Major League Soccer Returns To The Sunshine State
It is official! Orlando City Soccer Club will be the Major League Soccer’s 21st team. Orlando City will play one more season in the USL PRO and take the field as a MLS club in 2015.
Other news coming from MLS commissioner Dan Garber as part of his annual state of the league address, is that the league plans to expand to 24 teams by 2015, and will definitely place another franchise in South Florida.
He also revealed that the league continues to have discussions about putting a franchise in Atlanta.
“We hope to have 24 teams by the end of the decade,” said Garber. “In order to do that, we need to expand strategically.
“We’ve got a big chunk of the country where we’re not covered. That’s the Southeast. We h[show_disconnected][show_to accesslevel=’Subscriber’]ope to be able to achieve that with Atlanta, with Orlando and Miami, but we have a lot of work to do in Atlanta and Miami.”
New York FC and Orlando will join the league as the 20th and 21st franchises. The major obstacle for settling on a Miami-based team is the question of a new soccer specific stadium.
Ironically, New York FC does not have plans for a new stadium in place and is planning to launch a team in 2015. However, that franchise has the backing of the New York Yankees, and the team can play in Yankee Stadium until a soccer stadium is built.
Past discussions for locating NYFC have centered in Queens near the Flushing Meadows USTA National Tennis Center and close to the site of the NY Mets’ old Shea Stadium. Now, it appears that the chosen location is in the Bronx near Yankee Stadium.
Price tag for that proposed 28,000-seat stadium is around $400 million. It is likely that completion will not happen until 2018 or 2019.
In Miami, David Beckham has an option to buy an MLS franchise as part of his contract that brought him to the U.S. and to Major League Soccer.
While Beckham’s investor group has not officially been identified, his discussions with Bolivian businessman Marcelo Claure have been widely reported.
Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins and one of the largest real estate developers in the country, has also indicated an interest in a franchise in Miami. He owns Sun Life Stadium, where the Dolphins play home games.
Beckham’s group also includes “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller. It has also been reported that LaBron James of the NBA Miami Heat, has expressed an interest in investing in a MLS franchise in Dade County.
Garber has indicated that the league would prefer a new stadium in Miami to be located in an urban portion of the city. The most recent reported site is on Dodge Island, home to PortMiami, which is land owned by Dade County.
In his media discussion about future expansion in Major League Soccer, Garber reported that in addition to Miami, Atlanta is also on the short list for a future league franchise and the league continues to talk with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank about an expansion team in Atlanta.
Major League Soccer has not had a franchise in Florida since 2011, and never in Georgia. The Tampa Bay Mutiny was one of the league’s charter franchises, and the Miami Fusion FC was added, along with the Chicago Fire, in 1998. The Mutiny and Fusion were folded by the league in 2001.
If the league expands to 3 teams by adding Miami and Atlanta, Garber mentioned St. Louis, Minneapolis and San Antonio as possibilies for the 24th franchise.
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