PHOENIX – In just a few months, Phoenix Rising FC and the city the club calls home have gone from an afterthought as a soccer market to being one of 12 candidates for an expansion team. And Tuesday’s visit from league executives served to further the club’s belief that it could potentially win one of the four spots up for grabs.
“Extremely confident,” Phoenix Rising governor Berke Bakay said when asked how he feels about Phoenix’s chances. “It’s always been a vision from Day One. We always wanted to have the highest level of professional soccer in Arizona.”
MLS president and deputy commissioner Mark Abbott led a contingent of MLS representatives, who were in town to discuss elements of the group’s prospective bid on Tuesday. Phoenix Rising’s Bakay, his co-owners, club COO Bobby Dulle, and player/co-owner Didier Drogba helped guide the MLS group on a tour of the club’s stadium and complex, followed by meetings with local leaders and club stakeholders.
"We have four factors that we evaluate our bids on, ownership, stadium plan, and market's support of Major League Soccer,” Abbott said. “And how does the market help Major League Soccer achieve its goals, one of which is to increase national viewership for our television, and to elevate overall interest in our league.”
Phoenix Rising have managed to do what previous USL clubs in the market could not — shoot for MLS from the start and draw sellout, standing-room only crowds to their first four home games.
“It’s a special moment for us to be able to show them [MLS league officials] what we were able to accomplish in the past four months in person and on the ground,” Bakay said, “for them to see what we told them we were going to do, the fact that we have actually done it.”
The MLS expansion process as it currently stands calls for two new expansion clubs to be named by the end of the year and two more winning bids some time after that.
Phoenix is the second-largest market in the country without an MLS club and has the largest Hispanic population of the 12 finalists. And should they land an expansion team, the club plans to build a privately financed stadium for 20,000-plus fans on the plot of land where Phoenix Rising’s USL stadium is currently located.
It would be a stadium that accounts for the city's hot and dry summer, coinciding with the heart of the MLS season. And while it’s being constructed, the club could look to partner with Arizona State University, the largest public university in the US, to temporarily make use of Sun Devil Stadium, the football home of ASU, located close to their future MLS home. The MLS executive visit even featured a lunch with ASU Vice President for University Athletics Ray Anderson.
“Finding the right stadium solution is going to be important here,” Abbott said. “There’s a lot of very positive things that are happening here and I was really glad that I came today to see them first hand.”
The movement toward MLS was hardly considered feasible by many in the local soccer community as late as last August 2016 when Bakay purchased a majority share in the club, formerly called Arizona United. Since then, that movement has picked up considerable momentum.
That momentum has also shown on the playing side. Since January 31 when the Phoenix expansion bid was submitted, Phoenix Rising have signed former Liga MX and Sporting Kansas City star Omar Bravo and a pair of former MLS and English Premier League players, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Jordan Stewart.
Those signings turned heads, but so did the construction of a 6,200-seat stadium in 52 days and the retaining of Goldman Sachs as the structuring agent for the financing of the club’s proposed MLS stadium.
The move that might truly have signaled Bakay and his group’s big-league intentions was the addition of former Chelsea and Montreal Impact star Didier Drogba as player, part-owner and club ambassador. Drogba, one of the world’s most recognizable soccer personalities, attended Tuesday’s briefing.
“Phoenix won my heart, the [MLS] project won my heart. I want to be a part of it, that’s why I’m here,” Drogba said after his introduction drew cheers from supporters' group representatives.
Abbott noted the significance of Drogba's joining the prospective ownership group and spoke positively of the progress of Phoenix Rising’s bid for an MLS club.
“I came away with a deeper understanding of the commitment of the ownership group to what they’re trying to do not just with Major League Soccer, but with their team that’s here now,” Abbott said. “That’s a wonderful experience."
