The team will serve the local and global soccer fan base of Detroit, while inspiring a new generation of youth soccer throughout the state, whose current numbers exceed100,000 registered players.
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Owned by Indy businessman Ersal Ozdemir and formerly led by CST guest Peter Wilt, Indy Eleven broke onto the American soccer scene in 2014 by drawing record crowds for lower division professional soccer.
Marcus Smith, president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports, Inc., has been working with city and county leaders, along with community stakeholders in the effort to bring an MLS expansion team to the area. “We thought it was a great opportunity to sort of celebrate the Fire’s 20th anniversary, a way to bring some excitement to this city with our sport, somewhat like what we did with our Copa America (semifinal)”. MLS, which now has 24 teams, has said it plans to add two teams for 2020 and two more for 2024.
The game, which will pit the best MLS players against a “top five” team in the world, will be nationally telecast on ESPN to 170 countries. We think we could have an unbelievable rivalry with that team.
Real Madrid is arguably the biggest club in the world and has more Champions League crowns (11) than any other team.
The plan calls for demolishing Memorial Stadium and replacing it with an MLS stadium.
“You know, the site is a fairly large site, and it also, you know, there is talk of putting I-375 up to grade”, Gilbert said.
The City Council isn’t planning a vote at this time. North Carolina FC Owner Steve Malik also made his MLS ambitions clear at a press conference in December, although his plan is to privately-finance a new stadium up to MLS standards.
The cost estimate is $100 million.
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“We’ve got a great NFL team, a great National Basketball Association team, this is the home of NASCAR, and we’ve got minor league baseball”, Smith said.
