Measure E finished with just over 30%
San Diego rejects Soccer City’s MLS plan
San Diego has rejected the development plan that would have brought an MLS franchise to the city with the Measure receiving just over 30% of the vote.
After over a year’s campaigning, voters in San Diego have had their say on the future of the former San Diego Chargers Stadium. With all the votes in, the initiative that would have allowed the Mission Valley site to be used for a Major League Soccer team was defeated by 78,223 to 178,810 votes. This plan is known as SoccerCity.
The alternate plan to allow San Diego State University (SDSU) to develop the site won by by 139,724 to 116,397 a lead of 54.55% to 45.45%. This plan is known as SDSUWest.
San Diegans voted on the two separate measures. Measure ‘E’ was to give the venue to FS Investors, a consortium whose main aim was to place an MLS team in the stadium, and the architects of SoccerCity.
Measure ‘G’ was to allow SDSU the land to develop their facilities including a stadium for their gridiron Aztecs team. SDSU was originally part of discussions with FS Investors. The deal fell through in May 2017, leading FS Investors begin the Measure ‘E’ campaign later that year. SDSU officials subsequently unveiled a proposed measure of their own, Measure ‘G’.
These numbers are a huge blow to Major League Soccer which sees San Diego as a prime territory for expansion given the huge popularity of the sport there. MLS games often receive higher ratings than in cities with a team and the 2018 World Cup viewing figures were among the best in the USA.
Despite that favorable territory, SoccerCity lost the vote and MLS Commissioner Don Garber won’t be the only one wondering why the most fertile territory in the USA has been lost to his league.
Young soccer fans attend a San Diego City Council meeting in 2017
How did it all go wrong?
SDSU is a very popular institution in San Diego with many alumni remaining in the city and therefore in the voting base. They united with a cartel of developers who have long been influential in the city.
Those rival developers to FS Investors attempted to turn the debate into a bunfight between SDSU and soccer. Amazingly the Soccer City campaign fell for the bait and even as late as election eve, some of its core campaigners were retweeting press stories hostile to SDSU, a very popular local institution.
This ineptitude and naivety fed into the mostly untrue SDSUWest assertion that Soccer City was led by outsiders. It wasn’t. A battle that pitted one set of developers against another had become framed as SDSU against insurgents. Despite soccer’s fanbase being mostly Democrat, the SDSUWest campaign successfully obtained the support of the local Democrat Party and most local Democrat politicians, occasionally even painting FS Investors as Republicans.
SoccerCity made other strategic errors.
It tried to force Measure ‘G’ off today’s ballot with an unwise court action that was ill-advised and doomed to failure. Having made the right to vote on their own measure a huge part of their campaign in 2017, the same people were using lawyers to deny citizens the right to vote on the alternative plan a year later. It came across poorly.
Is this the end of MLS in San Diego?
Probably but not definitely. The SoccerCity development plan is dead but no-one would blame Nick Stone and his FS Investors for turning their backs on soccer entirely. It has been a bruising encounter.
Recent adverts for SDSUWest have mentioned soccer as a ‘wishlist item’ for their own stadium plans, although it is yet to be seen whether this was merely an electoral tactic or they have come to realise just how lucrative an MLS side in San Diego could be.
Bridges will need to be built if they are to succeed as the SDSUWest campaign alienated a large number of soccer fans with some of its own campaign rhetoric, just as Soccer City offended many SDSU alumni. There needs to be some healing and some soothing words.
However nothing is impossible.
City Councillor Scott Sherman (R) who represents the area was one of the few local politicians to back SoccerCity. On KUSI News this morning he said of Measure G’s victory,
“Nothing that happens now will be quick. We’re supposed to sell the property to SDSU. It is out of the city’s hands once we have negotiated fair market value. It’ll have to go through an environmental review.”
If MLS want a side in the city badly enough, they could award a franchise to the SDSU Consortium as long as any SDSUWest plan met all its preconditions including the hefty expansion fee. It may be a matter of who calls who first.
Sherman however advised caution on this:
“You’re not going to get an MLS team here that wants to be a tenant on a college campus.”
There would be fury in the other candidate cities but MLS has already shown an ability to withstand that.
