Relentless: How West Sider Jeff Berding brought Major League Soccer to Cincinnati

Jeff Berding flew to New York City the night of Dec. 5, ready for one of the biggest moments of his life.

The next day, the general manager of Futbol Club Cincinnati joined team owners Carl H. Lindner III and Scott Farmer and Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley to pitch Cincinnati as home to a Major League Soccer expansion team.

He spent the day rehearsing his presentation, which focused on the success of the futbol club they fielded over the previous two years, the city’s rabid fan base and a hard-fought stadium financing plan.

At 3 p.m. Berding walked briskly into Major League Soccer's headquarters in Midtown, wearing what has become his signature look: a blue suit with an orange FC Cincinnati scarf.

Everything was on the line, but Berding was calm. He’d gone over his presentation time and time again in his head. He was as prepared as he could be.

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He sat, waiting, for 90 minutes before the door popped open and Charles Altchek, the vice president of Major League Soccer, stuck his head into the room.

“Jeff, are you ready?”

Berding stood. “I am,” he said.

Major League Soccer last week awarded Cincinnati an expansion franchise, an announcement that drew thousands of fans decked out in orange and blue and international attention for Cincinnati. The 21,000-seat, $200 million stadium will be built in the West End, on the current site of a high school stadium that will be rebuilt nearby. The team is expected to begin playing there in 2021.

"Jeff Berding has energy and vision and talent," said Councilman David Mann, who has known him since Berding's first job out of college. "There isn't anyone else who could have navigated this journey."

But it was a long journey from that December day in New York to here – a journey that didn't always seem certain to succeed.

Opponents back home were mounting their defense even as Berding made his pitch.

A lame-duck City Council had approved money for a stadium in Oakley, but it soon became clear the FC Cincinnati group was also looking at other, more urban sites.

The quest to finalize a site from among three options – Oakley, Newport and the West End – set off a months-long battle that involved council, the Cincinnati Public school board and members of three communities. News of an imminent announcement was pushed back again and again. And again.

Berding took a credibility hit. Opponents asked: Why wasn't the stadium location settled before the election, instead of at the last minute? Was the run at Oakley just a cover while Berding secured what he needed for the far more complicated West End site? Was the community being shortchanged in favor of billionaire team owners?

And, was he being honest?

Michelle Dillingham, a community activist, has been one of Berding's biggest critics. An opponent of the West End site, she is now mounting a campaign to let voters decide if city money should flow to the stadium.

Early on, Berding said he wouldn't build the stadium in a community that didn't want it. Yet, she says, that's exactly what has happened. The West End Community Council said no. The stadium is still being built there.

"A trail of misinformation and outright lies, that is what I see when I look at Jeff Berding," Dillingham said.

But Berding was doing what Berding does best, championing a big vision and navigating the politics to make it happen. He did it once before as the frontman for the sales tax campaign to build the Reds and Bengals stadiums – projects that have left a sour taste for many who still consider them a bad deal for taxpayers and blame Berding for promoting them.

"They were widely regarded as the worst deal in the country," said Tim Mara, a Cincinnati lawyer who fought against the sales tax. "And we discovered after they were built it was even worse than it seemed at the time."

To be clear, Berding didn't actually draw up the deals for those stadiums and Mara doesn't blame any one person "for that fiasco." But the MLS stadium is no better, in his opinion.

Berding, 51, isn't afraid of controversy – not when it comes to asking for a sales tax, not when seeking concessions from powerful unions and not when merging select youth soccer clubs.

And not now, when it comes to making Cincinnati a Major League Soccer city.

He took on the challenge of landing an MLS team the way he's taken on most challenges in his life. He worked hard. He prepared. And he was relentless in trying to convince everyone around him to make his vision a reality.

He's smart, he works hard, and he is a master politician who can see the political landscape three steps ahead. Berding made a rare misstep when he gave the school board a day to strike a deal for the stadium land and then said the West End location was off the table.

The schools stood firm and ultimately got what they wanted – and Berding got his site, too.

Some of the most powerful people in Cincinnati have sought Berding out and trusted him to execute their vision. Along the way, he became one of the most powerful men in Cincinnati in his own right.

"Jeff is wise beyond his years," said John Williams, a former Cincinnati chamber president who has served as a mentor to Berding and was one of the first to tap his talent. "Is he perfect? No. Is he too cocky at times? Sure. But, he’s doing it for the community, his family and future generations."

Sports focus of Berding’s West Side childhood

Growing up in Cincinnati’s Westwood neighborhood in a blended family with 10 kids, Berding's family didn’t have much money, but they did have sports. They followed the Big Red Machine and watched the Bengals compete in two Super Bowls.

In school, Berding worked hard to be first, although sometimes he was second to a student whose name he still remembers.

"Jeff hated getting one point less than her," said Kevin Casey, who went to grade school with Berding and is one of many childhood friends still in his life. "He would stay up all night long to make sure that didn’t happen. He wanted to be first; for him it was nothing but first."

Coaches and teachers put Berding on the path to St. Xavier High School, considered one of the best private high schools in the state. Berding scored a 99 percent on the entrance exam. His dad said they'd find the money.

Berding played sports all year round. Soccer. Baseball. Basketball. He practiced hard, and he played hard. He didn’t shy away from contact in basketball and, when playing third base, he always applied the hard tag. In soccer, he was the goalkeeper with the motto “the ball or the player,” which meant he once came home with his teeth in his hand.

He may have been hard-charging on the field, but he wasn’t a stereotypical jock. After the movie "Meatballs" came out, his friends started calling him Spaz because of his bad haircut, ill-fitting clothes and chronically broken glasses.

After St. X, Berding went to Miami University and then worked for a trio of politicians, including U.S. Sen. John Glenn. While working in Cleveland for USA NAFTA, a business group that championed the free trade agreement, he met U.S. Rep. David Mann, joining Mann's re-election campaign in 1994.

“He was full of energy, full of enthusiasm, full of information,” said Mann, now a Cincinnati councilman. “He could always articulate what needed to be said.”

Berding, now married, returned to Cincinnati, taking a job with Student Loan Funding Corporation and pursuing an MBA.

In the fall of 1995, Williams called Berding with a proposal. Would he be interested in running a sales tax campaign to build two professional sports stadiums?

The city needed the stadiums, the chamber believed, to keep the teams in Cincinnati.

Berding said yes.

He threw himself into the job. He was aggressive and he prepared for every argument that arose on the campaign trail. Not everyone liked his style, and not everyone embraced the idea of taxpayers spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new stadiums for wealthy owners, but Berding kept pushing.

The sales tax passed with 62 percent of the vote.

The cost of the stadiums would become a political liability for its supporters, and it remains today a strain on Hamilton County's finances.

Berding, though, still believes the stadiums are good for the city and county.

“This community would be lesser without major league sports teams,” he said. “It gives us visibility, higher cultural relevance.”

The campaign also elevated Berding from a political player to a political force. After the election, Bengals Vice President Katie Blackburn offered him a job in sales.

Another yes from Berding.

“As a kid who grew up on the West Side, the thought of working for the Reds or Bengals was beyond my wildest dreams,” Berding said.

Bob Bedinghaus, a commissioner when the stadium deals were signed and the Bengals' director of business development, said Berding "was key" in the team's move to a new and different kind of stadium, one where there would now be premium seats and suites to sell.

“Jeff is a convincing guy,” Bedinghaus said. “He understands what you’re selling when you’re selling professional sports. It’s about emotion and community pride just as much as touchdowns or goals.”

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Politics never left his system, though, propelling him to run for Cincinnati City Council in 2005.

On council, Berding voted for the streetcar -- when it was supposed to go up the hill to Clifton -- starting out as an ally to then-Mayor Mark Mallory, the project’s champion. Unions, which are influential in the local Democratic Party, were against the streetcar project and pulled their support from Berding. He nonetheless won re-election twice.

His lasting legacy on council came after his 2007 re-election. The riverfront had two stadiums, but the six blocks between them remained a mud pit. Committed to the vision he sold to voters during the stadium tax campaign, Berding brought together city and county leaders, despite differences between the two governments.

Together they developed and executed the vision of a destination where people could live, work and play.

"The Banks wouldn't have gotten done without him," Mallory said. "All those negotiations, all those meetings, all the back and forth with the developer and the county and the team owners, that was Jeff."

Berding resigned from council in 2011, before his term was up, to focus on his day job at the Bengals as the recession began affecting ticket sales.

Lessons from youth soccer

While Berding's political and professional efforts were taking off, he was also raising three kids, including a son on a traveling youth soccer league.

Berding's friend Diego Vallota, whose son played for another team, Classic Hammer, recruited Berding's son and asked Berding join the team's board.

Berding quickly assessed there were too many teams. It was diluting the pool of kids.

He reached out to Kings Soccer Academy Club, Northern Kentucky's largest club. They merged to create Kings Hammer Academy for the top players and then the following year they created Kings Hammer.

Of course, some parents were upset, but merging the two clubs meant the quality of youth soccer in the region improved.

"He took Classic Hammer, which was a good, smaller club and combined it with Kings to make a powerful and nationally known organization," Vallota said. "It wasn't easy. But he sees an opportunity and has a vision."

They were traveling all over the country, giving Berding an up-close look at multimillion-dollar soccer facilities for teenagers and families passionate about the sport.

And he was seeing NFL data come into his inbox at work, showing soccer was quickly growing in popularity. He started to study the business of soccer.

“Soccer was becoming a big deal,” he said. “I thought, if we’re a major league sports town, we need soccer here. I knew I was uniquely positioned to champion this.”

He had a vision for those select clubs. And he had a vision for FC Cincinnati.

He took the idea to the Bengals. They said no.

He took it to the Reds. They said no, too.

It was Carl Lindner III who called Berding, then still a Bengals executive.

“I hear you’re the guy trying to bring professional soccer here,” Berding remembers Lindner saying.

This was early 2015. That same day, the two had lunch in Lindner’s Great American Tower office, where the view spanned the entirety of The Banks. Together, they planted the seeds for FC Cincinnati.

“I wasn’t trying to leave the Bengals,” Berding said. “I thought it was important for the future of the city because soccer has global currency.”

He thought big from the beginning.

Valotta remembers that once, on a drive to Appleton, Wisconsin, for a regional youth soccer championship with their children, Berding took a call from Lindner, In the call, Berding predicted he could draw 8,000 to 10,000 fans to FC Cincinnati games in the first year. Valotta told his friend that seemed inflated; after all, Louisville was drawing roughly 6,000 fans per game.

Valotta said Berding countered: "If they're getting that, I'll get 8,000 to 10,000."

Berding was right.

In June 2015, Lindner told Berding he was all-in as a majority owner.

Berding left the Bengals on Aug. 3, and nine days later he and Lindner launched the club. Initially, Berding worked out of coffee shops and his kitchen. Then he set up offices Downtown on Fourth Street, where he'd be until the wee hours.

In 2016, he fielded a team that exceeded everyone's expectations by winning 16 games and hosting a home playoff game. In 2017, his club took American soccer by storm as FC Cincinnati defeated two MLS teams in advancing to the U.S. Open Cup semifinals.

This, everyone said, was a team to be reckoned with.

Mel Rodriguez, another childhood friend, was with Berding the day FC Cincinnati played Crystal Palace, a team in the English Premier League, widely considered the top soccer league in the world.

"As the Star Spangled Banner played, I said, 'Jeff, you did that. Look around us, look at the parking lots, look at the filled-to-the-brim restaurants. You should be proud, you didn’t just build FC, you built a community around it.'"

Berding was quiet. He looked around. He got choked up.

The city embraced the futbol club from Day One, in huge numbers. Attendance has often topped that of MLS games. They're winners, sometimes even beating MLS teams.

The numbers are staggering. The first home game drew 14,658 fans. When the club played hip English Premier League Crystal Palace, 35,061 fans turned out.

The average attendance per game for the first year was 17,296. Last year it was almost 22,000 per game.

But it was still a United Soccer League club – the minor league of soccer. Berding and the owners group wanted more. They never publicly mentioned MLS by name but would talk about bringing soccer to Cincinnati at its highest level.

"Jeff’s background perfectly prepared him for this role," Lindner said. "His love for our hometown and the work he has done to continually improve our community match my family’s mission to make a better Queen City. Building the hottest soccer franchise in North America while being considered for MLS expansion in just our second year proved that Jeff has been the right person to lead FC Cincinnati."

The May 29 announcement at Rhinegeist and Fountain Square wasn't about the fights, the objections. It was a celebration.

At a 9 a.m. staff meeting the next day, Berding thanked everyone. Then, he told them it was time to get back to work.

"We can't lose a single day," he said. "There are no victory laps."