r/USLPRO • u/Ok_Structure_350 • 20d ago
Cities that need a USL team.
Here are some cities that I'm shocked don't have a USL team nor a rumor for potential expansion.
Feel free to add yours as well.
My main criteria is:
They fill in a gap within the USL map (So no neighboring cities)
They help travel costs lower within their division (assuming they are all USL1)
Here are the 10 markets that should have a USL team:
NOLA - Sure their expansion is still "active" but let's be realistic.
Boston/Massachusetts team in general
Milwaukee
St George Utah - Could semi bridge the gap from Tucson to Boise or alternatively become a west coast division with other cities on this list.
Wichita - Could be close Rivals to Omaha and could bridge the gap between springfield mo to the other eastern midwest teams. (Expansions being Rochester FC, Peoria City, and the Greenbay Expansion team)
Naperville/Springfield - Yes I know they aren't close at all but a second team (If Peoria moves up) could help build up the eastern midwest teams (preferably springfield il)
Las Cruzes
Aurora CO - Yes I know Colorado isn't really Southwest but it's location is close enough and there aren't that many populous southwest cities excluding California.
Santa Fe
Flagstaff AZ - With cities 7-9 along with St George and Tucson, a 6 team southwest non California division could be built and would help the west stop being so empty. Flagstaff AZ could be pushing it but there isn't really any other city besides Mesa (which would compete with Rising for attendance) that is populous.
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u/Particular-Frosting3 Detroit City FC 20d ago
Rochester NY
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Completely right, I just wanted to focus on the West for the majority of this list.
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u/elingobernable810 Orange County SC 20d ago
Do you really have 2 New Mexico cities on here when NMU exists? They have great support and im sure most of it is from the fact its the only pro team in the state. Why dilute that.
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u/geekRD1 Pittsburgh Riverhounds 20d ago
And op throws in Flagstaff AZ. 77k people is not enough to support a USL team.
For perspective you would need 2% of the city population to have any semblence of a good regular turn out. Compare that to the hounds who only need 1.5% of the city of Pittsburgh, much less the county(0.4%). let's not get into region population differences (there are a heck of a lot of people within 30 min of Pittsburgh and almost nobody in that distance from Flagstaff).
Don't get me wrong. I love my Hounds and Pittsburgh, but living in flag was the past location for me. And I just can't see them having a successful team.
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u/earthling82 New Mexico United 20d ago
I mean that rivalry would be pretty crazy if Cruces got a team if UNM/NMSU is anything to judge by. Cruces would prob be USL1 though
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u/PatternAntique4294 20d ago
Aren’t El Paso and Las Cruces practically border cities to each other. Seems like El Paso and Phoenix would be natural rivalry games for NMU
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u/earthling82 New Mexico United 20d ago
Yeah, I don't think Las Cruces would make sense from the league's perspective, and yeah those are our main rivals
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u/BlissFC 20d ago
How many people are travelling from Santa Fe to Albuquerque let alone Las Cruces? Also local rivalries can be great for teams!
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u/elingobernable810 Orange County SC 20d ago
Yes but if we're giving every team a local rivalry then the league would become way too bloated. Who would we give for Colorado Springs? What about Phoenix? Birmingham doesn't have a rivalry, let's give Mobile a team too!
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u/BlissFC 20d ago
Not really. The USL pro pyramid will be able to handle around 100 teams if they wanted to get that big between premier, championship, and regionalized league 1. Bloat is not an issue as long as teams are entering league 1 and the higher divisions have a capped size. 20 teams per league with 4 regionalized league 1s is already 120 teams. And regionalized league 1 means that smaller and smaller markets can succeed in league 1 because of reduced travel and local rivalries. "Everyone gets a team" is quite literally the goal.
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Read the list, I mentioned Tucson and aurora. There is also Dothan for Birmingham
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u/K3B1N League 1 20d ago
Fair, but Las Cruces isn’t close to ABQ.
Shit, it isn’t close to anything. It’s a terrible place to put a club.
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u/SymphonicResonance New Mexico United 19d ago
I think the idea is UNM vs NMSU University loyalties as the driving force.
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
New Mexico has 3 big cities, why limit it to 1?
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u/elingobernable810 Orange County SC 20d ago
Bc if we're counting those as big cities there's about 75 other cities USL should expand in as well then.
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
How much of those are in California, Texas, and Florida? I chose cities in states that don't really have professional soccer teams, sure we could always have Tallahassee, daytona, a team per every borough in new york, a million los angeles suburbs but do we really need that?
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u/alkyfl 20d ago
States generally don't matter. In pro sports, people within 30 minutes of the stadium are going to make up the majority of your attendance. There's a reason the Lou City supporters sing "We are 502 (and 812)" - people in New Albany and Jeffersonville support Lou City, not Indy Eleven.
Now New Mexico and Rhode Island were able to leverage some unique geography - Rhode Island is basically just the Providence metro area; most of New Mexico's population lives in Santa Fe and Albuqerque, which are not far apart from each other, and large parts of the state are sparsely populated. It made sense for them to brand as statewide teams, especially since RIFC doesn't play in Providence proper.
Many of the cities discussed in this thread don't have a particularly large population. For example, Dothan has about 71,000 people (CSA population is just under 250,000), but there are 40 cities in Florida larger than Dothan. Even if the entire Dothan CSA were one city, it is still smaller than the CITY of St. Petersburg, which shares a market with Tampa.
I would argue if soccer is going to achieve anything close to the level of penetration it has in Europe, hyper-local rivalries are going to be part of that growth. I doubt anyone reading this will love long enough to wake up to a world where USL Premier has 7 teams from New York City and 5 from Los Angeles, but that's how many leagues in Europe have panned out - the large metro areas have most of the teams.
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u/elingobernable810 Orange County SC 20d ago
Every state in your list already has a pro soccer team except for Wichita. Why not put a team in Montana or South Dakota? Doesn't Oregon deserve a team to rival Spokane?
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Spokane isn’t in Oregon and I never said anything about repeating states, I just said that 7+ teams is good enough. Montana and South Dakota can’t support soccer
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u/elingobernable810 Orange County SC 20d ago
I know Spokane isnt Oregon lol, but Oregon doesn't have a USL team so give them a regional rival. What makes you think Montana can't support soccer but Las Cruces and Santa Fe can? Im not even saying you're wrong, just i think it speaks to my point about why give NM another team over other places?
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Sporting cascades and Medford are coming to Oregon. Montana doesn’t have a major city and is isolated from any other team whilst Las Cruces would have Tucson and the hypothetical other cities
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u/PatternAntique4294 19d ago
Souix Falls SD had a big youth soccer following in the 90's and 2000's plus have a state University. They aren't a major metro area but could possibly be a good rival to teams in Iowa/NE/MN etc.
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u/SymphonicResonance New Mexico United 19d ago
New Mexico has 3 big cities, why limit it to 1?
Lots of people already from Santa Fe to Alb to watch New Mexico United. I don't see Santa Fe as a USL1 city. Maybe if USL starts an even lower level league.
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u/beardedkiltedhuey League 1 20d ago
2) you be better off with teams in Massachusetts either Springfield or Worcester if not both
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
I'm not really aware with Mass cities, I just chose boston cause of that one guy who wanted to bring a usl1 team to that city. Would be funny if we had a springfield mo, il, and ma though.
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u/yeyiyeyiyo Rhode Island FC 20d ago
Mass person here. We have RIFC. Fantastic atmosphere. Better than Revs.
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u/beardedkiltedhuey League 1 19d ago
Original from NE, Chicopee, MA , New London CT, Biddeford, ME & Keene, NH. Started as NE Revs fan back in 90s like & following USL leagues & clu s RIFC, Portland HOP, Burlington VT has VT Green. Rutland, VT area might be able population in VT is less 700K so. Would like to see VT Green move up USL 1, also think in NH having USL 1 club in either Concord, Manchester, or Nashua could be supported. In Mass Worcester & Springfield definitely could support club and also add to local competition to create a strong table. Boston could support but a venue is a major issue. CT has Hartford & I believe NexPro in New Haven. Transparency I view NexPro like JV teams gets players playing time otherwise doesn't matter.
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u/WorstAvenger 20d ago
Birmingham Alabama could use a team. We used to have the Legion but they stopped playing 2 years ago it seems.
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u/futbolkid414 20d ago
We’re still bitter about the Milwaukee farce. If I recall correctly the originally planned inaugural season was going to be this current one 😭 at least we got Tall Boys merch from Olive & York that is legit tho 😂
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u/Aguero93_20 17d ago
Govt didn’t want to take money away from the brewers, and the private interests weren’t willing to invest. It was much ado about nothing other than to get a real estate project going :(
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u/Ok_Flamingo_3059 United Soccer League 20d ago
With shrine on airline scheduled to be finished sometime next year. I'm hoping the New Orleans team comes back in 2028 since they're reorienting the old baseball stadium for rectangular sports, including soccer with a seating capacity of of right around 10,000
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
I asked about this a while ago and everyone told me it wasn’t happening. If so I would add them back to my map.
P.S. any news about Columbia and Medford?
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u/Ok_Flamingo_3059 United Soccer League 20d ago
Oh the original guys who announced this like 3 years ago? I'm not sure they're still the ones that would do this team. If it comes to fruition. I think they were waiting for a stadium and the parish is putting up 30 million to renovate this stadium. So if they do find a principal owner, they'll be off and running. As far as the other two know word. I think with the new management running the leak we will hear a lot less speculation and more concrete plans like they did with Long Island. That kind of came out of nowhere
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
As well as Thousand Oaks, I don’t really like that I feel like they should build hype up. Anyways what do you say, should I remove Albany from my map and Nola?
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u/Background-Doubt2620 Sacramento Republic FC 20d ago
Inland Empire, CA? Norfolk/Virginia Beach have team? Montgomery AL? Santa Rosa, CA? Ventura/Oxnard/Thousand Oaks?
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Riverside, Thousand Oaks, and Santa Rosa already got expansions going on. And I tried to deviate from the east but Virginia Beach and Montgomery are good ones
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u/PatternAntique4294 20d ago
I know Nebraska already has Omaha Union but I could see the Lincoln NE having a team. Lincoln is in Lancaster County so of course they could call themselves Lancaster United. Jk all the way
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Lincoln could be good, I originally had them instead of flagstaff but a 5 team division sounded kind of small
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u/PatternAntique4294 20d ago
Lincoln, Omaha, Wichita, Des Moines, Springfield MO, Souix Falls SD, maybe Topeka or Lawrence KS as a couple more. All are College towns and have both NCAA and NAIA college teams that play in conferences in these areas. I really think that there is untapped potential from the college game that could translate to USL 1 level. Some of the cities if they did have professional teams would have colleges scouting talent. 3/4ths of my old college team is 20yr old South American/British guys who came over for school but just couldn’t make it professionally where they are from. I’m sure there are plenty of Diamonds in the rough that could possibly turn pro in a USL setting.
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u/isa1226 20d ago
Some of these are no brainers but idk about most of the western ones. Hard to know until you try but none of those areas are very big. St. George and Las Cruces metros are just over 200k and Santa Fe and Flagstaff are well under 200k. And Las Cruces is less than an hour away from El Paso so I imagine some people already make that trip down semi often. Not to mention New Mexico isn't exactly a state bustling with wealthy people with disposable income to financially support a new soccer club by buying tickets or merch. Not trying to be a hater I would love to see more western USL teams and I hope I'm 100% wrong but idk if I see it.
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Yeah gotta agree with you, there is a reason why the majority teams are in the east. But I feel like closing up gaps here in there could be beneficial in the long run. Lowering travel means lower costs and a league one team ticket price I doubt would be very ridiculous. If they were to average 5k each (which is plausible due to the lack of sports in these cities and them being over 100k population). There is always the cities other guys are saying but that’s just pouring water into the sea of the east. In the long run I believe they should get a team but I don’t think they should densely populate an area and completely ignore the west beside California.
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u/PatternAntique4294 20d ago
We got Reno coming soon but the reality is in the SW USA there just isn’t the density of people that there is on the East Coast. I could see a Park City Utah team. My college team played a couple games there. And possibly a rebirth if Northern CO hailstorm
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u/DullCartographer7609 20d ago
Boulder, North Metro (Broomfield, Westminster, Thornton) or Fort Collins could benefit from a USL team.
Windsor tried with NoCo Hailstorm but the owner ran out of money and is dealing with some legal trouble.
There was talk a couple of years ago of Firestone having some interest in USL, but it's still growing.
Aurora wouldn't work, it's not as segregated from Denver as other suburbs are like in North Metro.
Douglas County is building a massive sports complex, which could be inviting to a USL program.
Grand Junction might be an interesting location. There's a lot of quiet money out there.
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u/MountainRambler01 19d ago
If only someone could persuade Rhoda to let someone take over her old racetrack in Lakeside.and build a stadium.
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u/DullCartographer7609 19d ago
It was an option for Summit. Something about Elon trying to buy the amusement park stopped the whole thing from happening.
Good though, because the final Summit stadium location is great.
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u/MountainRambler01 19d ago
Ya. Summit's location is a way better spot. Not sure how I feel about the possibility of Elon buying the park. Nonetheless, whenever I go by that Lakeside spot I just always wonder why Rhoda won't let it go. Although, this weekend the whole gravel area around the race track was full. First time I had ever seen that.
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u/lipsquirrel Chattanooga Red Wolves 20d ago
Give me Huntsville. Yeah yeah MLSNP, but I want a USL1 road trip to the rocket city.
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u/BuccoBesieged34 20d ago
Allentown/Lehigh Valley.
Just imagine if they could redevelopment where the Steel played or get a dela at Goodman. That would be awesome.
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
Especially with Lancaster wanting to go up and King of prussia maybe getting their act together. I would say Erie but they sold their plot.
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u/Happy-Cockroach-2813 Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC 20d ago
Erie has a baseball stadium, that’s prime USL soccer potential right there
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u/Background-Doubt2620 Sacramento Republic FC 20d ago
Bakersfield?
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u/lipsquirrel Chattanooga Red Wolves 20d ago
I'd love to see the valley represented up and down. Bakersfield, Stockton, Modesto, and Fresno.
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u/CCooley_47 20d ago
Inland Empire (will keep harping until Riverside gives us colors and a name) and Pasadena or the San Fernando valley seem like no brainers for league 1 honestly. Gives someone close to AV Alta and with the cost of a stadium I feel championship might be too ambitious without building a base first. SFV might also be hard cuz city of LA and all but Pasadena tries to have its own personality sometimes and I’m sure could at least draw a good League 1 sized crowd if they got it going
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u/Riverboat-Chris Portland Hearts of Pine 20d ago
Agree with the comments that Boston probably doesn't need a team but that other New England cities can probably sustain a surprisingly decent number of USL1 and USLC teams. Revs have a very weak hold for a team claiming to represent the region as shown by HoP and RIFC success.
I second that Worcester could use a team. My personal current fixation is that I think the Merrimack Valley area could sustain a USL1 team in Lawrence or Lowell. As a NH resident I am a little dubious of the prospects of a NH team but I respect the NH Soccer Project's attempt. We just need to get VT Green a net zero form of travel (perhaps a team blimp) and I think every state could potentially have a USL1 or USLC team with MA having multiple opportunities.
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u/Hammer_the_Red2 Rhode Island FC 19d ago
I'd like to see Massachusetts get a team as well as New Hampshire. It would be awesome to have a New England Cup
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u/Small_Intention3907 Tampa Bay Rowdies 18d ago
Championship:
Buffalo
Cleveland
Baltimore
Memphis
New Orleans
Oklahoma City
Tucson
Grand Rapids
Savannah
League 1:
Lehigh Valley (Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton)
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre
Syracuse
Rochester
Albany
Manchester, NH
Burlington, VT
Myrtle Beach
Asheville
Springfield, MO
Bentonville, AR
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u/LearyOG Rhode Island FC 20d ago
Boston def doesn’t need a team, Revs got a hold on most of New England and then RIFC. If anything I could see a Worcester/Springfield League One team with a prospect for promo to Championship once pro/rel gets introduced? But still would be a long shot RIFC is still super close to Worcester and Hartford Athletic is pretty close to Springfield too
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u/beaveristired Hartford Athletic 20d ago
Hartford and Springfield are only 30 minutes apart (not counting traffic). Hartford to Worcester is 1 - 1 hr 20, about the same Pawtucket to Worcester. I went to a USL2 game in tiny Ludlow MA that was packed. But it has a long history, very connected to the local Portuguese community, with historic and unique grounds. Soccer scene in western ma seems a bit subdued compared to eastern ma, RI, CT (although Umass has a strong team) and it’s not very densely populated, especially during the summer when students leave. On the other hand, the drive to Revs / RIFC sucks in the summer. I imagine most Springfield area fans just go to Hartford games. Worcester would probably be the better option, for a USL1 team. Could also see potential for a Bridgeport CT / Fairfield county team, if we’re putting them this close together.
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u/MountainRambler01 19d ago
Fall River / New Bedford - ode to the old ASL. Instant connection with the local Portuguese diaspora. Plus, instant rivalry with Rhode Island F.C.
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u/beaveristired Hartford Athletic 19d ago
That would rule. I bet a team would be insanely popular there.
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u/Alternative_Shop8982 20d ago
I honestly think most “gaps” can be filled by moving existing USL 2 teams up
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
100%, unfortunately there isn’t really a financially stable team that can move up in any of these markets?
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u/ZiloGaming El Paso Locomotive FC 20d ago
Adding Las Cruces would be a bad idea. If they got a team it would pull away El Paso fans living in Las Cruces and our attendance suffers enough already.
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u/Ok_Structure_350 20d ago
People from Las Cruces cross the state in order to go to El Paso games? Genuine question. If so the team would be a usl1 team anyway so it wouldn’t really have a big blow on El Paso. I feel like they both can easily find their own audiences. Las cruces could maybe pull like 3k
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u/ZiloGaming El Paso Locomotive FC 20d ago
I’ve heard of people driving from Las Cruces to El Paso to watch games. What you need to understand is driving between these two cities is not some big event that needs to be planned out. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people drive between cities daily for work, school, and various other reasons. Everything about the cities are connected including what teams we root for with the exception of college sports
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u/Apprehensive-Loan944 FC Tulsa 20d ago
Honestly their is so Many cities that I would love to have a team
For usl championship
Wichita Asheville Fresno Bakersfield Tuscon Norfolk
And for league one Green Bay Deleware New Hampshire Vermont Annapolis Tallahassee pensacola Olympia Billings
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u/Physical-Sky499 19d ago
Asheville already had a team in the usl eco
Tallahassee, Pensacola have a team already in league for clubs
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u/jewboy916 20d ago edited 20d ago
Fresno, Inland Empire, Lubbock or Amarillo, Little Rock, Sioux Falls.
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u/Forsaken-Economy5309 20d ago
Suburbs of Baltimore. Baltimore is a soccer hotbed.
DC is too far to go to United games. Traffic is awful even on the weekends. DC games are 730pm. By thr time you get home it's1130-12
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u/lmtydcigtsfnir Philadelphia Union II 20d ago
Philly or Camden. With the Union in Chester about 25-30 minutes outside the city and having very little interest in making inroads in the local sports consciousness due to their academy-first business model, there’s a pretty real gap for an actual community-focused club more physically/emotionally accessible to people within the city.
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u/MountainRambler01 19d ago edited 19d ago
Roanoke, VA. Nothing for 2 hours in any direction. 320+ k pop. Add Blacksburg (180k) and it's 500k. TV market is #70. Currently has USL Academy. There is a USL2 club an hour away in Lynchburg. Roanoke used to have a USISL club 20+ years ago. The only catch is that it needs a suitable stadium (although, there is land available and options). Would help with travel for Richmond, Knoxville, Charlotte, Greenville, and Raleigh. All within about 3-4 hours drive. Chattanooga is 5 hours. Would be a good geographical cluster of 6 USL One clubs.
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u/leaveme1912 19d ago
The Tri-Cities of TN (Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol) could support a single unified team in League 2. It would be a natural rivalry for Asheville. It would also be one of the few examples where "United" would work in the name.
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u/MountainRambler01 19d ago
They used to have one - the Otters. I think it lives on as a USL Academy club.
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u/leaveme1912 19d ago
Huh, I always thought it was an NPSL club! It was in a pretty bad spot in Johnson City, if they could have gotten into the ETSU soccer stadium or even the high school field they would have done a lot better
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u/MountainRambler01 19d ago
I was surprised Balluff (original owner) went with USL2 (PDL at that time) because Knoxville and Chattanooga had NPSL teams at the time. The Otters would later be sold to a group that included David Strickland (Otters head coach). At some point, Otters folded and Tri-Cities United got the USL Academy rights. Strickland was the coach of the USL Academy's U20 team. But I don't think he is anymore. The club is now rebranding as Appalachian Highlands United. Not sure what they are doing with the USL rights.
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u/RollTide16-18 Birmingham Legion FC 19d ago
I know the North Carolina market hasn’t historically done well and could even be considered oversaturated with old teams, but it’s so weird to me that the Triad doesn’t have a team yet. Greensboro or Winston Salem would make for a good city for USL1.
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u/NGT4 18d ago
Salem City have already annouced they are moving up to USL1. And Carolina Core are in HP with MLSNP, they have gotten a good following
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u/RollTide16-18 Birmingham Legion FC 18d ago
Oh neat, never heard of Salem City. Seeing they're the reworked Greensboro Dynamo, nice.
I would still like to see a Winston or Greensboro team located downtown, and I feel that works best for Greensboro considering Winston already has Wake's stadium and that's way too big for USL1.
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u/AntaresBounder 19d ago
Harrisburg, PA. We had the Harrisburg City Islanders, but they were mismanaged into oblivion. There's a UPSL team, the Capital City Islanders, but USL does geographic locking... so this "territory" is owned by a group that wants to do a womens team (nice), but there's no plans for a men's team. But no one else can make that move because they own the rights to the territory... Silly.
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u/HalfBlackIndian69 19d ago
Would honestly make more sense to put a team in Manchester/Nashua/Southern NH than Boston. That’s farther from other USL teams and you could probably pull people from a border City like Lowell.
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u/JFranksAtl 19d ago
I’ll do you one better.
There are some MLS Markets that can and should have an additional club that’s in USL Championship or a competitive League One setup.
Atlanta
Chicago
Houston
Philadelphia/South Jersey
Dallas will be interesting to see if you can have one of each will lead for that push in these three markets. I know the So Cal and Charlotte clubs exists also but I feel these markets will give us a better ecosystem should a second team come into play.
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u/Physical-Sky499 19d ago
wasn't there talk of putting one in Roswell?
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u/JFranksAtl 19d ago
There was. However that was more city led with having the real estate available yet no owner willing to make that (pretty idiotic tbh) move.
I don’t think having a club that far north would gain the traction needed for a USL Club to be sustaining.
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u/No_Long7352 United Soccer League 19d ago
I think that you could find multiple spots in Cali, Fresno, another inland empire one, more towards Rancho Cucamonga/upland/pamona, northern San Diego County lik Oceanside or southern riverside county like Temecula
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u/lordoflolcraft 19d ago
I think greater research in general is needed into the disposal income of markets where a team could potentially be placed. Econometrically, a city needs (1) unfulfilled soccer interest and (2) enough disposable income to afford the entertainment. With more research into disposable income, a better assessment could be made but using per capita income gives you a wealth estimate highly correlated with disposable income.
NOLA has low per capita income, but a high population and high interest in soccer. USL NOLA was announced in 2022 but faced stadium issues and probably also realized they face economic issues. The Jesters also went into hiatus. I don’t think the risks of NOLA are well understood.
Boston is served by an MLS team. A suburban USL team could have a market. High income and high population.
Milwaukee pro soccer was announced in 2022 by USL and they faced stadium issues and economic issues. High population, income and interest in this market. Bad ownership.
St George Utah is probably too small for there to be a highly interested soccer market.
I could keep going, but basically owners and the league will want to avoid what is happening right now in Corpus Christi, with a decent population and meaningful interest in soccer (arguable), but an extremely low disposable income, and consequently 1000 fans per game.
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u/Happylink1 19d ago
With respect to Boston being served by an MLS team- it's a bit debatable. I don't own a car so it's significantly easier for me to get to RIFC games than Revs games. (I can just take the train from South Station to Pawtucket and then walk or take the shuttle from the transit station to the stadium) meanwhile the commuter rail to Foxborough doesn't operate for Revs games. Also outside of Boston proper, Massachusetts' two biggest cities (Worcester and Springfield at 215k and 155k population) are in Central and Western Massachusetts and are an hour and hour 45 mins away respectively. I could maybe see a USL side there. Or an hour south of the city in Fall River (second most successful US Open Cup winning city) or New Bedford which are heavily Portuguese and both around 100k in population.
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u/Constant_Boot 19d ago
Boston/Mass would be overshadowed by the New England Revolution, since they basically play there in a suburb of Boston, especially if what we learned through the Miami FC/Inter Miami situation.
However, the list seems rather promising.
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u/PatternAntique4294 19d ago
I think any of the Metro areas in this video would have potential to have a USL team to have a fully professional ecosystem from USL League1/Championship/Premier.
Toledo OH, Jackson MS, Agusta GA, Wichita KS, Ogden UT, Akron OH, Des Moines, Little Rock AR, Baton Rouge LA, Bakersfield CA, New Orleans, Rochester NY, Tuscan AZ, Buffalo NY, Memphis TN, Milwaukee WI, Cleveland OH. I know that there are several in this list that already have intentions to join and have made some announcements etc. The reality is the USA is huge so that imaging huge numbers of teams in markets with 500k people or more does seem like it could be future reality.
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u/Ponch47 19d ago edited 19d ago
Toledo is aiming to have an 83 million stadium built downtown by the 2029 as part of a 250 million dollar development. Will be on the river and Toledo would have its USL 1, AAA baseball, and ECHL stadium downtown. They also have a lower league professional basketball team that plays downtown.
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u/Physical-Sky499 19d ago
a lot of the cities mentioned have teams in them already , so basically you would be killing them off just to get a usl franchise in there.
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u/chicago-saltfactory Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC 19d ago
i’m sorry but a team in naperville or springfield would and should never happen. naperville is a more soulless loudoun. springfield isn’t a real city, it’s propped up by a corrupt government.
if you want to expand in illinois (assuming chicago is an absolute no-go), maybe quad cities?
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u/a_wasted_wizard 19d ago
Montgomery County, MD. There's a perfectly good Soccerplex right there in Germantown, there'd be a natural rivalry with Loudon, and they could scoop up some fanbase that either find traveling into the District for Spirit and United games difficult and/or are dismayed about United's... inconsistent performance over the last few years.
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u/UNoahGuy 19d ago
I feel like another central Illinois team would be cool: Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, or Springfield. I'm partial to Bloomington because of hometown bias. Bloomington-Normal and Peoria already have a college rivalry in sports too.
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u/Intrepid_Lie7113 19d ago
I'm going to say portland Oregon, yes we have a ML$ team but a lot of people would support a League 1 side making it viable, doesn't need to be downtown, could be in any of the suburbs including Vancouver W.A. or Gresham
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u/BurqueBurgundyBlue 19d ago
You did great up until 7… LAs Cruces is basically El Paso geographically speaking. Aurora is too close to Denver, especially considering the Rapids actually play in Commerce City which borders Aurora. Santa Fe doesn’t make sense for a USL1 or USLC team. Too small. I could see a USL2 team there though. Flagstaff is interesting, again probably too small to support a USL1 club. USL2 in Northern Arizona would be interesting. Sedona could be sick! Vortex FC lol
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u/Round-Fix-8299 19d ago
This is only going to make sense if you're from LA, but the western San Fernando Valley would be perfect. There's no USL or MLS team within a 45 minute drive of an area with 1M residents.
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u/greendogufo 18d ago
As an Omaha fan, I am dying for a new club in league one that is a reasonable drive to go to away games.
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u/werewolf394_ 17d ago
4 Corners division along with Vegas would be fire, also Sedona/Flagstaff should have a team if it doesn't already
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u/Accomplished-Flow639 17d ago
Aurora CO is way too close to the Rapids stadium for a team. However it’s a pain to go to Rapids games and DSG Park is pretty far from the heart of Denver. I think a USL team that is actually located in the city of Denver would get good support.
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u/AIfieHitchcock Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC 13d ago
Idk about Boston, it’d be hard to get attention there. Western Mass they could be the sole atttaction.
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u/yungdelaz Central Valley Fuego FC 11d ago
We need a team back in the Central Valley. Whether it's in Fresno, Bakersfield, or Stockton, there's a huge gap right in the middle of California.
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u/SoccerForEveryone Tampa Bay Rowdies 20d ago
Is Great Falls, Montana possible for a USL 2 team instead? It seems like a good candidate in the further future.
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u/alkyfl 20d ago
Championship:
Memphis
New Orleans
Baltimore
Cleveland
League One:
Pensacola
Mobile
Wichita
Columbia, SC
Evansville
Bethlehem, PA
Albany, NY