Utah Royals FC (URFC), Real Salt Lake (RSL) (URFC & RSL jointly as “Club”) and America First Credit Union (AFCU) are aligned in our partnership goal to champion professional soccer in Utah and beyond – foundational in that mission is protecting our Club’s soccer spaces as safe spaces for all - there is no place for racism in this partnership, or anywhere in society. Bolstered by this goal alignment, we will not allow the hijacking of our credit union’s name in order to bring racist and hateful ideology into our Club, community, and League.
AFCU has contributed immeasurable hours, outreach and investment backing our professional athletes; above all AFCU is profoundly dedicated to supporting our teams, our community and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) more broadly.
As one of the largest credit unions in the country, AFCU has been a partner of our organization since its inaugural season in 2005, and most importantly, was the first local partner to step up, invest in and align with our URFC vision to be a Club run by women, empowering women on and off the field in our Utah community. Hopefully encouraging the countless businesses who have yet to wade into women’s soccer, AFCU has led the way with immense financial and non-financial support for professional female sports’ return to the state of Utah.
Made possible by AFCU’s enormous backing of our Club, our partnership continually and actively promotes charitable giving and growing awareness for community initiatives, including YWCA programs addressing racial inequities, LGBTQAI+ programs, youth programs and Major League Soccer’s social responsibility platform Soccer for All, among many others. Our Club's ownership group, its staff, the players and academy teams are proud of our diversity with regards to race, creed, gender identification, national origin and cultural background; and we will always celebrate these differences.
Our Club refuses to allow hate groups, past or present, or those who espouse such values, to commandeer or misappropriate historic words, phrases and symbols that have meant so much to our community, our Club and our Country. Words like “Democrat”, “Republican”, “America” and countless other historically rooted phrases have been utilized in vastly different ways by a myriad of political groups over the course of our nation’s complex, painful and storied history – a history that evokes both pride and discomfort depending on one’s own perspective.
As such, we will not allow detractors to seize and co-opt the words “America” and “First” in order to disparage our partner, Club and community. The phrase “America First” was sourced by AFCU in their American military roots and tradition of putting the needs of its military, country, members and community first, details of which can be found at americafirst.com. AFCU continues that tradition by supporting our Utah organization and our players.
We are thankful to AFCU for their continued and unwavering support of our female athletes, our female-run front office, our Club, our community and women’s soccer. We hope that our supporters, our opponents’ supporters and all those in the NWSL community will help us in driving future investment & involvement in the sport we all love, and on championing women and diversity in the sport and beyond.
