Columbus Crew SC is a professional soccer club based in Columbus, Ohio, United States, which competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) in the Eastern Conference of the league. It is one of the ten charter clubs of MLS, having competed in the league since its inception. Crew SC is owned by Anthony Precourt and Precourt Sports Ventures LLC. Precourt became the second owner in the history of the club on July 30, 2013. The club's head coach is Gregg Berhalter, a former player of the United States men's national soccer team.
The franchise was founded in 1994 and originally known as the Columbus Crew, without any markers of its membership as a soccer club, 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".
The Crew currently plays its home games at MAPFRE Stadium (known as Columbus Crew Stadium until 2015), the first soccer-specific stadium ever built for a MLS team, with a seating capacity of 19,968 as of the 2014 season. From 1996 to 1998, Crew SC played its home games at Ohio Stadium on the campus of The Ohio State University. In 2014, the club's 19th season at Crew Stadium, the Black & Gold set club attendance records for both most cumulative attendance and most sellouts.
The Crew has won five major trophies: MLS Cup 2008, the 2004, 2008, and 2009 Supporters' Shields, and the 2002 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. The Black & Gold have qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League (or its predecessor, the CONCACAF Champions' Cup) three times, reaching the quarterfinals each time.