Former Padres owner John Moores reportedly is finalizing a deal to buy Everton FC of England’s Premier League, heading an investment group behind a $300 million bid for controlling stake in the 137-year-old club from Liverpool.

John Moores (Nelvin Cepeda)

It isn’t the only professional soccer team he is pursuing.

Moores is one of two groups investigating the prospects of owning a Major League Soccer club that would play in San Diego and that might solve the stadium conundrum facing San Diego State’s football team if or when the Chargers relocate to Los Angeles and Qualcomm Stadium is bulldozed. Steve Peace, a senior advisor to Moores and former state legislator, confirmed their “interest” in MLS, both as a tenant in a new mid-sized facility (possibly on the redeveloped Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley) and a Stateside partner for their Premier League team.


The identity of the other investment group is unknown. But earlier this month MLS Commissioner Don Garber told Sports Illustrated, when asked about future expansion, “there are markets now that seem to come up that weren’t even part of our thinking a year or two ago” and “we’ve been having discussions with people in San Diego.”

A league source confirmed the renewed interest in San Diego but characterized the discussions as “very preliminary.”

MLS currently has 20 teams with plans to expand to 24 by 2020 — Atlanta in 2017 and a second Los Angeles club in 2018, following by Minnesota and Miami. Earlier this month, the league’s owners announced support for a further expansion to 28.

“There is no shortage of demand for MLS expansion teams,” Garber said, “and we believe the opportunity exists to grow beyond our current plans.”


This isn’t the first time San Diego or Moores have been linked to MLS. Moores was in regular contact with the league from its inception in 1996 and helped bring the 1999 MLS All-Star Game to Qualcomm Stadium as a test run (which didn’t go well). When Petco Park was built, Moores quietly obtained, according to city documents, “the sole option to lease from the city Qualcomm Stadium for professional soccer” in exchange for waiving revenue from the stadium’s naming rights deal.

In 2004, Chivas USA flirted with locating its MLS expansion franchise at the Q, holding formal meetings with stadium and city officials, before fatefully deciding to share the Home Depot Center with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Another group approached the San Ysidro School District about building a 30,000-seat stadium on its land for purposes of housing an MLS team; it never materialized.

Through it all, Moores and business partner Charlie Noell’s interest in soccer has never waned despite questions about whether it is a prudent investment. Peace said they even investigated owning a Mexican pro team and basing it in Southern California, ultimately determining the legal and bureaucratic hurdles were too high. Moores and Noell also came close to buying a different Premier League team last year, Swansea City of Wales, before the deal fell through and they turned their attention to Everton.

Peace noted the possibility of both expansion and relocation for a San Diego team, although the latter seems less plausible given MLS owners’ appetite for a steady diet of expansion fees to balance their books. Instead of selling Chivas USA to a new ownership group in Los Angeles, the league folded the club and auctioned the expansion rights for a reported $110 million.


Assuming expansion is the most viable path, that probably means three things:

▪ An owner willing to pay an expansion fee in the neighborhood of $100 million.

▪ An owner with financing in place for a mid-sized stadium, something municipalities subsidized with taxpayer dollars early in MLS’s history but have increasingly refused.

▪ Patience. The current round of expansion extends through 2020. A 25th team likely wouldn’t start before 2021.


Moores satisfies the first criteria, having the financial reserves and ownership experience in pro sports that MLS covets. And his longtime interest in MLS has fostered a strong relationship with the league’s principles.

“The venue issue, then, becomes the challenge,” Peace said.

There are three options apparently being considered by the two investment groups: downtown, Chula Vista and Mission Valley. All have their merits, and issues.

Downtown likely would be part of a convention center expansion, and we all know how contentious and drawn out that could become. The old SDG&E plant along the bay in Chula Vista would be an ideal site for a stadium, but it’s also 10 miles from Estadio Caliente and the Tijuana Xolos of the Mexico’s top division that are so popular in South Bay.


Then there’s the city-owned Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley. Peace said they’ve had architects analyze it both as a reconstruction and renovation project, tearing it down and starting over or “dropping a seating bowl inside the current structure” while converting the external frame into office space. The estimated cost: $300-400 million.

A new or downsized Mission Valley stadium, however, would be dependent on a larger, more complex redevelopment project. Moores has backed the proposal authored by attorney Cory Briggs — he contributed $45,000 to help gather signatures for a ballot measure —that would transform the 166-acre site into parkland and a university annex for both SDSU and UCSD connected by the San Diego Trolley.

It would align several Moores’ interests. He could fulfill what Peace calls his “seminal legacy” of supporting higher education. He could serve as the primary developer, tapping into state funds for university expansion and using his JMI Realty and JMI Sports subsidiaries. The man who was once the biggest donor to SDSU’s athletic department could provide a more appropriately-sized home for its football team.

And he could complete his 20-year quest to own an MLS team.


“When you invest in soccer,” Peace said, “you’re investing in a future growth market.”