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COLUMBUS, Ohio—Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said Indianapolis is “following the playbook” in its effort to land an expansion club.
Speaking at a mid-season news conference during MLS All-Star week in Columbus, Garber said that while the addition of San Diego FC in 2025 will “be the end of expansion for a time,” he is paying close attention to the work Indianapolis officials are doing to position the city for a bid to the league and plans to continue engaging with city officials in the coming months.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, who announced his effort to pursue Major League Soccer on April 25, traveled to Columbus to engage with Garber and league and team executives, alongside the the city’s Chief Deputy Mayor Dan Parker on Tuesday and Tom Glick, a longtime soccer executive working with the city to oversee its MLS efforts.
While Hogsett said he hopes to work with a prospective investor group to file a league application from the city by the end of this year, Garber said Wednesday he considers the process to be in its infancy.
“I think they’re doing, so far, everything right,” he said. “They’re following the playbook. Tom’s a very experienced guy … who knows how to build a team and a soccer team. So I think they’re doing everything right. This is a process. It takes time and these are teams that require a whole lot of constituents to come together, from ownership to city leaders to other fans and partners, and we’re very much in the beginning of this process.”
Hogsett and Garber first met April 22, just three days before the mayor publicly announced plans to pursue MLS. The city contingent attended a private reception hosted by Garber on Tuesday night, although Hogsett returned to Indianapolis on Wednesday to greet Vice President Kamala Harris upon her arrival for a sorority convention.
Garber said while Hogsett, local and state leaders “are very bullish” about joining MLS, he expects the league will rely on a tried and true formula, which has evolved over the past 28 years, to decide what organizations will join its ranks.
“We’ve done this a lot. We’ve expanded by over 20 teams … so we understand how to manage this process,” he said. “We love the city. We love the support from the city leaders and from the state. We think there’s interesting ownership dynamics. We like the location that we’re talking about for the stadium, so we’ll continue to work with them.”
The Hogsett administration in the coming weeks is expected to receive a completed feasibility study and fiscal analysis for the proposed soccer stadium site at the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport from Chicago-based Hunden Partners. Those reports will be submitted to the Indiana Finance Authority, State Budget Committee and State Budget Agency for consideration as part of a request to finalize a new professional sports development area, or PSDA, taxing district.
A source familiar with the situation said several team and league executives also met separately on Wednesday with Glick, amid a day of meetings tied to the MLS Board of Governors at the Hilton Columbus downtown hotel.
Glick helped establish Charlotte FC and was a longtime front office executive for New York City FC, in addition to stints with overseas clubs. He now runs Charlotte-based Rockledge Sports Advisory.
He, alongside Hogsett and Parker, also hosted several league executives, attorneys and other power players in a suite at Lower.com Field, during Tuesday’s MLS All-Star Skills Challenge. Indianapolis City-County Council president Vop Osili is attending Wednesday’s all-star game in Hogsett’s place, arriving in Columbus on Wednesday evening.
Glick and Parker also independently met with multiple league and MLS team officials throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, sources told IBJ, speaking on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of discussions about Major League Soccer expansion.
Garber said he’s aware of who is involved in a would-be investor group for an Indianapolis club but said he couldn’t provide any details.
Speculation continues to swirl about the involvement of the Herb Simon family, which owns the Indiana Pacers and Fever franchises. However, Danny Lopez, executive vice president of community and external affairs and corporate communications for the Pacers organization, told IBJ the Simons are not in Columbus this week.
Indy Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir, whose Eleven Park soccer stadium project was torpedoed when the city announced its own MLS efforts also did not attend all-star events. Glick and city officials have unsuccessfully approached Ozdemir at least four times about being part of the ownership group, a source said.
Hogsett has said he expects a local investor group will be revealed “sooner rather than later,” and certainly before the city submits its request to the state government entities for consideration of the PSDA.
Garber noted that despite Indianapolis’ interest, there’s no firm timeline for MLS to expand from its current stable of 30 teams to where many owners have indicated it hopes to be—at 32 overall. But he said if Indianapolis, or any other city, makes a compelling argument to join the league, it would have the ears of league leadership.
“If there’s a good market for us to expand it, if that market makes sense, if we have the right owner, and the right stadium plan, I think, like any league, we would consider strongly expanding beyond 30 teams that we have now,” he said.
League and team sources told IBJ this week it could be a tough path forward for Indianapolis because the league hadn’t planned to consider expansion until after North America hosts the World Cup in 2026, noting that MLS club entry fees could grow anywhere from 25% to 50% higher from their latest price. San Diego paid $500 million for its club, which begins play next year.
Whether or not Indianapolis gets that nod—and regardless of when it comes—it’s clear that the next expansion club will be on the hook an entry fee that’s higher than what San Diego paid just a few years ago.
“It will be more than $500 million” for that fee, Garber said.
Hogsett said this week that while he didn’t expect any formal commitments from MLS during his trip to Columbus, he continues to be interested in an “accelerated” timeline for Indianapolis’ shot at joining the league.
“All we can focus on is making sure that we’re doing what we need to be doing, to put together as competitive a bid for a club as we can, and that’s what we are doing,” he said.
“We would like that process to be as accelerated as we can reasonably make it, while at the same time being responsible. My job as mayor is to present to them the most compelling argument as to why Indianapolis should be included in decisions that they may ultimately make about awarding a club, and we’re doing that. MLS will take care of the rest once we’ve submitted an application.”
Clark Hunt, owner of Dallas FC and the Kansas City Chiefs, was among those who met with Hogsett in the suite. He said they discussed the stadium site and the city’s overall interest in joining the league.
“It’s great to see [Indianapolis] political leaders here,” he said. “They’re obviously very focused on it, and they came to make sure everybody in the league knows that their interest is sincere.”
Hunt, who has been involved with the league since 1996, initially as owner of the Columbus Crew, is considered among the most influential owners in the league when it comes to expansion discussions.
Like Garber, Hunt said the league has “no established timeline right now for future expansion” but added he thinks Indianapolis would be a good fit for MLS when that time comes.
“I think it’s likely down the road that we’ll consider expansion again,” he said. “Clearly a city like Indianapolis, which is a proven sports town, would have to be a great candidate.”
Hunt and other owners told IBJ they believe the league could reasonably expand to 32 teams, matching the number now playing in the National Football League.
Jeff Berding, co-CEO of FC Cincinnati, said he expects the league will eventually pursue that number, but said the World Cup might be an opportune time to do so.
“I’m not going to get out ahead of it,” he said. “Obviously, there’s other leagues in the United States that have more teams than our current 30. So that would say that there’s a model for success.”
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Indianapolis is up next.
Not for at least 10-15 years. They will have 30 teams by 2025. There are teams in Cincy, St. Louis, Nashville and Chicago. I don’t see Indianapolis have an MLS team any time soon.
It feels like Indianapolis is late to the party because they were counting on Ozdemir, who MLS has made clear won’t be an owner in their league.
So, IMO, they were right to pull the plug on the Ozedmir stadium project, which in addition to preventing Indy from ever getting a team would also have cost taxpayers more money than anticipated.
But I agree with Corey … it will be a few years until Indianapolis gets a team, in part because no other city is anywhere close and it doesn’t make sense to go to only 31 teams. And, they’ve done expanding at the moment.
The MLS wants to get to 32 teams sooner than later and it appears Indy has likely jumped Tampa and Las Vegas to get one of those last 2 teams. The city is pushing because Keystone didn’t have the juice and there is an opportunity to get this done for the city now.
To MLS, having multiple teams close together is a way to create additional interest and pump attendance.
MLS learned their strategy from F1.
It appears to be working … can you blame them?
+1
The Mayor is being played like a fool. MLS is not coming to Indy. What MLS wanted was to sink another USL club and their high profile stadium. Garber had successfully done that now. Mission accomplished. Watch for the narrative to flip soon.
Flip to what – thanking Garber for not giving Ozedmir a giant white elephant of a stadium that taxpayers will be paying for, for a team destined to never get promoted to MLS?
If Indianapolis is going to be stuck with minor league soccer forever, what’s the point in building a new stadium? Did we build the Indians a MLB-quality stadium for 40,000 people?
The Eleven may as well throw in with the Rugby folks and share a field with them.
Thaut’s…not what’s happening. At all. Indy taxpayers just saved a bundle, and we’re not building a stadium on sacred burial grounds. Win-win.
“Following the playbook” gets expensive.
The Indy Eleven stadium seemed the appropriate size, and it was part of development for an important part of the city. The “sacred burial grounds” were long since removed. One can only hope this mess ends positively for the sport of soccer and the city.
It was going to take even more taxpayer funds and they keep finding bodies.
It will end well if Ozdemir lets it end well. But it’s clear … he will never be able to land an MLS expansion team. He’s had multiple chances and never gotten it done, and now the cost will be multiple millions higher.