Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores want a soccer team. Detroit already has a successful one.

Could a marriage, or maybe an adoption, be in their future?

The billionaire businessmen and the owners of the popular semi-pro Detroit City FC soccer club — who want to turn pro as soon as 2018 and needs millions of dollars from an investor to do so — have talked several times over the past year, but nothing has emerged from the meetings.

Now, it appears there is budding business relationship between the Gores-Gilbert consortium and DCFC.

Gilbert's Quicken Loans Inc. and Gores' Detroit Pistons are the presenting sponsors for the soccer club's July 18 exhibition match against venerable Italian soccer team Venezia FC. Additionally, the current issue of the Gilbert-owned TBD quarterly magazine includes a feature story about DCFC.

Are these developments clues that investment by the billionaires will happen? Impossible to say, but they certainly don't harm any potential future deal.

All involved have acknowledged discussions, but remain coy about details.

"As we've said in the past, we've had an ongoing dialogue with the Gilbert and Gores group about how DCFC fits into the MLS-Detroit bid. We are having parallel conversations with potential investors interested in helping to move DCFC into a higher level professional league," Todd Kropp, one of DCFC's five owners, said via email. He speaks on behalf of the ownership group. "We have had an ongoing sponsor relationship with Quicken Loans since 2013. They along with the Pistons group expressed an interest in helping to grow soccer here in this region so when we spoke of the opportunity to host Venezia they were interested in being involved. It does not represent any change in direction or ownership for DCFC."

Arn Tellem, Gores' top lieutenant for his business and philanthropic ventures locally, characterized the inaugural Pistons' sponsorship with DCFC as a collaboration with Quicken and an example of community support.

"Teaming with Quicken Loans as presenting sponsor for DCFC's (Venezia FC) match is a unique opportunity for us to demonstrate our collective support for the local soccer community and continue to build a positive relationship between our organizations," he said in a statement provided by the Pistons. "We teamed with Quicken Loans on a school project at Burton International Academy in Corktown a month ago and this DCFC sponsorship is another opportunity for us to partner on a positive community event in Detroit now and showcase the type of collaboration we intend to have in the future."

He previously has praised Detroit City's owners, and explained that Gilbert's staff has been handling the real estate and stadium portion of the MLS development proposal while Gores' staff is handling the expansion part of the effort.

So while both sides aren't saying a lot, it's clear the business relationship has deepened. Whether it represents some steps toward investment or a sale remains to be seen.

The friendly support by billionaires for the grassroots soccer team also can be viewed as an olive branch for the portion of DCFC's fanbase that has been openly and profanely hostile to any link between the team and MLS. The Gores-Gilbert group is definitely interested in DCFC's supporters.

"We're supportive of their team and can learn a lot in the way they have cultivated a very passionate fan base," Tellem said. "We hope to continue those discussions as our process with MLS continues."

It was in May 2016 that Gilbert and Gores announced their joint bid for a Detroit MLS club as the pro league seeks to expand by four teams in coming years. The businessmen proposed a $1 billion soccer stadium and mixed-used development at the site of the unfinished Wayne County jail downtown, and negotiations remain underway between the county and billionaires over the site.

Not long after the announcement, Gilbert-Gores and DCFC told reporters they have had sit-down chats — which makes business sense for all involved.

Since the MLS announcement, Detroit City's ownership has maintained its position that its open to talks about involvement in the Gores-Gilbert effort as long as the relationship with DCFC's particular fan focus is preserved.

"We remain committed to our mission and will only move forward with a partner who appreciates and is willing to maintain the grassroots community-based support that has been critical to our success thus far," Kropp said.

That said, if Gilbert-Gores offer to buy Detroit City FC, Kropp and the other four owners will at least listen. That makes logical business sense because they need money to achieve their business goal of moving the team into the U.S. soccer ecosystem's professional ranks. The amateur team, which launched in 2012, now has $1 million operating budget.

That growth and rabid fan support was the topic of the DCFC profile in the current issue of Gilbert's TBD magazine. The pro-Detroit publication, launched by Gilbert's Bedrock LLC last fall, generates its story ideas internally. That was the case of the DCFC profile, said Whitney Eichinger, director of communications for Bedrock.

There's no suggestion the story was linked to Gilbert's potential interest in the team: "The idea came from the editorial team and the MLS bid was not taken into consideration," Eichinger said via email this week.

The coincidental timing of the story, in a Gilbert publication, is at least interesting. Detroit City makes sense as a profile because it looms over the Detroit soccer scene. The team has been a surprising feel-good story by creating a wildly popular game-day atmosphere — first at Cass Tech, and since last year at Hamtramck's Keyworth Stadium — that draws more than 5,000 fans a game. The club is spending more than $1 million to improve and expand Keyworth, too.

That's a built-in soccer audience that has gotten notice among the sport's elite, and seemingly would serve as a turn-key entry for Gilbert and Gores into the Detroit soccer universe. If they want to buy the club, or provide the necessary capital for it to turn pro, there are options for the team's future: It could transition to become the full MLS club, or serve as a lower-tier developmental and rehab team, akin to a the minor-league teams that serve Major League Baseball.

Both of those scenarios have happened elsewhere in U.S. soccer. The most high-profile example lately has been Orlando City SC, which was a third-tier pro team in the US Pro (now United Soccer League) from 2010-14 before transitioning to become an MLS club in 2015. While technically two different teams, it was the same ownership group. The club's 25,500-seat Orlando City Stadium stadium opened earlier this year at a privately financed cost of $155 million.

Detroit City's ownership has said it's been in talks with the two leagues that are one level below Major League Soccer: the New York City-based North American Soccer League and the the Tampa, Fla.-based United Soccer League. Kropp has said Detroit City has "talked extensively" with the NASL. NASL interim Commissioner Rishi Sehgal, who has attended a DCFC match, said the league will add four teams going into 2018, and intends to eventually be at 18 to 20 clubs. The NASL said its expansion fee is more than $1 million, but less than $10 million, but would not be more specific.

The NASL and USL have provisional Division II status this year that was granted by the United States Soccer Federation, the Chicago-based governing body known as U.S. Soccer. There currently is no Division III league, the lowest level of professional soccer, but USL announced plans earlier this year to launch a D-3 league in 2019.

The other option for Detroit City is the USL, which also launched in 2011, but has 30 teams and a developmental relationship with MLS, which owns and operates 10 USL clubs.

The USL said its franchise fee is $5 million. Its clubs play 32 matches a season. Last season, they averaged 3,439 fans per game — noticeably lower than Detroit City's average.

The DCFC owners will need to find a wealthy benefactor to make such a move. In the past, the owners have had what Kropp termed a "couple of serious offers" but they were not a proper fit.

"It's difficult to find the right partner," he said. The team isn't disclosing names of who it's talking to.

"It's more than just the money that might be attached to it," Kropp told Crain's in May. "Our goal continues to be building the DCFC brand and remaining committed to how we've built that with community support. We're not opposed to partnering with other groups. We're open to all possibilities, and we're comfortable with doing our own thing."

There is only a general timeline for how things may play out. DCFC wants to turn pro as early as next year, and the Gilbert-Gores MLS bid could learn its fate later this year.

Detroit's MLS expansion bid was submitted on the league's Jan. 31 deadline, and was one of 12 bids. MLS has said it intends to award two cities in the third quarter of 2017, and two some time after that, likely in 2018.

If there was to be some sort of Detroit MLS-DCFC marriage, it could occur at any point during that timeline, or even later. Or not at all.