Tim Leiweke has been aiding David Beckham’s push for an MLS team in Miami, but the longtime executive admitted there is still some doubt surrounding the project.
Leiweke joined up with Beckham’s group in 2015 in an advisory role and has helped aid negotiations between the ownership team and the city of Miami. Those negotiations have been back and forth, to say the least, but, by and large, little progress has been made to confirm a team in Miami.
Largely, conversations have centered around the club’s stadium deal and acquiring surrounding lands, with MLS comissioner Don Garber saying this summer that he was “confident” a deal would get done. However, Leiweke, a former executive with Toronto FC, isn’t fully sure.
“I’m helping any way I can with David,” Leiweke told the Toronto Sun. “I hope it gets done, but it’s not done. I have my fears as to whether it’s going to get done because things like this that drag on this long that’s always tough on a process. But for David I hope he lands somewhere.”
MLS is officially set to announce two more expansion teams this winter, with Sacramento, Cincinnati and Nashville expected to be among the favorites to be awarded a team. Meanwhile, LAFC is set to enter the league for the 2018 season, pushing the number of teams up to 23.
Miami has long been viewed as the most likely team No. 24, and Leiweke hopes that’s ultimately the case.
“It would be unfortunate for the league to not honor the job he did and the decision he made,” Leiweke told the Sun. “His best work would still be ahead of us if we could figure out a way to get him involved with a franchise.
“But our company has a lot of different projects. I haven’t spent a lot of time on Miami lately so I’m not sure if that gets done. I hope it does for David’s sake.”
I am live in South Florida & I know no one is going to pay to see Kansas City or watch Wondo, in this market. This very stuck up ultra “euro snobs” market.
The reason why Leiweke is so pessimistic is because of the lawsuits coming in against the Beckham Group. It looks like it could drag out for up to a year from now.
The way this is dragging on, it will be the year 2025 and Miami is still not happening.
The irony is the necessity to have a soccer specific stadium is very MLS 2.0. This has been going on so long, we are now in MLS 3.0 where 70k seat football stadia are fake grass are the thing again.
Hard Rock (Dolphins) stadium is now 30+ years old; the life expectancy of these places is ~25 years, If I was David Beckham, I would sell my MLS option to Stephen Ross for ownership interest in the NFL team, joining other celeb owners like Gloria & Emilio Estefan, Marc Anthony, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Fergie, etc., Together, they can build a new place like Atlanta and Minnesota.
Well MLS 3.0 is the new 1.0.
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I don’t really see what the problem is sharing a stadium. All the sudden we became too good for that? (I get turf, if you hate that)
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Seattle built a stadium for both. The vote would not have passed for just one or the other. Don’t really see why you would be opposed to that? Fans can’t vote to share? Should MLS come out so strongly against that they try to get fans not to support? Seems like a weird stance. Many, many fans want soccer, MLS supplies soccer, MLS says, no thanks to the best stadium in the world?
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Not a coincidence that Seattle and Atlanta will lead the league in attendance. One, they actually CAN, playing a real stadium, rather than a stadium a team can afford, which is big enough to be shared ( with rock concerts ). Two, they look big time. Maybe not in MLS 1.0, because they didn’t fill it, but definitely in 2.0 and 3.0. Definitely not in USL Sounders days. 5k of us in that stadium, but things change and they change fast. The idea that 5-10 years from now 3/4 of the stadiums in MLS will work for the teams playing in them is laughable.
I remember when the Sounders were drawing 35k, some where pushing for going to their own 25k stadium…away from the city. Why? Grass and the one time a year ( zero this year ) when sharing overlaps. Now the Sounders are drawing 45k. I guess some think they should cut that in half by moving to the suburbs. Gerber should force them to.
Sell a team for 1/7th the value of it and put it where the Fusion failed, sweep the water back into the ocean and get it done.
Why not?
What is crazy about it, is that teams are going for $150 million now and people are lining up, but at $20 million or so. Nope still can’t get it done. Pretty sure that tells us all we need to know.