Columbus Crew SC, Football

Columbus Crew Soccer Club is an American professional soccer club based in Columbus, Ohio. The Crew competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference and began play in 1996 as one of the ten charter clubs of the league.[3] The team is currently being operated by an ownership group led by the Haslam family and former team doctor Pete Edwards. The Haslam/Edwards group is the third owner in club history. The franchise was founded in 1994 and originally known as the Columbus Crew until late 2014, when the club revealed a new logo and the addition of "SC" to its moniker. The "SC" in the team moniker stands for "Soccer Club", but the team name is officially "Columbus Crew SC". Since 1999, the Crew has played home games at Mapfre Stadium, the first soccer-specific stadium ever built for an MLS team, with a seating capacity of 19,968 as of the 2015 season. From 1996 to 1998, the Crew played its home games at Ohio Stadium on the campus of Ohio State University.[3] In 2014, the team set club attendance records for both most cumulative attendance and most sellouts.[4] Crew SC has won five major trophies: MLS Cup 2008, the Supporters' Shield in 2004, 2008, and 2009, and the 2002 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. The Crew have qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League (or its predecessor, the CONCACAF Champions' Cup) three times, reaching the quarterfinals each time.