Major League Soccer is expanding to Salt Lake City next season.
A league source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the city will become the 12th MLS team as part of its 2005 expansion.
MLS has also granted an expansion team to Jorge Vergara, who owns the Mexican club Chivas. The franchise is still looking for a host city.
MLS commissioner Don Garber will make the announcement about Salt Lake City on Wednesday at a news conference at Rice-Eccles Stadium, where the team is expected to play its first two seasons.
Dave Checketts, former president of the Utah Jazz and New York Knicks, leads the group of investors that is bringing the expansion team to Utah. Checketts did not immediately return a message Tuesday afternoon.
Utah has been home to the Jazz since the team moved from New Orleans in 1979. The Salt Lake Valley is one of the smallest markets in the league with a population of about 1 million.
But it has sustained an NBA team for 25 years, and officials hope the top soccer league in the country can also thrive there.
"It reminds me of the old days when Larry Miller started the Jazz," said Mark Burk, director of Rice-Eccles and the Huntsman Center. "It's an opportunity and they're going to try to make it work. There were some people wondering back then if it would go."
Burk said negotiations have been going on for about a month with the Checketts group, which wants to use Rice-Eccles as its home until a soccer-only stadium is built.
Rice-Eccles is already home to the minor-league club Utah Blitzz.
A Cleveland group had a preliminary plan last fall to get one of the expansion teams, but it stalled after prospective owner Bert L. Wolstein died in May.
__________________
|