By Garrett Dvorkin | Baltimore Business Journal
One effort to bring a professional soccer team and stadium to the city will not move forward, but another chance to expand the sport in Baltimore still lies ahead.
At a Maryland Stadium Authority meeting on Jan. 3, Gary McGuigan, the MSA’s executive vice president, told the board that it was asked not to proceed with one of two previously approved studies on the economic impact of a soccer stadium and professional team in Baltimore.
The study that was canceled was requested by Right to Dream, a soccer academy that started in Ghana and operates facilities in Egypt and Denmark. Right to Dream was looking to establish a U.S. location and had secured an expansion agreement with the United Soccer League (USL) to bring both men’s and women’s teams to Baltimore. The group was eying Port Covington for its new location. A second study, which could bring a minor league team affiliated with Major League Soccer’s D.C. United to the region, is still in the works.
Right to Dream said in a letter to Mayor Brandon Scott in October 2022 that Baltimore is not a viable option for its U.S. academy because it was “more challenging and costly than anticipated.”
“We have decided to terminate our exclusivity agreement with the USL for the Baltimore market and will no longer pursue the stadium and academy option at Port Covington,” said Tom Vernon, Right to Dream founder and CEO.
USL is the country’s second-level professional soccer league behind MLS.
Right to Dream’s plan was to build a multi-purpose 10,000-seat stadium for soccer training, paid for with public money and owned and operated by the MSA. The stadium would have been just one piece of a privately funded campus that was slated to include residential and academic buildings for kids in the program.
The abandoned study was originally approved by the MSA in July following a request from Scott. The MSA would have paid for one-third of the $62,000 study, with the remaining two-thirds paid for by the city and private funds. According to McGuigan, no money was used on the study, as the parties never agreed on a memorandum of understanding.
The failed effort is another blow to Greater Baltimore’s efforts to expand its soccer footprint after losing out on a bid to be a World Cup host in 2026, though another study to bring a D.C. United-affiliated team to the region could be completed by the end of the year.
In May 2022, just a few months before the Right to Dream study was approved, the MSA approved a request from the Maryland Department of Commerce for a market and economic analysis, as well as potential site fits, to bring a stadium and a team to the Baltimore metro area. The cost of the $50,000 study is to be split by D.C. United and the MSA.
The team would play in MLS Next Pro, a lower-tier league that acts as a feeder to MLS, similar to the minor league system of an MLB club.
According to McGuigan, the MSA was surprised to get two study requests at the same time, and there was even an internal discussion about combining them. McGuigan said it would have been challenging for both projects to move forward at the same time.
“This goes to the question, ‘Can the city support two soccer stadiums,’ which I would say was unlikely even without doing the studies,” McGuigan said.
Al Tyler, the vice president of the MSA’s capital projects development group, said he hopes the MLS Next Pro study can be completed by the end of 2023 or early in 2024. An agreement on the process of the study will hopefully be reached in February, but it is unclear when or if an actual stadium will be built.
“If you ask me when a stadium will be constructed and the first whistle will blow, we can’t accurately predict that because it depends on financing between the state, maybe, and what the team wants to do,” Tyler said.
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