3 Ways San Diego Made More Sense For MLS Expansion Than Las Vegas

Major League Soccer is widely expected to announce on Thursday that San Diego has won the bidding to be the home of the league’s next expansion team.

San Diego’s is somewhat of a comeback story. Not all that long ago, most favored Las Vegas to land the league’s 30th club. But it’s not the first time one city has emerged from the shadow of another as an MLS expansion winner.

That’s partly because there’s a unique set of attributes that has proven to make for fruitful MLS markets, particularly in the last decade when the league has nearly doubled in size. And as time went on, it likely became clear to the MLS front office that San Diego ultimately had more of them than did Las Vegas.

Here’s three ways in which the Southern California city has an edge in terms of being a successful MLS market.

Bigger Fish, Smaller Pond

In terms of attracting fans, sponsors and media coverage, many of the most successful MLS teams are in less saturated pro sports markets.

Eight of the MLS’ top 10 attendance leaders in 2022 are in markets that are without a team in at least one of the other four major North American pro sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NBA). The other two are in Los Angeles, where a huge Spanish speaking community places soccer in higher esteem relative to other sports than in most American cities.

In San Diego, the an MLS expansion team will be competing only against Major League Baseball’s Padres. The city’s NWSL women’s pro soccer team, San Diego Wave FC, is more likely to act as a symbiotic force rather than a competitor. And in terms of how the city profiles, it’s similar as a sports market to Nashville, Austin and Cincinnati, three mid-size cities where MLS teams are thriving.

This is also likely what MLS commissioner Don Garber envisioned when the league began courting Las Vegas nearly a decade ago now. But in the interim, the widespread legalization of sports betting made Sin City far more appealing to other pro sports franchises.

The NHL expanded there with the Golden Knights in 2017. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders relocated there during the pandemic. And now MLB’s Oakland Athletics appear to be edging closer to a move. Given the newfound sway of the sports betting industry, it’s seems likely Las Vegas would also be on the short list if and when the NBA eyes expansion again.

Proof of Concept

So many current MLS cities made their case for a team in part by showing robust support for other soccer clubs that already existed in their cities in different leagues or competitions.

Cities like Seattle, Montreal, Cincinnati and others were able to devote steadfast support of men’s second-tier pro teams. In San Diego, fans have turned out en masse for the women’s pro club San Diego Wave FC of the top flight NWSL.

The club is the current NWSL attendance leader this year, drawing more than 21,000 fans per game through its first three home fixtures. That’s a larger number than the bottom 19 MLS clubs through last weekend, according to Soccer Stadium Digest. And that’s in addition to the San Diego Loyal, a second-tier men’s team in the USL Championship that has drawn solid crowds this season and in previous years.

Las Vegas also has a USL Championship team, Las Vegas Lights FC, that has typically drawn average or slightly above average crowds in recent seasons. But they lack anything on the scope that Wave FC has created.

Stadium Certainty

Part of what has driven San Diego Wave FC’s attendance numbers is the move to San Diego State University’s Snapdragon Stadium, which opened late last summer.

While the 35,000-seat capacity venue is not quite in the mold of a truly soccer-specific venue (it’s the home of the SDSU’s football team), it was constructed specifically to accommodate the dimensions of a FIFA regulation soccer field. And its seating capacity is only a few thousand seats higher than some of the larger soccer-specific venues in use in MLS in Nashville and Toronto.

All discussions regarding an MLS team in Las Vegas had included potential new stadium construction, and a workable plan for that never quite materialized — at least yet. (While Garber has set the league’s short-term capacity at 30 teams, he hasn’t ruled out further expansion in the future, and Las Vegas would seem likely to remain a candidate if that happens.)

Of note, the Las Vegas Raiders’ home, Allegiant Stadium, wasn’t considered a long-term solution for an expansion MLS team in a way that Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte and New England share stadiums with NFL teams.