Charlotte is about to land the 30th Major League Soccer team
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Charlotte MLS expansion
Charlotte will become the host city for the 30th Major League Soccer team. David Tepper, the billionaire owner of the Carolina Panthers, has been instrumental in working to bring a team to the city. The team would play in Bank of America Stadium after renovations are made.
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After months of anticipation, Charlotte is finally expected to formally hear the news: The city will host Major League Soccer’s 30th team.
MLS Commissioner Don Garber, billionaire Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper and Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles will gather for a “special announcement” Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Mint Museum Uptown, according to a Monday press release from Tepper Sports and Entertainment.
Tepper, who’s expected to pay an expansion fee of well over $200 million, has been leading efforts to bring a soccer team to Charlotte since before the league announced in April it would expand to 30 teams.
MLS had 24 teams competing in the league in 2019, with three more expected to begin play in the next two years.
A Charlotte MLS team could possibly begin play as early as the 2021 season, said Mark Conrad, director of the sports business concentration at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. The team would play in Bank of America Stadium, while other recent expansion teams are still in the process of building new stadiums.
The stadium was seen as a potential obstacle to a deal leading up to Tuesday’s announcement. Garber told media this month that there were still problems with the stadium.
Tepper has said the stadium would need a number of renovations before it is ready to be home to a pro soccer team. Those include outfitting for soccer camera angles, a center tunnel and two new locker rooms.
City money
The city is willing to set aside $110 million in tourism taxes to help bring an MLS team to Charlotte.
In a November letter to Garber, Lyles said the public money will “help ensure a successful venture over the next many years.” The letter fails to outline, though, how the money will be generated — and the time frame for distributing it to MLS-related initiatives.
In the letter, which city spokeswoman Britt Clampitt released last week after multiple media requests, Lyles indicated the funding could be split among Bank of America Stadium upgrades, construction of MLS headquarters and practice facilities on the former Eastland Mall site, and development of an entertainment district linking uptown and the Gateway District.
It’s unlikely the city will offer the public money in a lump sum, council members have said.
One of Charlotte’s main tourism streams, called the Convention Center Fund, is specifically used for “capital maintenance, repair and refurbishment of the Charlotte Convention Center, Bank of America Stadium, and amateur sports infrastructure,” according to a May 2018 City Council presentation.
The fund had an ending balance of $75 million for fiscal year 2018, according to Charlotte’s comprehensive annual financial report.
And it generated $55 million — from a 3% occupancy tax and 1% prepared food and beverage tax — in the last fiscal year. Those revenues are expected to increase by about 3% between fiscal years 2019 and 2020.
Council member James Mitchell has told the Observer that Charlotte isn’t pursuing alternative financing options, such as bonds.
Economic development
Building the expansion team’s headquarters and practice facilities at the former Eastland Mall site could spur other economic development in east Charlotte.
The nearly 80-acre property — once anchored by Belk, Sears and Dillard’s — was a popular retail destination in the 1970s and 1980s. After it closed in 2010, the city bought the land for $13.2 million in an attempt to revitalize the vacant space and explore new mixed-use residential and retail options, in addition to construction of a sports entertainment complex.
Crosland Southeast, the site’s master developer, lauded the impact MLS would bring to the region.
“The MLS headquarters, practice fields and community fields would be transformational for the Eastland area,” Tim Sittema, managing partner at Crosland Southeast, said in a statement Thursday. “This would be a major win for Charlotte and for the Eastside specifically.”
But exact plans for the site — including how much of the city’s $110-million pledge would be earmarked for Eastland — remain murky.
Justin Harlow, a former City Council member who left office this month, said previous closed sessions to discuss MLS have revolved around Charlotte’s financial commitment there.
“All our conversations have been about how do we spur economic development in Eastland and knowing the community in East Charlotte would definitely support soccer,” Harlow told the Observer last week.
MLS could usher in a separate wave of development surrounding Bank of America Stadium.
In her letter, Lyles told Garber she envisions “continued work” on an entertainment district connecting Charlotte’s core and the Gateway District. Anchored by the Gateway Station — a “multimodal” transit hub for Amtrak, bus, light rail and street car — the district could become a bustling extension of uptown infused with professional sports, parks, retail and housing.
Looking back
Charlotte has pursued an MLS team for years, starting with the unsuccessful 2017 bid from Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith.
That bid died when city officials weren’t able to reach an agreement on a public-private financing deal, the Observer reported at the time. That team would have played in a proposed $175 million soccer facility on the site of Memorial Stadium near uptown.
But when Tepper bought the Panthers for $2.275 billion in July 2018, Charlotte again caught the league’s attention.
MLS head Garber told media the next month he was aware of Tepper’s interest in bringing a team to Charlotte.
“We’re intrigued by Charlotte,” Garber said in 2018. “We’re well aware of David Tepper’s interest and obviously that’s a great development for the city, for their football team, for their fans. The fact that he’s interested in MLS is a positive.”
Tepper made a major personnel hire soon after, bringing in an employee with MLS experience: Panthers President Tom Glick. Glick joined the Panthers from Manchester City Football Club, where he was the chief operating officer. He had previously helped launch MLS team New York City FC in 2015, and served as its president for a year.
In April 2019, MLS announced it would expand once more, this time to 30 teams.
St. Louis and Sacramento won bids to become the league’s 28th and 29th expansion teams, with team owners for each team paying a fee of $200 million to join the league.
Charlotte has been in competition with Las Vegas and Phoenix for the 30th team. Garber said in November that Charlotte had done a lot of work to move its bid to the “front of the line.”
And at the beginning of December, Garber announced the league’s Board of Governors had authorized the MLS expansion committee to enter into final negotiations with Tepper.
Growth of MLS
With the addition of Charlotte, 10 expansion teams will have joined MLS since 2017.
Inter Miami CF and Nashville SC will join for the 2020 season, Austin FC for the 2021 season, and St. Louis and Sacramento teams are scheduled to join in 2022.
Expansion teams take part in expansion drafts, in which a certain number of players from existing teams are made available to those joining the league, in addition to an annual draft that all teams participate in. Teams are also built up by signing unattached players and acquiring others via international transfers or loans.
Players can also be traded for or acquired via the Allocation Ranking Order, a tool used to determine which MLS club has priority in acquiring specific kinds of players, who are all found on the Allocation Ranking List. The list will consist of select U.S. Men’s National Team players, elite youth U.S. National Team players, or former MLS players returning to the league after joining a non-MLS club for a transfer fee greater than $500,000.
MLS teams are also typically supported by their own academies and players come up through that system. Charlotte is expected to have the same.
The 2020 season will be MLS’s 25th and it will begin on Feb. 29, the earliest start in league history. The regular season is scheduled to end in October with the MLS Cup final in November. Each team plays 34 regular season games — 17 home and 17 away.
This story was originally published December 16, 2019 at 2:11 PM with the headline "Charlotte is about to land the 30th Major League Soccer team."
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