On Thursday, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber is expected to announce some long-awaited news: MLS’ 30th team will be based in San Diego, California.
Garber will join the new team’s owners and the Mayor of San Diego in attending a press conference at Snapdragon Stadium, the club’s future home, to celebrate the occasion. It will be the latest in a dizzying streak of expansion for the league as the league has tripled in size since 2004.
The team’s owner pays a staggering sum to get into the league, a $500 million expansion fee. That’s $175 million more than Charlotte FC owner David Tepper paid for an MLS franchise in 2019 and 67 times what Real Salt Lake paid to enter the league in 2005 (7, $5 million). The league is in the first year of a $2.5 billion media rights partnership with Apple, further evidence of its financial growth.
Here’s the basic history and framework of San Diego’s successful bid, along with some helpful context. If you haven’t kept an eye on the expansion offer over the past year or so, this will help you catch up.
Who Owns the San Diego MLS Team?
The yet-to-be-named club is co-owned by Egyptian billionaire and former politician Mohamed Mansour and the Kumeyaay Nation’s Sycuan Band. Mansour leads the Mansour Group, a global conglomerate valued at approximately $7 billion engaged in automotive distribution, capital management and technology. He is a British citizen living in London and is the Senior Treasurer of the British Conservative Party. His uncle was a member of the Egyptian team that took part in the 1934 World Cup in Italy.
Mansour, who has an estimated net worth of $3.6 billion according to Forbes, is also involved in other football projects. Through Man Capital, the investment arm of Mansour Group, he holds a stake in Danish Superliga club Nordsjaelland and since 2021 he also owns the football academy “Right to Dream” based in Ghana. The academy has produced around 20 players in professional football across Europe. A number of alumni have ended up in MLS over the years, including New England Revolution’s Emmanuel Boateng and veteran midfielder David Accam. It is widely believed that the San Diego MLS franchise will also open another Residential Academy branch in San Diego.
Mansour studied in the US at North Carolina State and Auburn University in the 1960s and 1970s and established lasting business relationships that eventually made him a very wealthy man. His company is one of the world’s largest distributors of General Motors automobiles and has at various times worked with other global giants, including McDonald’s and Marlboro.
Mansour’s MLS project could be a step towards something bigger. In December, with the sale of Manchester United dominating the news, the Daily Mirror reported its interest in buying a British football club. Mansour’s son Loutfy was part of a failed takeover attempt for Chelsea that ended up in the hands of American businessman Todd Boehly and his partners.
The Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation is a tribe of Missionary Indians who have lived in the San Diego area for thousands of years. They were driven out by Spanish missionaries in the mid-18th century, and when the US government forcibly evicted large numbers of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the mid-19th century, their population had increased almost tenfold, to about 3,000. The land the tribe currently occupies, a one square mile reservation in the Dehesa Valley of San Diego, was returned to them in 1875.
In recent years, the Sycuan Band has become a player in the gaming and entertainment industry. In 2001, they formed the Sycuan Tribal Development Corporation, which includes the Sycuan Casino, the Singing Hills Golf Resort, and the US Grant Hotel, which are among the oldest hotels in San Diego. Through their casino, the Sycuan Band was also involved in promoting martial arts and boxing.
The tribe first expressed interest in acquiring an MLS club in 2021 and worked with the league to find a suitable capital partner, resulting in the Monsour Group.
The San Diego-based MLS company also has a number of minority partners. Brad Termini, a local developer, is also reportedly among them.
What will the team be called?
The club will reportedly start without a name or crest at first.
However, there is a tantalizing clue as to the franchise’s possible identity: The “FCSanDiego.com” domain name was bought by the Mansour Group in 2020 and its registry was updated earlier this month.
FC San Diego. Who could have guessed. If the club adopts this name, it will become the tenth “soccer club” in the MLS.
Where will the team play?
Many MLS expansion concessions were given to teams who had to build their own stadium. This is not the case in San Diego as the club will be a tenant of an existing facility.
The San Diego-based MLS franchise will play their home games at Snapdragon Stadium on the campus of San Diego State University. Completed in 2022, the 35,000-seat venue is home to the NWSL’s San Diego Wave and the San Diego State Aztecs football team. The San Diego Legion of Major League Rugby also plays their games at the Snapdragon. The venue will host several international football matches this summer, including a Mexico national team game in June and a CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-final a month later.
Unlike most modern MLS stadiums, Snapdragon is almost completely uncovered, a throwback to the days when MLS clubs played in college and NFL football stadiums. This design has proven to be a problem at times – during the first-ever San Diego State Football game at the Snapdragon in September 2022, the temperature in the stadium reached 100°F and about 200 fans required medical attention for various heat-related illnesses. 20 of them had to be hospitalized. Taking to social media, fans of the San Diego Wave have also expressed frustration at the lack of shade.
Sources briefed on the talks between the league and the San Diego owners have told The Athletic in recent months that building a partial canopy around the stadium is a potential must for the league to be granted a franchise from the league’s perspective. The cost of this work ranged from $50 million to $125 million, one of those sources said. The same sources say the league’s tone has softened on these demands, largely due to the now standardized nature of the league’s fixture list. Most matches start in the evening, which generally means less impact from the sun. However, the franchise still has some work to do on Snapdragon — namely, building an upgraded visitor locker room.
They also need to build a training facility, with an MLS activist, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, suggested to The Athletic that the club ended up investing around $100m in the venture could get stuck.
A lease was finalized between the MLS club and SDSU Monday night, according to Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union Tribune. The university has tried to be flexible on lease terms and has expressed an interest in acquiring an equity interest in the franchise as part of the payment agreement, but that option was rejected by MLS, sources briefed on the talks surrounding the agreement said.
Incidentally, Snapdragon was built on a site that may once have been earmarked for an MLS stadium. In 2018, an attempt to build a soccer-specific stadium on the site and attract an MLS franchise was defeated in a public referendum.
What is happening to San Diego Loyal?
MLS clubs like Nashville SC and FC Cincinnati were direct offshoots of the USL franchises. That’s not the case with San Diego’s MLS franchise, which will have no affiliation with San Diego Loyal, the USL championship club that has been the city’s home since 2019.
Loyal, who play at Torero Stadium on the University of San Diego campus, have a large local following and their games regularly sell out. They reportedly held talks with the MLS ownership group but came to nothing. The club was co-founded and is currently managed by US legend Landon Donovan, who has spent most of his career in Major League Soccer.
“We have become aware of an independent ownership group that intends to form its own club in San Diego,” the club’s chairman and owner, Andrew Vassiliadis, said in a public statement last week. “We have an unwavering commitment to the vision of growing football in this city and we want to make that clear. Landon Donovan, the entire San Diego Loyal team, and I are dedicated to this mission and will continue to work tirelessly to achieve it. Our passion for football and for our community will never fade. San Diego, we are one with you. Our love for this city runs deep. This is our home and we are proud to be part of this rich and diverse fabric.”
San Diego is also home to a third professional men’s team, NISA’s Albion San Diego. This club has existed since 2015, but only started playing professionally last year.
Notably, the city is also home to the most decorated professional indoor soccer team in American history, the San Diego Sockers. The club has won 16 indoor championships since it began playing indoor sports in 1978. They remain a cult favorite in town.
How will the team fill their roster with players?
Historically, MLS clubs have taken a variety of approaches when building their first squad.
First and foremost, expansion teams have their chance to pick five players from other MLS rosters via the league’s expansion draft. Other clubs in the league can protect about a dozen of their players, with the rest left to choose from. In 2022, for example, St. Louis City SC, the league’s most recent addition, chose Orlando City forward Niko Gioacchini, Inter Miami midfielder Indiana Vassilev, New England Revolution centre-back Jonathan Bell, FC Cincinnati left-back John Nelson and New York Red Bulls forward Jake La Cava in the extension draft. Teams often develop trades right after the draft. La Cava, for example, was quickly traded to Inter Miami last year for $150,000 in allotment funds. Sometimes selected players never play a competitive minute for their new team.
Clubs that have made the leap from the USL to the MLS through expansion have often brought a handful of players with them from their minor leagues, a moot point at San Diego, which was being formed from the ground up. The MLS collegiate SuperDraft has also proven to be a valuable tool for expansion franchises in recent years. And then there’s the international market – some expansion franchises like Inter Miami and NYCFC have stocked their first rosters with big-name acquisitions from abroad: Frank Lampard, David Villa and Gonzalo Higuain to name a few.
What is the history of professional football in San Diego?
San Diego’s first professional team was the San Diego Toros, formed in 1968. The franchise was a founding member of the newly formed North American Soccer League and came close to winning the league’s first championship game, but fell short later in the year. The NASL returned to the city in 1976 with the San Diego Jaws, named after the movie Jaws. Playing at San Diego State, they went bad and later that year relocated and became the Las Vegas Quicksilvers. Amazingly, the Quicksilvers, playing in a sweltering 100-degree heat in a city that had no football history to speak of, couldn’t last much longer. The franchise moved back to San Diego and became the San Diego Sockers in 1978.
From 1978 to 1984, the Sockers were consistently competitive, reaching the league finals several times in a game while playing at Jack Murphy Stadium. However, by the end of the season, the club was the last entrant in the league. Think about it: in the mid-’70s, the NASL darlings New York Cosmos attracted more viewers in a single game than the Sockers attended in an entire season.
For years, the Sockers were the city’s only connection to professional football through indoor sports. That changed with San Diego Loyal, and the city’s MLS club is on course to become its first top-flight outdoor team since the early ’80s.
What’s next for the MLS expansion?
MLS has long said it will pause after Team 30 and explore the idea of further expansion. The league could expand into a number of other markets in the future — Garber has cited Phoenix, Sacramento (which once looked like a replacement store), Detroit and Tampa Bay as potential expansion markets.
Las Vegas, widely considered a contender for San Diego, was once considered a gateway destination as well. Earlier in the year, however, Garber spoke of the difficulties that came with that offer and the difficulties that came with it.
“When you’re in a place like Las Vegas, we need to have an indoor stadium,” Garber told The Athletic. “And that’s extremely expensive. But I can’t imagine not having a team in Las Vegas one day.”
The Vegas bid was spearheaded by Bill Foley, who also owns the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights. Foley eventually bought Premier League side Bournemouth for far less than they would have paid to get into the MLS.
“Unfortunately, MLS requires the construction of a stadium and stadiums in the US currently cost $600-700 million,” Foley told the BBC. “The franchise fee itself, I think, is ($500 million). So you’re in for a billion dollars before you even have a team. I thought Bournemouth really was a bargain. I’m buying a Premier League team, they already have a stadium, they already have players and I can improve it. i can do better So I don’t think we’re getting involved in MLS. I just don’t care that much.”
Wherever MLS goes next, one thing is certain: as long as there are people paying half a billion dollars (or more) for a franchise, the league will continue to grow.
“Other leagues have 30+ teams,” Garber said. “MLS is structured very differently than any other professional football league in the world. I see no reason why we couldn’t have more teams at the right time in the future if we are able to accommodate that in terms of the schedule, players and ecosystem of MLS.”
(Photo: Ray Acevedo-USA TODAY Sports)