MLS formally announced that San Diego will be the home of its 30th team, granting an expansion franchise that will begin play in 2025 to a group headed by Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour. The ownership group paid an MLS-record $500M expansion fee, according to sources with knowledge of the deal, far exceeding the $325M Tepper Sports and Entertainment paid the league in 2019 for the right to launch Charlotte FC.
The Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a Native American tribe with a longstanding history in the region, is also a limited partner with a significant equity stake in the club. The Sycuan Band is the first Native American tribe to take an ownership stake in a U.S.-based professional soccer team. Other founding investors include Padres 3B Manny Machado, Zephyr Partners co-founder Brad Termini, Right to Dream founder Tom Vernon and Right to Dream board member Dan Dickinson. Former LAFC President Tom Penn will serve as the club’s CEO.
“Cody Martinez, the chairman of the Sycuan Band, made it his mission to put together an ownership group that was going to work for the tribe, for Major League Soccer and, most importantly, for San Diego,” MLS EVP Charles Altchek told SBJ. “He, in partnership with Tom Penn and a few others, were able to do something that none of us expected, which is to create this unprecedented group that is hyperlocal but also global and has soccer expertise.”
The club will be a tenant of San Diego State at Snapdragon Stadium, which opened in 2022 and was designed with both football and soccer in mind. With a capacity of more than 32,000 fans for soccer, it will be among the largest stadiums in MLS. The facility also is home to the NWSL’s San Diego Wave, which is leading the league with more than 20,000 fans per game in its second season, according to Soccer Stadium Digest. The San Diego announcement marks the culmination of a yearslong effort by MLS to bring an expansion team to the market, which MLS views as an ideal locale due to its soccer history, proximity to Mexico and the relative lack of professional sports competition in town following the Chargers’ departure in 2017.
| MLS Club Celebrity/Athlete Owners |
| CLUB |
CELEBRITY/ATHLETE OWNER |
| San Diego |
Manny Machado |
| Austin FC |
Matthew McConaughey |
| D.C. United |
Yo Gotti, Mark Ingram |
| Houston Dynamo |
James Harden |
| Inter Miami CF |
David Beckham |
| Sporting K.C. |
Patrick Mahomes |
| LAFC |
Will Ferrell, Magic Johnson, Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra |
| Nashville SC |
Reese Witherspoon, Derrick Henry, Filip Forsberg, Giannis Antetokounmpo and brothers Thanasis, Kostas and Alex |
| Philadelphia Union |
Kevin Durant |
| Real Salt Lake |
Dwyane Wade |
| Seattle Sounders |
Russell Wilson and Ciara, Drew Carey, Ken Griffey Jr. and Macklemore |
| Vancouver Whitecaps |
Steve Nash |
