Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said he hoped the league would have a final decision on its 28th and 29th franchises before tonight's All-Star game, but fans in St. Louis and Sacramento are still waiting to hear if their cities will be awarded teams.
In a new interview with ESPN, Garber explained why the league has yet to name its 28th and 29th teams, highlighting the complexity of the deals and emphasizing he isn’t worried about the length of the expansion process involving the St. Louis and Sacramento markets.
“In both of those cases, you’re looking at between $550 million and $650 million in investment. When you’re making an investment like that, they take awhile to close. That’s the process that we’re going through now, and it’s not remotely alarming to me or anybody else,” Garber said in the interview.
In April, the MLS board of governors decided to expand the league to 30 teams, beyond its previous target of 28 clubs, authorizing the league to work exclusively with the ownership groups in St. Louis and Sacramento for teams 28 and 29. Following that decision, Garber made his remarks about hoping to finalize the two new teams by this week’s All-Star game.
“We had come out of a board meeting with the authority to try to finalize deals in both of those markets,” Garber said. “We have not yet done that. That’s not concerning to me. It just means that the investment stake required to come into MLS, that process of finalizing deals is getting more and more complicated.”
The MLS board of governors met Wednesday in Orlando, but an announcement regarding new MLS franchises is not expected following the meeting. Dan Courtemanche, MLS executive vice president for communications, recently told the Business Journal “any announcement of a new expansion team will take place in the market where the new club will be based.”
#MLS4THELOU, the ownership group leading St. Louis’ bid for a team, on July 15 met with the MLS expansion committee in New York. Members of the ownership group, along with those backing expansion bids in other cities, will be attending tonight’s MLS All-Star Game in Orlando.
