A big change is coming to FC Dallas’ jerseys, although it won’t be visible in an obvious way until 2023. MTX, the north Texas software company, will no longer be the jersey sponsor for FC Dallas after the current 2022 MLS season.
“We are currently transitioning from the MTX partnership” is the official line from the club. FC Dallas will be making an early termination of what was reported as a seven-year agreement, the value of which was never disclosed.
MTX has been a curiosity of sorts in the North Texas business world starting its successful bid for a $300 million project to build a contract tracing app for the State of Texas, beating out some of the world’s largest development firms, despite being a relative unknown.
MTX owner Das Nobel has also come under scrutiny for various reasons but it is his repeated public claim he will one day buy the Dallas Cowboys from Jerry Jones that tends to raise the most eyebrows.
Setting aside efforts to decipher if the Cowboys thing was a real goal or just hype-fuel, MTX is currently undergoing a contraction in business that appears to be affecting its partnership with FC Dallas.
MTX signed on to be the club’s jersey sponsor with a 2021 multi-year deal that included, “marketing and community impact initiatives.” In 2022, MTX changed the shirt sponsor logo to reflect its “Maverick Quantum Artificial Intelligence Platform” spin-off company ‘mavQ‘. mavQ is also currently the shirt sponsor of the club’s second division side, North Texas SC, while MTX remains on the Academy kits.
MTX is a Salesforce development partner – one that creates custom versions of Salesforce’s offerings but had also recently expanded in attempts to larger full-stack projects. mavQ, spun off as a separate entity, was supposed to develop an AI data analytics system for managing youth and pro players within the FC Dallas system, but that now too appears to be ending.
Concerns around the company’s business dealings go as far back as January when at the same time it executed a company-wide reduction in force, it was announcing it would become both the jersey sponsor and an investor in the Dallas Jackals rugby team.
One former MTX employee claims the same day they were instructed to let go almost half of their team, the company was both making the Jackals announcement and passing out cookies in the shape of the FC Dallas jersey, but with the mavQ logo (which they’d chosen to switch to).
That’s a move the former employee described as “at the best, tone-deaf” as employees were packing their belongings. The source, and their entire business vertical, were also eliminated two weeks later.
Changes in the relationship between FC Dallas and MTX started to become apparent several weeks ago when the MTX/mavQ branding began to disappear from locations in Toyota Stadium and references to the company ceased during the club’s TV gameday productions.
MTX came on board as kit sponsor after FCD’s partnership with previous shirt sponsor, Advocare, changed on the heels of their $149 million settlement with the FTC, who charged it with operating as a pyramid scheme. Advocare, who now claims it is no longer a multi-level marketing company, remains as the club’s sleeve sponsor.
There was considerable concern FC Dallas would enter into the 2021 season without a shirt sponsor, but a new partner sponsor MTX – a partnership that typically can take extended periods of time to work out – happened quickly over the course of the 2020 holiday season according to Dan Hunt (who led the negotiations).
Lol not surprised considering it never made sense what their business was.
At best I was hopeful it was something new and upcoming that might have at least national recognition one day… well now it might be recognized, for all the wrong reasons.
If you came from a technology background, the work they do does make sense and it’s similar to what other large, established consulting firms do (including Big 4).
The difference is that MTX is, at best, very poorly run.
Hopefully the next sponsor chosen will be a solid brand. There are so many who already partner with FC Dallas or are headquartered in the area. Would be great to have a brand like NEC, Pepsi or even something like Southwest or American Airlines become the sponsors.
So you’re saying my mavQ jerseys will become “collector’s” items?