Given this article...
A new effort is in the works to bring pro soccer to Buffalo:
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/b...21e3302d2.html
"Peter Marlette Jr. has wanted to bring a professional soccer team to his hometown of Buffalo for as long as he can remember.
And now the 35-year-old soccer executive has moved back to Western New York to dedicate his full-time efforts to realize that goal.
He announced Thursday the formation of Buffalo Pro Soccer and its partnership agreement with the United Soccer League Championship to bring a club to the area by 2026.
It’s a job Marlette has been positioning himself to take on for years in a market that the Nichols School graduate and former pro soccer player believes is a perfect fit for the sport at this level.
But bringing a high-level pro team to Buffalo will be a challenging undertaking that others have failed at in the past.
Not the least of the challenges will be raising the money needed to form the team and find a suitable place for it to play – a task that, in total, is likely to require tens of millions of dollars.
It will require building a new stadium with about 10,000 seats on a site, ideally in the city, that’s yet to be chosen. It will also require recruiting a group of partners and investors willing to spend millions of dollars to bring a team to fruition.
“After all of the research I’ve done on it, it became clear to me that Buffalo should have a pro soccer team,” said Marlette, who spent the last five years working on the business side of pro soccer after moving to Switzerland for a master’s degree program in sports management that produces many international soccer executives.
Buffalo has been here before. Most recently, in 2019, developers John McClutchy and Dennis Penman bought the conditional rights to start a Buffalo franchise in the USL and identified four potential sites in Western New York for a stadium.
But that deal fell apart last year. Other efforts throughout the years to bring and keep higher level soccer here have failed as well.
The difference now, Marlette said, is that he is committed to forging ahead with the idea. It also helps that there’s been a realization from some that a downtown stadium could help fill the void left by the Buffalo Bills deciding against building a new stadium in the city.
Marlette reached an agreement with USL executives several months ago and began working immediately on an investment portfolio and financial predictions for the team.
He had been serving the past three years as the general manager of Union Omaha, the 2021 USL League One champions and winners of two regular season titles.(Which has plans for a mixed use stadium development) He previously worked in business development for FC Dallas of Major League Soccer.
“For whatever reason, it didn’t work out with the last group, but it did not dampen USL’s desire to get pro soccer in Buffalo and that’s how the conversation started between them and I,” said Marlette, a former All-American at Trinity College in Connecticut, who has played with FC Buffalo and professionally in Australia.
Buffalo and USL a fit
USL has been persistent about bringing a team to Buffalo.
Buffalo fits the bill for a USL team. It is a metropolitan area – including the Southern Ontario region – with over 1 million people; it has a diverse population; it has a good professional sports culture; there’s a robust youth soccer scene; and there’s a growing millennial and young professional population.
The average age of a pro soccer fan is around 35, and the sport, considered the most popular in the world, is quickly growing in the U.S.
“Buffalo is home to some of the most fervent and proud sports fans in the world, and we know they will embrace and support a professional soccer club of their own,” USL Deputy CEO Justin Papadakis said. “Peter Marlette is a Buffalo soccer product with experience at all levels of the game and a deep commitment to the community he calls home.”
The USL Championship is considered the second-tier professional soccer league in the U.S., one level below Major League Soccer, which typically draws the most attention and best players. For Buffalo, this league is the sweet spot between MLS and USL League One – the third division of pro soccer in the U.S.
It features 24 men’s professional teams each playing a 34-game regular season from March to October. Teams average nearly 6,000 fans per game, and, in some markets, games have drawn around 10,000 fans. Matches are available live on CBS Sports or ESPN platforms.
“USL Championship is a really high-quality league,” Marlette said. “These guys are elite players.”
The work that’s ahead
As president of Buffalo Pro Soccer, Marlette must line up financing, potentially including public money.
Then he needs to find and acquire a private or public site large enough for a stadium.
He also has to come up with a stadium design that could handle other events and completing construction. Marlette has whittled down potential stadium locations to about seven sites.
“The model for USL Championship and what I think would probably work best for Buffalo is a downtown stadium,” he said.
It could be a legitimate consolation prize for those who were advocating for a new Bills stadium in a downtown location to help spur growth in the city. The Bills will stay in Orchard Park, where the team has been for the past five decades.
The biggest difference is the size and scale of the project. Many believed the infrastructure was not there for a football stadium that would bring between 60,000 and 70,000 fans downtown at once.
“This may be a little more realistic for downtown – perhaps, a little easier to accomplish,” Marlette said.
Because a concrete stadium structure can take years to build, he’s considering a modular stadium that could be less expensive, easier to construct and fully customizable.
Marlette said the stadium would also offer opportunities for a variety of community and entertainment events, as well as pregame activities and tailgating outside of it. He wants an array of high school, college and club sports being played there, too. Additionally, it could spawn mixed-use development that includes housing, retail and entertainment around the stadium.
He said he has had conversations with local and state officials about it, including Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and his staff.
“If this stadium only hosts 20 or so men’s soccer games a year, that’s a total waste,” Marlette said. “It would need to be a community asset.”
The team will have local ownership, but because the sport is exploding nationally, Marlette said he can also see significant investors coming from other parts of the country.
He would not disclose the cost involved with owning the team, but he pointed to the recent sales of some National Women Soccer League teams as being a more expensive investment than what it would take to start the Buffalo team.
The Portland Thorns, for example, were acquired earlier this year, reportedly for $63 million.
“Pro sports is an asset outperforming virtually everything else right now,” Marlette said. “But you don’t have to be a billionaire to get involved in this.”
Not the first Buffalo pro team
It wouldn’t be Buffalo’s only professional soccer team. FC Buffalo has a men’s team playing in USL League Two, a national amateur league sanctioned as Division IV by U.S. Soccer, and a women’s team playing in United Women’s Soccer, a national pro-am league.
The Buffalo Stallions played indoors in the Major Indoor Soccer League from 1979 to 1984. The Buffalo Blizzard played indoors from 1992 to 2001. A women’s team, the Buffalo Flash, played in Buffalo for three years before moving to Rochester as the Western New York Flash in 2011.
Buffalo Pro Soccer would also like to eventually pursue a professional women’s soccer team in the Division I USL Super League, which launches in August.
“This is an important and exciting step forward that builds on the foundation we’ve laid in growing Buffalo’s passion for the game,” said FC Buffalo Owner and President Nick Mendola.
In the months ahead, a listening campaign will gather perspectives throughout the community to help define the club’s brand, name, logo and colors. Buffalo Pro Soccer will launch its social media presence in the coming weeks and continue sharing updates."
Do you think that there would be good interest/a good following for professional Soccer in the city/area? I think so between the New American population, local youth/others in the area Soccer community and some nearby Canadians, among others.
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