13.5 Josh: Wow.

0:04:14.2 Aaron: Because the World Cup came to America back then. I don’t know if you remember, there was like a groundswell of support from more fans than we thought we had here who showed up and paid a lot of money for these tickets. And my cousin came in from Wyoming and like a van full of kids that were into soccer, and we all kind of went together and crowded in the Cotton Bowl and saw I think a combined seven goals in that match. It was amazing. And I kind of caught the bug. I already had the bug a little bit, but I really caught the bug that day. And so whereas you just told a story that was sort of like, here’s where Austen’s been with professional sports. There’s also this other narrative, which is where like, here’s where Aaron von Flare has been in relation to soccer. So that’s, you know, it’s two different major storylines there. [laughter]

0:05:05.7 Josh: But those things overlapped in 1994.

0:05:09.6 Aaron: In 1994, that’s where they first overlapped and then it took all the way, you know, it’s like this weird elliptical shave. It came, took all the way until 2022.

0:05:22.4 Josh: Yes.

0:05:22.6 Aaron: 2022 for it to come full circle. And we found ourselves connected to Austin FC in this weird way. So how did it happen? Why did it happen? What are we even talking about?

0:05:34.4 Josh: Yeah. I think we wanna try to understand why it was so important for us to be a part of the program when we realized that it was gonna become official. And part of the excitement for me was knowing that for really the first time in the city of Austin’s history, we were going to have this incredible opportunity to be a part of the beginning of something that really brings the community together from all different demographics, all different socioeconomic tiers. Something in common that everyone in the city could be united around and proud of and be a part of from the ground up. Something that the city really needed and something that I think we both knew was going to be exactly what the city wanted and needed at that moment in time of its growth and maturity.

0:06:54.0 Aaron: Yeah. I would say FVF law connected with Austin FC in part because Austin FC shared a dream of a community that was tied together. It was aspirational for us. Soccer is the beautiful game for a reason. It’s not because it’s so fun to watch and the players are so skilled. I mean, it’s because entire community’s happiness or depression swings and/or hangs on each match. And I’ve always weirdly wanted to live in a place that felt so connected to its team that if they lost, the whole community’s like depressed for a week and/or if they won, you’re like out in the streets hugging some person you don’t know while tears streamed out in your face just because that’s the feeling of that community having overcome. And Austin is going places, we’re definitely changing.

0:07:57.1 Josh: Sure.

0:07:57.6 Aaron: No question. And we’ve talked on this podcast and we’ve been on CBS Austin talking about our connection to live music and how there are certain things about Austin that we wanna be a part of because they ground our community. And to me, Austin FC gives us that another thing to keep us all connected.

0:08:18.2 Josh: What do you think it is about soccer in particular that has resonated so strongly with this city?

0:08:29.1 Aaron: Oh man. First of all, soccer’s amazing. It’s just like a combination of F1 drivers endurance and heavyweight boxers trying to outlast each other. And someone who’s just got like ninja like martial arts skills to do things with their bodies that we can’t do as normal mortals. And watching that play out on the field is just fantastic. I think soccer in and of itself in a vacuum is amazing. If you study it and you study other sports, you’ll see there’s a reason why it’s the most popular sport on the planet. But why it’s great for Austin is that it is a community-based emotional game. The players play better when this… Look at the MLS win rate, I think at home, or let me put it the other way. On the road, if you’re playing away, you lose like 70% of the time, or the chances of winning are only 30%. It’s a huge, massive advantage for the home team. Why? Because it’s an emotional sport.

0:09:41.1 Josh: It’s just so much energy.

0:09:42.1 Aaron: Yeah. And I think that is the thing that makes it kind of imprint on people. If you go there and you see your fellow Austinites who know the words to songs that are about a sports team and sing them loudly and proudly and hug each other when they score, you just kind of feel connected to something way bigger than yourself. And you feel the power of emotional force something that Austin FC or that FVF law has always emotional force is something FVF law has always traded upon. That’s what we go into court. That’s how we win. Every time. We connect with our clients, we care about them a lot more than the defense lawyer cares about the insurance company that he’s working for or she’s working for. So, that’s the obvious connection for me is that there’s a something that transcends and pulls the community together there. And I think, it’s a great fit for us as a firm.

0:10:40.7 Josh: Yeah. Now, I think also another reason why it’s been so successful so quickly here and why the timing was just so perfect. This was just such a great moment for FC to come to Austin as we’ve really become such an incredibly international city. I mean, we’ve got international businesses here, tons of international residents here. We’ve got lots of international flights now coming and going. And with soccer being such an incredibly international sport, it seems like the perfect opportunity to reach as far into the community as possible and bring everyone and unite everyone together to get behind kind of a common cause. And love to kind of hear your opinion, but the organization itself has done such an incredible job of making the supporters feel like part of the team and part of the community. It’s been a phenomenal experience to see FC go from just an idea to a fully supported community of human beings in this town, giving all that they have emotionally to show up and support the club.

0:12:18.7 Aaron: Yeah. They’ve given that platform to the supporters to… I mean, they’ve kind of supported the supporters. And when I say supporters, I’m talking specifically about the sort of intense side of the field where you’ve got people that are singing the whole game. There’s don’t sit down that are just outrageously supportive of the team and very vocal about it in a very authentic way. And for that to happen so quickly at all at Austin FC it took a mindset that I would say we could learn a lot from and that is, it’s democracy of leadership. Austin FC has a president, has a general manager, has a coach, but it also listens to the community. And there are decisions that are made about player acquisition and trades that are really made in partnership with those supporters whose online forums, by the way, some of them rival the following of the team itself. They have power. And it’s because that’s been allowed because there’s an ecosystem that was sort of built to allow the community to have a voice in this thing that is so important to the community.

0:13:38.2 Josh: That, and they’ve given back outside of the actual practice of soccer, they’ve given back to the community and continue to give back to the community in so many different ways. Getting the youth involved in sports, keeping the youth active physically and giving them an opportunity to really become a part of something larger. I think that the way that they have gotten out into the community really resonates with us as an organization in helping really not just come in and be a business, but to come in and be a part of the community whose roots run deep and who appreciate what the community has done for the organization and show that appreciation by giving back over and over and over again and in deeply meaningful ways.

0:14:37.0 Aaron: Absolutely.

0:14:40.3 Josh: When we made the decision to reach out to Austin FC to become a part of the story, it’s a big decision for us. Why do you feel like Austin FC was a great fit for us?

0:15:02.4 Aaron: You know, we had a chance to meet them on a personal level before they even had an office over there. When they first set up in a temporary camp in North Austin, I think you mentioned earlier that we were maybe like the, one of the earliest sponsor, I don’t know if it was a second sponsor or what, but we were one of the earliest people who came into their office and wanted to sign a deal, wanted to be a part of what they were about to go through and start. And at that time, we didn’t know who the marquee players were. We didn’t know that YETI was gonna be the Jersey sponsor. There’s so many unknowns at that point. All we knew was that we wanted to be a part of something that was gonna be professional grade, pulling our city together and doing something that wasn’t exclusive. You and I are both UT grads, we’re both Longhorns. We both are part of that club. I have season tickets to UT Baseball, I have season tickets to UT Football. I love the Longhorns in every possible way, but I have to recognize that not everybody in the community gets to feel as connected to it as I do. Whereas with Austin FC, like I was talking about earlier, there’s a sense that everyone has a voice. Those voices are gonna be heard and appreciated.

0:16:25.4 Josh: Well said sir, Verde.

0:16:27.3 Aaron: Verde.

0:16:28.9 Josh: Listos.

0:16:29.5 Aaron: Lis [laughter] Wanna do that again.

0:16:31.2 Josh: Verde.

0:16:31.5 Aaron: Listos.