Gabriel Brener is a private man. The majority owner of the Houston Dynamo generally avoids the public spotlight, preferring to allow his staff to focus on the tasks at hand, whether on the pitch or in the front office, without the owner weighing in publicly on every issue.
Make no mistake, though, Mr. Brener cares deeply about the club and wants to see the Orange at the top of the table. It’s a labor of love on behalf of a city that holds a special place in his heart and has influenced him from his earliest days. As part of our ongoing coverage of Hispanic Heritage Month and leading into Saturday's Noche Naranja match (7:15 p.m., TICKETS), HoustonDynamo.com spoke with him about his memories of Houston, what it means to be the only Mexican-American owner in Major League Soccer, and when and how he became of fan of the beautiful game.
“Ever since I have had a memory, I’ve been a soccer fan,” he said. “We all used to hang around the television on Saturdays and Sundays and watch the games. Mainly we were big fans of Chivas de Guadalajara, and in fact I remember I was so passionate about it when I was six or seven years old that I used to cry when they would lose. It was incredible.
“I think the thing that was the icing on the cake for me to become a huge soccer follower and fan was the 1970 World Cup in Mexico City. I was 11 years old and it just left a huge mark in everybody from that generation,” Brener continued. “I went to a number of matches. The most memorable was the final between Brazil and Italy, where Brazil beat Italy 4-1. The squad of Brazil had some huge names like Pelé and Rivelino and Jairzinho and all of those huge names that went into the history books as some of the better players ever.”
It’s been nearly 10 years since Brener and Oscar de la Hoya teamed up to purchase a 50 percent stake in the Dynamo in 2008. The duo were looking for an opportunity to invest in a professional sports organization that could appeal to the Hispanic community from which each came. Anschutz Entertainment Group was seeking investors to purchase part of the Dynamo, and for Brener the fit was a perfect one.
“My sister Susana has been living in Houston for almost 45 years. My grandparents used to live in Houston. They’re buried in Houston,” he said. “I got married in Houston. A lot of things have always brought me to Houston, so having a chance to buy part of the Houston Dynamo was a great opportunity.”
Family has always been important to Brener, and it was that pull that has drawn him to the Bayou City time and again throughout his life, starting in childhood.
“Growing up in Mexico City, when we used to travel to the United States it was always Houston because my sister was there, so it was a natural place to go,” he said. “Other people went to New York or LA or Miami, but we always went to Houston.”
That family-first theme brought him back to Houston when he and his wife Deborah were married.
“I used to live in Los Angeles, and my wife is from Chicago and my parents lived in Mexico City, but my grandmother was living in Houston and she was too old to travel,” he said. “We wanted her to be at the wedding, so we just dragged everybody to Houston.”
Even as a young man, Brener was impressed with the inclusive, can-do attitude of Houston and its residents. The entrepreneurial spirit that makes the city so special stood out to the young man from Mexico.
“It just seemed that there was a huge melting pot giving opportunities to people from all over the world, and opening its arms to anybody from anywhere that wanted to come and work hard and better themselves,” Brener said. “It sort of set an example for the way of thinking, of looking at people as people and not segregating them by race, religion or anything. It’s the American Dream, you know?”
As the owner, it’s important to Brener that the club reflects the city that it calls home. Soccer is the world’s game and Houston is an international city, making the Dynamo the ideal club to represent it.
“It’s very, very important to me,” the owner said. “I think it is one of the key components of the team that we have implemented and I want to continue to implement. We have players of so many different nationalities. … We have players from Europe, from Central America, from South America, from Africa. We are trying to cover every region that we can.”
Being the only Mexican-born owner in Major League Soccer and one of only two in American pro sports is a fact not lost on Brener, and it fills him with tremendous pride as well as an awareness of a great responsibility.
“We’re here, we’re proud to be the owners of the team and the managing partners of the team, and we support the community,” Brener said. “We’ll always be there for them and we expect them always to be there for us. It’s a partnership that we have with the community and we’re very proud to be the representatives of that community that we come from.”
