USL defeats MLS in bid for Spokane soccer team, city doesn’t quite get how “bidding” works

One of the advantages of the growing war between MLS and the USL for dominance of U.S. soccer — tl;dr version: both leagues are expanding like crazy and setting up competing men’s and women’s pyramids — should be that cities finally have some leverage in cutting lease deals for sports teams, since they can actually pit different leagues against each other and get bidding wars going. And that’s exactly what just happened in Spokane, Washington, where the Spokane Public Facilities District board of directors voted yesterday to accept a USL proposal over an MLS bid for new men’s and women’s teams to play at the city’s new stadium.

So what did Spokane extract from the winning bidder in terms of a lease?

The USL proposal included a $4 million investment in the stadium for upgrades, with half of that money to be paid within 18 months of a lease-operating agreement.

The [MLS] package included base rent of $200,000 annually, plus 7% of net ticket sales.

That doesn’t sound all that great, given that Spokane just spent $31 million to build the stadium, which will also be used for high-school sports. (If you’re wondering, Spokane already had an even larger high school sports stadium, but it committed the sin of being old.) It’s possible that there are other lease payments included in the USL’s deal that none of the news reports bothered to mention — only the Spokane Spokesman-Review even revealed that much — but if not, then Spokane just spent a whole lot of money for a soccer stadium that will never come close to paying its own way.

But, you know, who can put a price on a guarantee of having two new pro soccer teams in town—

However, [Cindy Wendle, who is leading USL efforts in Spokane] acknowledged that the USL is still working on finding a franchise owner.

Um.

It’s also unclear when the new downtown stadium will be ready for action. Greg Forsyth, director of capital projects for Spokane Public Schools, said Tuesday that because of the uncertain composition of the ground, he “couldn’t say for sure” whether the facility will be complete by the spring of 2023, when the USL League One season would begin.

Well, then. Go team(s)! Eventually. In the meantime, enjoy this rendering of extremely white people quietly looking at their phones while a high-school football game goes on somewhere off in the distance. At least there’s some lens flare, or we would hardly know it was vaportecture at all!