LANSING – A new era of sports and entertainment in downtown Lansing began Thursday, as the Lansing Ignite, a professional soccer team set to begin play next spring, announced their existence Thursday afternoon at Cooley Law School Stadium.

The stadium and ownership group is familiar — Lugnuts owner Tom Dickson is the Ignite’s owner, Lugnuts president Nick Grueser is the president. Lansing United owner and founder Jeremy Sampson is the Ignite’s full-time general manager.

The team will play in the new USL League One, an offshoot of the longstanding United Soccer League, under the umbrella of Major League Soccer. Lansing Ignite is Michigan’s first professional soccer team since the Detroit Express, which lasted from 1978 to ’80.

“This is gonna explode in Lansing. It’s the first professional soccer team in Michigan,” Dickson said. “Lansing, No. 1, nobody else got one.”

Between the Lugnuts and Ignite, Cooley Law School Stadium should be in use every weekend from late March into September.

The Ignite will have 17 home dates, 12 to 14 of them as part of their league schedule.

“There’s going to be someone downtown, thousands of people, every Friday or Saturday night,” Grueser said. “That’s impactful economically to the city. We’re pretty proud to be a part of all that.”

RELATED: Couch: Downtown stadium experience gives pro soccer a shot to work in Lansing

Grueser is very aware that this is a different venture than the Lugnuts, both in cost and fans. There are roughly $1.2 million in expenses that the Lugnuts don’t incur, he said — salaries and travel that the Toronto Blue Jays handle on the baseball side and the cost of flipping the field primarily. The roster payroll is expected to be roughly $350,000 annually. It cost $15,000 to change the field from baseball to soccer each time, with a one-time expense of $150,000 for the equipment to lay down the massive rolls of sod.

Grueser says the club needs to average 4,000 fans per game for the franchise to be stable, about what the Lugnuts average.

Doing so, in part, means understanding the target fan base, in demographics and priority, something Grueser picked up from other ownership groups that have both soccer and baseball.

“Really, it’s a different audience,” Grueser said. “(Soccer) focuses on young professionals and millennials, which outside of Thirsty Thursdays is not really our core demographic (with the Lugnuts). It focuses on a more ethnic market.”

“In minor league baseball, it’s so much about the entertainment versus the sport. In soccer it’s the exact opposite. It’s more the sport. Some of my peers that do both (sports) were saying, ‘Hey, don’t treat this like minor league baseball. The gimmicks, the promotions, the fun stuff we do to really entertain the crowd in baseball is not what the soccer fan wants. They want to come out and watch good, competitive soccer. Wins and losses matter. Go find and recruit a great team. Whereas in baseball, if we go 40-100 (with the Lugnuts), it doesn’t affect my gate at all, that year or the next year.

“It’s one of the reasons we added Jeremy. He had gone through this for five years.”

The collaboration with Sampson began after both parties realized the other was also exploring the idea of bringing pro soccer to Lansing. Both had met with USL officials during a site visit last year. Sampson moved Lansing United from the National Premier Soccer League to the Premier Development League after the 2017 season to better align with the MLS and USL side of professional soccer.

Sampson had hoped to find investors to take United professional by 2020. Grueser and Dickson also were thinking about 2020. They pushed it up to make sure their new league had enough teams. Including the Ignite, nine franchises are confirmed for USL League One — the third tier of professional soccer, behind MLS and the USL and above the amateur USL League Two, better known as the PDL until a couple weeks ago.

“Being able to work together obviously made a lot of sense to me,” Sampson said. “They (the Lugnuts) had exactly what we needed. We needed a 3,500-seat venue and this is the only one in the community that’s currently constructed.”

Sampson also needed a primary owner with at least $10 million in capital, a league requirement.

Dickson also provided that. Grueser provided a working partner that he’d known since his days as a sportscaster at WILX in Lansing, when Grueser was the Lugnuts’ GM.

Sampson is in charge of putting together a coaching staff and roster. He hopes to have a head coach in place by early November.

What he lost control of in joining forces with Grueser and Dickson is the team name. He said he came to peace with that possibility when he knew moving to the professional ranks would mean no longer being the majority owner. Lansing United, as a men’s side, will cease to exist. The women’s team will continue playing, with Sampson still as the owner.

“We had a lot of discussions about the name,” Grueser said. “And as much as much as we wanted to support what Jeremy had done, it’s a new franchise. We were going to keep Lansing United at one point. We wanted to show that it’s a new venture, a new franchise. It’s not an amateur level. It is a professional level. It’s not the same team. It’s going to be a different coach, a different roster. It is completely separate.

“I realize in bringing Jeremy on board with that, it kind of complicates that message a little bit, which is even more a reason why we wanted to change the name. If we kept United and Jeremy, people were going to think this was just the evolution (of United). And to some degree it is, a lot of the same foundation, but it’s a separate ownership group, a separate franchise. It’s a completely separate entity.

"And then we wanted to have some fun with the brand. So we really kept into the automotive theme with the Ignite and the spark plug. And a lot of the stadium is automobile themed. We wanted to keep that play on words.”

Lansing Ignite’s contract with the city for use of Cooley Law School stadium runs 16 years, concurrent with the remaining length of the deal between the Lugnuts and the city. The city’s financial lift with this pro soccer enterprise is primarily for the first five years of the contract, including $125,000 annually for marketing.

Grueser said they’re developing plans to dual-brand the ballpark and are adding a new locker room just for the soccer team.

Other cities with teams USL League One include: Chattanooga, Tennessee; Greenville, South Carolina, Madison, Wisconsin; Orlando, Florida; Richmond, Virginia; Statesboro, Georgia; Tucson, Arizona and Toronto.

Tickets will be priced from $15 to $22 per game.

RELATED:

LSJ digital reporter Phil Friend contributed to this story.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch