MLS: Detroit among 4 cities to make progress on expansion team efforts – Crain’s Detroit Business

Detroit was mentioned this week by Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber as one of four cities that have advanced their efforts over the summer to secure an expansion team.

His comments came during a webcast news conference before the MLS All-Star Game in Chicago on Wednesday.

The league, which is in final talks to add Miami as a market, plans to expand to four more cities in coming years, and Detroit is one of 12 cities that are part of the formal expansion bid process.

Garber said had specific praise for the efforts by Detroit, Cincinnati, Sacramento and Nashville.

Locally, billionaires Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores are jointly seeking the Detroit team, and made progress in securing their preferred location the unfinished downtown jail site when Wayne County announced on July 31 that it intends to work with them on a deal instead of finishing the justice facility.

"Detroit just got one step closer to having access to the jail site," Garber said. "That got a lot of energy and attention in Detroit."

The league has told Crain's that it has monitored the success high-profile soccer events in the market, including the recent International Champions Cup match that drew 36,000 fans last month, crowds of more than 100,000 at Michigan Stadium for ICC matches, and the ongoing crowds of 5,000-plus for semi-pro Detroit City FC in Hamtramck.

MLS intends to award two expansion teams during its league meeting in December, then two more some time after that.

"We'll conduct lots of meetings and have got an enormous amount of work over the next couple of months to get to the final two," Garber said.

The other cities with formal expansion bids, which had to be submitted by Jan. 31, are St. Louis, Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg, San Antonio, Raleigh, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Phoenix and San Diego.

Ultimately, MLS will have 28 teams. Los Angeles FC begins play next year as the 23rd club and the unnamed Miami team launches for the 2019 season. After that, the next two expansion teams are expected to begin play in 2020. It's unclear when the final two expansion clubs would formally launch.

The expansion teams awarded in December will pay $150 million each to join the league. A fee for the final two clubs hasn't been formally announced.

New MLS owners aren't buying franchises. Instead, MLS is a single-entity business, meaning all teams are owned by the league and all players are its employees rather than employed by the club. MLS pays the players. Team "owners" pay an investment fee to MLS for the right to operate a team in a geographic area. They become league shareholders rather than franchise owners in a league that has publicly acknowledged it remains unprofitable.

Teams keep their own books and budgets.

Gilbert and Gores unveiled a $1 billion plan in April 2016 to build a 22,000-25,000-seat soccer-specific stadium on the jail site, and the project would include towers for residential, retail, and office use.

More:

MLS: Detroit among 4 cities to make progress on expansion team efforts - Crain's Detroit Business