For a long time, San Diegans have wanted another professional team in the city in one of the elusive big 4 leagues.
We’ve had heartbreak after heartbreak from big expectations turning into huge disappointments and an unnamed team leaving the city after years of the owner trying to move the team.
But now with Midway Rising, the developer of the Midway district, San Diego is ever closer to getting a new professional team.
Midway Rising tasked Legends, a solutions business for brands, with managing the logistics of the arena. They’ve worked on the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, New York Yankees’ Yankee Stadium, and the team-that-must-not-be-named and Los Angeles Rams’ SoFi Stadium.
During Midway Rising’s informational meeting at the Hilton in Mission Valley, I spoke with a Legends representative, on how they plan to keep the current arena teams, excluding the Sockers who already had their Frontwave Arena planned in Oceanside before any arena plan started.
They’ve had talks that were positive with the Gulls, Seals, and Strike Force, but the biggest thing is Pechanga Arena will remain open during the construction of the new arena so that the city can keep the teams here.
No shade to San Diego State and how they managed the construction of Snapdragon Stadium, but having the football team play in Carson for two years, and with the exception of a small percentage of fans and students who made the trips up north, lost a lot of fan interest from a lot of locals, not including the students and alumni who would always show up.
As for arena size, it will be slightly less than 16,000 although Midway Rising did not say an exact number. The arena will be built in a horseshoe shape to allow for an expansion of 2,000 to to 3,000 additional seats.
An arena size of 18,000 to 19,000 would be more than enough to supplement National Basketball Association (NBA) or National Hockey League (NHL) teams that have seen their average arena sizes trend downward in recent years.
The NBA’s smallest arena, the Atlanta Hawks’ State Farm Arena, stands at a capacity of 16,600 seats. The average arena size is 18,790. Their largest arena is the Chicago Bulls’ United Center at 20,917.
Meanwhile, the NHL’s latest expansion team, the Seattle Kraken, has a capacity of 17,151 at Climate Pledge Arena and ESPN reported that the NHL is interested in making Atlanta, Ga. its 33rd expansion team with an arena size that is at 16,600 seats.
For once, arena size won’t be the issue once the arena gets built and that means San Diego is closer than ever to getting an expansion team in the NBA or NHL.
A Midway Rising representative told me that they have reached out to both the NBA and NHL but neither league was interested in the San Diego market at the time.
However, the same was said about Major League Soccer before Snapdragon Stadium was built and less than a year later, San Diego received the 30th expansion team in the MLS.
Hopefully the result here will be the same as Snapdragon Stadium was.