Lose one football team, gain another — just of a different sort.
That’s the situation the city of St. Louis seems to find itself in, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Major League Soccer is planning to award the city an expansion franchise.
The news is expected to be formally announced next week, and an event is planned for Tuesday.
The ownership group, dubbed “MLS4TheLou” presented plans to MLS owners that called for downtown stadium funded primarily via private donations, as well as a majority female group of owners. The presentation seemed to make an impact on league commissioner Don Garber, who heaped praise on the city and called the expansion effort “amazing.”
BREAKING: MLS to announce St. Louis as expansion team winner, sources say https://t.co/DwuI0jWpKz via @Ben_Fred pic.twitter.com/a3thJBzFtv
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch (@stltoday) August 14, 2019
The ownership group includes such figures as Carolyn Kindle Betz, the president of Enterprise Holdings Foundation, and Jim Kavanaugh, the CEO of World Wide Technology. Their partnership revived an effort to woo soccer to St. Louis after an April 2017 effort to secure $60 million in public financing for a new stadium was rejected by voters.
MLS has reportedly been interested in expanding into St. Louis for some time, but especially since the NFL’s Rams left the city in a return to Los Angeles.
The Post-Dispatch reports that the expansion team is targeting 2022 to begin play, but that details regarding the team’s name, colors, and final stadium financing were not yet made public.
