College Sports
QB Tim Tebow anchors ownership group for Augusta’s new hockey team
Video: Augusta announces new ECHL hockey team
Tim Tebow, former NFL quarterback and co-owner of Augusta Pro Hockey, and Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson speak on the new hockey team coming to downtown.
Professional hockey is returning to Augusta and will be backed by a college football legend.
Former NFL and quarterback Tim Tebow and auto-sales executive David Hodges are the new owners of the 32nd member team of the East Coast Hockey League, which will play its home games at the city’s rebuilt events arena.
The team begins play in October 2026 for the 2026-27 season. Fans will have the chance online to name the team byvisiting www.augustaprohockey.com/name-the-team.
“The arena’s going to be so special, and it’s going to take entertainment to another level,” said ice hockey executive Peter Luukko, who co-chairs Oak View Group’s Stadium and Arena Alliances. OVG manages the new Augusta arena.
Luukko compared Augusta’s re-entry into pro hockey to the success of another ECHL team, the Savannah Ghost Pirates, which he said is thriving in a recently built arena.
“The old arena was fantastic,” he said about the former James Brown Arena. “There were a lot of great musical acts there, sporting events there, but times are changing. The venues are bigger, faster, stronger, more capacity.”
Augusta had been home to the ECHL’s Augusta Lynx from 1998 to 2008 and the Southern Professional Hockey League’s Augusta RiverHawks from 2010 to 2013. The new arena will seat 10,500 visitors.
The arena, scheduled to open in the spring of 2027, will also include 14 luxury suites, 25 loge boxes, eight open suites, party suites, and center ice club seating.
Tebow, a 2007 Heisman Trophy winner with the University of Florida, played short stints with the Denver Broncos and the New York Jets. He’s visited the Augusta area before for speaking engagements and Masters Tournaments, and was an investor in a former PDQ chicken franchise that operated briefly in Evans.
“One of the most famous things that is here is the Masters, and you think about what happens when someone wins it – it changes their life,” Tebow said Wednesday in a press conference at the under-construction arena. “How many lives can get changed not just because they wear a green jacket, but their lives can be part of a community that values one another, that loves one another, that there’s something special about each other.”
“And we want to have a winning team,” he added.
Hodges, the CEO of Hodges Management Group LLC, sold two of his Florida Mazda dealerships in June as part of a pivot toward more non-automotive business ventures such as insurance and agriculture, and ownership stakes in several minor-league pro sports franchises, according to buy-sell business agent Haig Partners.
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Another owner, Andy Kaufmann, is CEO of Zawyer Sports and Entertainment, the group that will oversee the day-to-day operations of the new team.
Russell Lahodny attended Wednesday’s announcement not only as the executive director for the chamber of commerce in neighboring Columbia County, but also as a longtime sports fan and himself a 20-year ice hockey player in youth and adult leagues.
“It was great to see an opportunity to have a sport back in our area. When Andy came here and we were talking about the opportunity, I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure that they had the connections and everything that they needed,” Lahodny said. “The Augusta Commission, the Augusta (Richmond County) Coliseum Authority, they were really helpful in making sure that we had the opportunity to get ownership like Kaufmann and Zawyer Sports to bring an opportunity for family-friendly entertainment back to Augusta.”