Things have been getting a little crazy in the Tar Heel State when it comes to its professional soccer teams this month. Earlier in December the Carolina Railhawks rebranded as North Carolina FC and announced their intentions to bid for a MLS expansion team. They would be directly competing with Charlotte, who has had an ownership group slowly building an expansion bid for just about three years. That Charlotte ownership group, Queen City Soccer Club LLC, is led by Managing Partner Jim McPhilliamy. McPhilliamy is also the President of both Major League Lacrosse’s Charlotte Hounds and (more importantly for our discussions) USL’s Charlotte Independence.

Some Backstory

When Charlotte soccer fans talked about the possibility of a MLS franchise in the Queen City for the past several years, its always been with McPhilliamy and Independence in mind. The team itself has had some off-the-field issues, drawing among the least in attendance in USL both seasons, construction delays on their temporary (and yet not so temporary) stadium south of the city center at Ramblewood Park and their continued push to renovate the county-owned Memorial Stadium. The stadium is a New Deal relic, its concrete stands literally crumbling, and McPhilliamy and Co. want to help the city and county pay for it to be completely redone. In return, they’d like to lease it for both their professional teams (but mainly for soccer use) and potentially add more seats to make it a MLS-caliber stadium.

North Carolina FC’s local owner Stephen Malik told the press and fans that he was “going to spend a considerable amount of money” when he bought the team in October 2015. He’s now putting his money where his mouth is, coming out of the gate with a strong, if not somewhat predicable, rebranding and the launch of a MLS expansion bid. Malik told the News & Observer that the team has their eye on eight potential spots to build a $150 million stadium and that the team is prepared to pay for it out of pocket.

I have felt some anxiety about Charlotte missing out on MLS because of the Independence ownership group for a good part of 2016 now, but North Carolina FC’s announcement last week gave me a bit of a booster shot. If Charlotte couldn’t put together a timely, competitive bid, it seemed like Malik and NCFC could.

Then a tele-conference with MLS Commissioner Don Garber took place on Thursday the 15th.

Enter the Third Party —Bruton and Marcus Smith

Garber spent an hour on the phone with journalists from around the country, outlining the expansion process MLS would be taking to reach 28 clubs, with spots 25–28 up for grabs. Teams would have until Jan. 31 to formally apply for an expansion and decisions on spots 25 and 26 would be made at some point in the second half of 2017. Ten cities were listed — ten cities vying for just four spots. Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham were both on the list. I started getting excited about the prospect of a competitive bid in Raleigh, then Katie Peralta at the Charlotte Observer dropped this bombshell on Twitter:

Those were not the names I expected to see when connected to a Charlotte expansion team.

I expected to read Charlotte Independence or Jim McPhilliamy. Instead, I’m reading about billionaire Bruton Smith and his son Marcus — owner of Speedway Motorsports, Inc. Bruton was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame back in January and he’s expressed his desire to own the Carolina Panthers, though somewhere in the team’s bylaws says the owner must be a Carolina native so Smith might be out of luck there. He’s apparently turned his eye to Major League Soccer and gave this quote to Peralta via email:

“MLS has great momentum and a tremendous future, and so does our city. Charlotte would be a great addition to the league, and an MLS club would be a great addition to Charlotte. We are working with local leaders on an application, and hope to have more to say in February.”

Well, ain’t that something.

My first thought was that perhaps the Smith’s had joined the Independence ownership group as financial muscle. But Charlotte Business Journal’s Erik Spanberg pour cold water on that by reaching out to McPhilliamy and tweeting this:

Sure, I guess that relationship could go the other direction too — the Smiths could join McPhilliamy’s group. But why the hell would they? If they think they can do it themselves (and I see no reason why they would need anything from the Independence group), why would they want to split potential profits, decision making and prestige?

The fact that it was the Smiths and not McPhilliamy or Charlotte Independence that got name-dropped during Garber’s teleconference is telling to me. The league’s commissioner chose to single out one potential bidder over an other about six weeks before the application deadline. To me, that shows which bid the league is taking more seriously.

McPhilliamy has spent two years talking about getting a stadium plan in place and additional investors involved, admitting that him and the current ownership group doesn’t meet the leagues net worth requirements. Bruton and Marcus Smith do, being valued at $1.4 billion around 10 years ago and is still given the billionaire title when mentioned in news clippings from what I can tell. Stephen Malik in Raleigh is quoted by Neil Morris saying he meets the D1 league net-worth standards as well. Just in that one regard checks a box that the Independence can’t yet check.

Pump the brakes, Zach.

Most of this has shaken out in the past 24 hours. Yes, its exciting to think about a potential bid for a Charlotte MLS franchise by billionaires who want to get into the game. Yes, its also exciting knowing that a strong bid in Raleigh is taking place. I think having both cities competing will only create better bids from both cities. I would hope that soccer fans would travel between either city if one of them was given a MLS franchise, though I have an obvious preference for the one in my back yard.

Neither one spells good news for Charlotte Independence though. If a MLS team comes to Charlotte, there won’t be a need for an independently owned team in the same city just a division down. If a team is awarded to Raleigh, logic says one won’t also be awarded to Charlotte being so close together. And with the Independence ownership operating the USL team expressly as a way to generate interest in their MLS bid, once that MLS bid goes bye-bye, I don’t see the owners deciding to continue footing the bill. But hey, I’m ready to be proven wrong.

Next Steps?

All potential owners will be putting together their applications over the next six weeks to submit by the January 31 deadline. You would want to hear from these groups around that time, essentially saying “Yes, we’ve submitted an application”. The month of January will be interesting for Charlotte soccer, as conversations are had with both ownership groups. Do they decide to work together? or do we have another Minneapolis on our hands, with two competing bids in the same city, forcing the league to choose one?

The biggest sticking point for everyone is a stadium plan, so you want to see both NCFC and the Smiths publicly announce some form of plan for their potential team’s home field. We know that Malik and NCFC are looking at spots around downtown Raleigh and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Smiths decided to build a soccer stadium in Concord where their Charlotte Motor Speedway is located. And we already know Independence’s plan of remodeling Memorial; they’re scheduled to appear in front of the county commissioners in January with Phase 1 of their plan.

After that? Who knows. But North Carolina is once again a battleground state.