The United Soccer League plans to continue a burst of expansion that has spread its footprint across nearly 30 markets in the United States and Canada, its president said Thursday.
“The expansion clubs who have joined the league this year and in the previous season have done extremely well,” the USL president, Jake Edwards, said during a conference call with reporters. “The popularity of soccer is booming and will continue to do so.”
The call came hours after the fast-growing third-division professional league confirmed its 27th club, in the Orlando, Fla., area, for the 2016 season — and a day before its championship match in Rochester, N.Y. The news highlights a recent boom in new lower-division professional teams: The USL added 13 this year, while the 11-team second-division North American Soccer League added one.
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The two leagues, which also added teams in 2014, will enter their sixth seasons in their current formats in 2016. Both plan to continue growing. The NASL, which is nearing the end of the second leg of its spring-and-fall season, has said it could have 18 teams by 2018, with two more — in Miami and Puerto Rico — set to play next season.
Courtesy of the United Soccer League
The 24-team USL, meanwhile, has targeted as many as 40 teams by the end of the decade, and four new clubs — in Bethlehem, Pa.; Cincinnati; Texas’s Rio Grande Valley; and Orlando — are to take the field next year. (The Austin Aztex — which joined the league in 2015 — will take the year off to resolve issues in lining up a stadium that meets league standards.)
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The USL’s growth has been driven largely by Major League Soccer, which has contributed to expansion through club-operated second squads and provided other clubs with players and expertise. Eight of the clubs that started play in 2015 are owned and operated by MLS organizations, and that will continue next season: The Pennsylvania and Orlando teams are the property of Major League Soccer clubs, while another will handle the soccer operations of the new Texas club.
“There is not one single model that works” for partnerships, Edwards said. “That’s for each team in the MLS to consider what makes sense for them both on the playing side and on the financial side.”
The MLS is the only first-division outdoor league sanctioned in the U.S., where professional organizations apply to join different leagues rather than, as in many countries around the world, move between divisions by way of promotion or relegation.
The USL has said it is pursuing second-division sanctioning from U.S. Soccer for the 2017 season, which would raise various competitive and organizational standards but perhaps also increase interest from sponsors, fans and players. Edwards said Thursday that the process, which began in January, continues.
Meantime, some USL clubs have been outspoken about their interest in moving up to Major League Soccer — notably the team in Sacramento, which in 2015 averaged more than 11,000 home fans a game, by far a league best. (Expansion Louisville City was second with nearly 6,800 a game; overall USL attendance crept up by about 200 a game to just over 3,300.)
Edwards said the league fully supports such aspirations and sees plenty of opportunities for growth elsewhere should its teams leave.
“When a team does that, it’s a great thing,” he said. Sacramento “came into our league thinking full well that some day that might be viable.”
Friday’s USL championship match pits the hometown Rochester Rhinos against the L.A. Galaxy II, a club owned and operated by the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer.
