California dreamin': MLS awards expansion team to San Diego
The new club will begin play starting in 2025
California is getting another MLS franchise.
San Diego was named the league’s 30th team on Thursday and will begin competing as an expansion club in 2025.
The team will play at Snapdragon Stadium, the 35,000-seat venue already home to the NWSL’s San Diego Wave, while the team’s name and crest will be announced at a later date.
“We are thrilled to welcome San Diego to Major League Soccer as our 30th team,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. “For many years we have believed San Diego would be a terrific MLS market due to its youthful energy, great diversity and the fact that soccer is an essential part of everyday life for so many people.”
This will be California’s fourth MLS team after the Los Angeles Galaxy, San Jose Earthquakes and Los Angeles FC.
The San Diego club is bankrolled by entrepreneur Mohamed Mansour, a member of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and the first Native American tribe to have an ownership stake in pro soccer in the United States.
“I’m a businessman and I tell you the partnership is the most important thing. And we were aligned right from the beginning, our values we have, and commitment we have,” Mansour told The Associated Press.
The ownership group also includes San Diego Padres star Manny Machado. Tom Penn, a former NBA executive who also served as president of LAFC until 2020, will serve as the team’s CEO.
Mansour is the founder and chairman of the London-based investment management firm Man Capital, which owns Right to Dream. It is a global soccer community of world-class academies and partners which identifies and nurtures talent.
San Diego has a long soccer tradition dating back to the 1970s with the San Diego Sockers. The city is currently home to the USL Championship side San Diego Loyal, a team co-founded by former U.S. soccer star Landon Donovan.
The Wave, now in their second season, are drawing an average of 21,000 fans to Snapdragon.
“It’s a dream team from an ownership perspective, but the market speaks for itself,” Garber said. “This is a soccer hotbed. So many of our players that come from this city, we’ve had great national team games here, CONCACAF games here, enormous success with friendlies, the women’s team is doing well.”
Donovan had previously led an effort to bring an MLS franchise to the city, but a stadium referendum was rejected by voters in 2018.
“We’ve wanted an MLS team here for many, many years, arguably since the beginning of the league,” said Garber, adding that it had taken “10 years to get to this point.”