Setting Sail on a New Era

Chris Campbell and other members of the media sat down with Brad Sims to discuss Etihad Park's opening, hosting the All-Star Game, the Gotham FC partnership, and NYCFC's flagship ambitions.

Editor’s note: This interview was edited for clarity.

Today's kind of a big day, in that we'll probably find out who the new MLS commissioner is. What do you think about the next phase of MLS? And what are the biggest things that the new person in charge, and the league in general, need to get right?

Brad Sims: I think potentially a big day here. I think first I would say that it’s big shoes to fill for whoever comes in, because I don’t think, in some respects, that Commissioner [Don] Garber gets all the credit that he deserves. I think when you go 10, 20 years in the future and you look back, I think he’s gonna go down as one of the best commissioners of any sport. He took a league from literally the ground up and found a way through multiple times early on. MLS 1.0, the league, who knows if it was gonna make it or not. To where it is today, with 30 teams, strong teams, 27 or 28 soccer-specific stadiums, teams valued at very, very high numbers. A handful of teams valued over a billion dollars, New York City FC being one of those. It’s amazing.

I think that across the board, the league out-punches its weight in so many areas: the sponsorship revenue, licensing, attendance and ticket sales, and sponsorships and things like that. It’s a very strong business, and I think everything’s in a really strong place. I think someone new coming in, it’s not like, hey, this is a fixer-upper, or we gotta tear this thing down to the studs and start over. I think they need to build upon strengths and try to identify areas that we can get even stronger. There are some for sure, there’s no doubt. I think that there’s a level of competition.

I think that all the owners have always been united in the fact that they want the level of play to continue growing. I don’t think anyone would dispute that the level of play in this league in 2026 is far better than it was in 2021, and that 2021 was better to far better than it was in 2016, and 2016 was better than it was in 2011. I think that there’s some level of, how do we make sure that that continues to happen?

I think some of the great groundwork in terms of where the league is going has already been laid ahead of time, with a new commissioner coming in, in terms of new competition formats and new calendar. I think the new commissioner’s gonna be stepping into kind of a playbook that has been mostly written for where the league is going forward. So it’s a matter of how do they challenge the owners in ways that maybe they haven’t been challenged before, thinking maybe differently. I think there’d probably be some debate on parity in the league. Parity, it was kind of like a founding ethos of MLS, essentially. Is that gonna continue to rule the day going forward, or is there some potential balance, after seeing, quite frankly, what Miami has done? Is there ways to encourage more of that in this league? And would that have more positive ramifications or negative ramifications? I think that’s what the owners will have to figure out: how to get positive ramifications. Could be, like, broadcasts: does the league become a more compelling broadcast? Now you have this value proposition. Or do we want to make sure that parity is also paramount, where every year, fans in at least 30 markets can feel like going into the year, their team has a good chance? Or if your previous year you were dead last, you could go worst to first, and we’ve seen a lot of times in this league, teams go worst to first, and teams go first to worst. I think that, in a lot of ways, has been good for the league. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

I don’t have any insights on the two candidates, like what their platforms are, so to speak. I think they both would know that they were moving in on a position of strength, and especially on the heels of the U.S. World Cup and all the excitement about this for this country. I think it’s just a matter of how do we maximize growth.

You've said a couple times that you believe the vision for New York City FC is, at the end, to be a flagship club. What does that mean to you?

BS: When you’re anywhere in the country, or anywhere around the world, and you’re thinking of soccer in the United States, or you’re thinking of MLS, we would be the first club that pops into your mind. That’s how you become undisputed: you’re the one that pops into your mind.

And again, this is meant to be aspirational, and something that doesn’t just happen overnight. Right now, the likely answer to that question, over the last 2 or 3 years, you’d probably say Miami. You see pink Messi jerseys on every continent. After Messi retires, we’ll see where they go. It seems like they’re adamant about trying to stay on that path. It’s easier said than done. We don’t have the greatest player of all time.

But part of it is you have to have the best infrastructure. To me, there’s a stadium story, and until we have what we think is going to be the best soccer stadium in the country, that’s going to check one of the boxes to being considered a flagship. I think being seen as a top operator and a top fan experience is one for us once you have the building. Also, I think the content that we’re providing: having top-flight women’s football, having U.S. men’s and women’s national team games, having things like the LA 28 Olympics, hopefully the Women’s World Cup in 2031, CONCACAF Gold Cups, things of that nature where we’re associated with that as a club. I think we’re getting events on the regular that no one else is getting, or the number of events and the caliber of events is unrivaled among teams around the league.

And you have to be a winning team, you have to be a consistently winning team, you have to win trophies. And probably have to have a marquee signature player, probably. I think those are most of the components that would be in that conversation.

Can you talk about how you would leverage CFG's connections to other clubs and its scouting network in trying to find this flagship player?

BS: It’s no different than saying, why haven’t we brought in former Man City players, or things like that? I mean, it’s similar. Man City and City Football Group, I think, are more connected than any group in the world. We’re the biggest global soccer organization. I think once we have the stadium, that’s one piece. We have the market in New York City. There’s a small handful of markets where any player around the world would say, if you could go to the US, where would you want to go? I think if we all took out a piece of paper and wrote three cities down, we might all write the same three cities, maybe with a small variation. I think we have that going for us. We have our global network going for us. We’re gonna have what we believe is gonna be the building going for us. So I think it’s not a matter of whether players are going to be interested in coming here.

I think first and foremost, you need players that want to come to MLS. If you have to try to convince somebody, I think that’s the very first indicator of whether there’s potential for something to work out: whether the player really wants to be here. Something I learned when I got here that I hadn’t heard throughout my sports career in other sports is the term “project.” You hear Pascal, you hear coaches talking about it all the time, players talking about it, executives talking about it: “I want to be part of this project.” I was like, what are they talking about, project? But then I actually bought into it. I was like, I get it. I came here for a project. I came here, this is New York, we could build New York City’s first-ever soccer-specific stadium. We have a sleeping giant in a league, in a sport that’s on a massive trajectory, that woke up all these things, checked all the boxes. So for me, this was a project: come here, build the best stadium in the country, build a brand, build the world’s game in the world’s city. That’s a project. So we want players, we want coaches, we want executives, we want everyone to buy into the project.

And so if there’s a free agent, or a big-name free agent, available right now who says, “I’d be happy to come to MLS if you pay me like $60 million a year,” no matter how good someone is, that’s not how you want to start a conversation, from our standpoint. They’re in it for the wrong reasons. For us, we’ve gotta find players that want to be here, want to buy into MLS, want to buy into being in America. And if they’re into that, then our project is as compelling as, or more compelling than, any other project in American soccer. If that’s just not in their head, or they’re not there yet, then it’s a no-go. There’ll be plenty of great players who aren’t going to be in that headspace.

The calendar is changing next year. Curious if there have been plans finalized, or if it's still being discussed, on changes to the All-Star Game and Leagues Cup. What can we expect from there going forward?

BS: My understanding is the All-Star Game will continue to happen, it just won't be in July. It'll probably be sometime more mid-season. My understanding is there's going to be an announcement sometime in mid-September with more clarification on calendar, competition, things of that nature, that they're getting close to figuring out or finalizing. And I think probably both of those things will happen there. But my understanding is that Leagues Cup is going to continue, with a similar or exact same format as it's had last year and this year. I don't know exactly what time, whether it'll still be August or not. I think it could be. It could still be the same time. And All-Star will definitely happen, not in July, probably later. My guess is it'll be on this side of the calendar, before the winter break, versus after the winter break. I think after the winter break, the schedule's gonna be jammed, scrambling right into the playoffs.

Would there be hope to host the All-Star Game at Etihad Park with the calendar change?

BS: Oh yeah, we would definitely want to host. I would be surprised if we’re not a host in the first one to three years of the stadium opening.

Some of the founding members are a little concerned about the new park, regarding the possibility of getting tours, any kind of free gifts. They're also concerned when it comes to certain things, like being priced out. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you have a game plan?

BS: We've been on record many times saying we're gonna have affordable tickets, tickets that are gonna work for every kind of budget.

Do you have any numbers on that?

BS: No, we don’t. We’ve been very methodical about how we’ve done releases of different pieces of inventory, starting with the most expensive and working our way down. We get a lot of learnings out of that, and it also gives us the ability to understand what supply and demand is gonna be. We continue to take new season ticket deposits, which, by the way, have ramped up significantly during and post-World Cup. We were getting new season ticket deposits at the rate we were when we actually launched the stadium, when we announced the stadium. They were up here, and they kind of plateaued and started to dip, and then the World Cup happened. And we’ve gone massively back up since.

We look at all those factors. Maybe two or three weeks ago, we started our fifth phase, which we’re calling Prime Reserve, the best of the best lower-bowl seats. We’re anticipating that the next phase will be sometime this fall, in the September-October timeframe, which would probably be the vast majority of general seating.

Do you think any of them, the fans, are going to get a chance to get a tour early?

BS: The problem right now is, while there’s construction going on, we have limited windows where we can do tours, and we can only really do ten to fifteen people at a time. There’s a lot of logistical challenges with that. You have to have PPE, personal protective equipment. Everyone has to have that. It’s easier for us to do small, very small groups and tours, but there’s not a lot to see that we haven’t already shown online. Once we get into the turn of the year, and into the three or four months leading up to the home opener, it’ll be much easier. We’ll be able to tell people they won’t need PPE, and we’ll be able to flow people through much more easily.

We did release a teaser for Etihad Park Plus, which we’ll add more information on before Phase 6 seating happens. A lot of the feedback we’ve gotten, and also charting usage, right now in the 2026 season, we’re at about 13,000 full season-ticket holders. There’s a range in how people use certain benefits, other benefits, and no benefits. There are people who highly value gifts, and there are people who don’t even ever pick up their gift or ask for it. We have people who highly value live events and meet-the-team kind of things, and behind-the-scenes access, going to practices, while other people never go to any events. We’ve had different benefit levels for premium seat holders and general seat holders. And general seat holders say, “Why do they get better benefits? They get better seats, they’re paying for better seats, but why do they get better benefits? I’m a more hardcore fan, and I should get better benefits.” I thought that was interesting. I’ve heard that a few times.

So the idea behind Etihad Park Plus is two things. One is almost like a create-your-own-adventure type of thing, in terms of what are the things that are most valuable to me. And if I want them, I’ll choose this membership package and pay for it, because I see the value in that. For those who don’t see the value in certain things, or see less value in certain things, don’t pay for it. So this is another way, going back to your affordability question, that we look at being able to offer more affordable season ticket prices: essentially not having a huge cost of sale on season tickets. We do all the data on this. We have season tickets, in our current world, where we actually lose money on the season ticket. Based on what they pay for the year, they get this gift, they get this gift, they go to these three events that we pay for food and beverage and rental on, and essentially it’s a negative, we lose money on the deal. And we’re not in a situation where we can do that in the new world. In order to have season tickets at an affordable rate, we’re essentially going to have a very base level of benefits attached to every season ticket holder. And if you want more benefits, you can look at the Etihad Park Plus options, and there are gonna be some really cool benefits where the value exceeds the price. And people can just say, “I really value this, and I want this, so I’m gonna go in this direction,” or “I don’t, and my season ticket is at a reasonable price.” So I think we’re trying to accomplish two things at once with that program, which we’re really excited about.

So you recently confirmed that Gotham is moving to Etihad Park. I'm curious to talk more about the process of getting them as a tenant there, and what you see as the potential for that collaboration to grow over time, beyond them just being a tenant. Do you see more opportunities to open in other areas?

BS: Yeah, it’s super exciting. I think there’s a ton of possibilities in working with them. You guys have heard me for years say we endeavor to have women’s football at the stadium, and there are numerous ways that could happen. It’s not as easy as us just saying, “hey, we want into NWSL, we’re gonna take a team, cool.” It wasn’t that easy. They had a team in the most important market in the country that had a suboptimal situation. So there was real willingness, interest on all sides, in the beginning. Interest on our side, interest on Gotham’s side, interest on the NWSL side. Everyone was like, boom, this makes so much sense, we gotta make this happen. It was a complicated deal to get all these things done, so it took a while. But I think everyone was super excited about it.

For us, it’s a less traditional structure. It’s not just a straight landlord-tenant relationship where the tenant pays rent, kind of like what we have now, or what maybe they have now. I think we wanted this, from the beginning, to be a tighter relationship. The way Etihad Park and New York City FC benefit is more by them being successful. The more successful they are, the more financially beneficial it is to NYCFC. So we have skin in the game; we want them to sell as many tickets as possible, and sell premium seating and sponsorship. Our team will be out there helping them sell on their behalf as well. Ideally, we’d love all of our corporate partners to also support Gotham, all of our suite holders to also buy their suites for Gotham, we want all of our club seat holders to also buy their seats for Gotham. It’s part of Etihad Park Plus members’ preferred rights to get in earlier and be able to buy preferred seats, and we’re still working with them on all these kinds of things.

I think what was also important to them is: how do we have our brand more reflected? We have so much digital signage throughout the building, whether it’s The Cube on the outside, or other video boards and video everywhere around the stadium, that it’s easier for their brand to transcend and not just be, you guys know, you go to Harrison, and there’s a lot of red. Even when we play there, we try to get as much blue out there, but there’s still a lot of red. When they play there, there’s still a lot of red. Here, it’s set up so we can Gothamize the building pretty easily. Something that was important to them was the locker room. So we’re building out what will be the visitor locker room. We gave them the option of either dressing up the home locker room, but it’s temporary, or being in the visitor locker room and making it permanent for them. And they said, “Hey, we want to make it permanent.” So MLS visiting teams will essentially be in the Gotham locker room.

And that’s just a few examples, but how do we collaborate on so many different things together? We think there’s a lot of opportunity, to mention youth programs, academies, we have girls’ academies now, so there’s things like that. How do we maybe also collaborate with them from a Man City Women’s standpoint, which is one of the premier women’s teams in the world? So we talked about whether there are some learnings there, whether there are things we can potentially integrate with them on. I think there’s a ton of opportunity. But for us, first and foremost, our success and their success are linked, in terms of the upside for NYCFC, versus just having a big guarantee where it doesn’t matter how many tickets they sell, or whether they’re successful or not. How do we build everything for them, help them grow their brand, grow their revenues? And if all those things work out well, it’s gonna work out well for New York City financially too.

I saw you guys recently announced, with Mayor [Zohran Mamdani], a program for summer employment for youth, technology, and soccer, and that's the first collaboration with this current mayor. Obviously, with [former Mayor Eric Adams], there was a lot of involvement with the stadium. Can you talk a little more about that partnership, and also if there are any more plans, with this new era of NYCFC, the stadium, and the partnership with Gotham, if any more conversations are happening?

Brad Sims: I want to say, first, during the World Cup, with the pitches, the Mayor’s Office came to us and liked the idea of having 24-hour, non-stop pitches. We worked with NYC Footy and the Mayor’s Office to pull off that program. We’ve been working on a few things with them, and then the Gotham piece, which they had a real interest in as well, from both a city standpoint and a state standpoint. That’s why Governor [Kathy] Hochul was also at that event, because it’s important, it’s a franchise essentially relocating from New Jersey to New York, and I think that’s also important.

Obviously the mayor’s a massive soccer fan, so I think there’s a lot of potential. He’s been very interested in what we’re doing, and what we’re going to be doing in the stadium, from a community standpoint, like City in the Community type initiatives. He’s been super interested in helping us out with all those things. So yeah, I think we’re looking forward to having a great relationship with the mayor. We have a group that’s focused on how we tighten those threads with the city as well.

I'm curious about how the club is operating with some of the league-wide roster rule changes, commissioner votes, et cetera. I know you mentioned earlier that it sounded like you weren't completely certain of the platform of each commissioner candidate. And there are also the roster rules. So when these presentations are being given to MLS owners, who's representing the club? And how is the club tied into that, in terms of "yes, we support these changes"? It sounds like maybe some of these are different groups of people than others, maybe commissioner and roster rules are handled separately.

BS: Anything that comes from a league governance standpoint, every club has a governor and an alternate governor. Those are your two seats that essentially sit on the Board of Governors. Our governor is Ferran Soriano, and our alternate governor is Marcelo Claure. And we have an unofficial alternate-alternate governor, Marty Edelman, who has previously been a governor and has been associated with us for many years.

So, for example, today in New York, at the commissioner announcement, both Ferran and Marcelo are out of the country and unable to be here. Marty is there today, in person, one of his rare days in New York, even though he’s New York-based. So he’s there. But at Board of Governors meetings, whether that’s at All-Star, those happen three times a year. Typically either Ferran or Marcelo, or both, are there, and me. But when it comes to voting, anything that comes to a vote at any point is governors only. So for commissioner, which is happening today, for roster rules, or things like the change in competition format or the change in the calendar, every club has a vote, and it’s whoever’s there, the governor or alternate governor, and they vote on it. So roster rules would be the same, but to my knowledge, that’s not at a point to vote on yet.

So for the roster rules, mainly from a role perspective, how are you, Todd, et cetera, getting involved and making sure you're communicating to whoever's in that seat for that particular vote, so they're aware of where the club wants to go?

BS: It’s essentially the league on all these things, whether it’s competition format, the calendar, the change of calendar, playoff format, roster investment rules, all those kinds of things. The league will do multiple, essentially, focus groups, for lack of a better term. Small groups with teams, chief business officers, chief soccer officers, sometimes with owners altogether. Over the course of the last two or three years, we’ve had dozens of conversations and presentations, and every time there are league meetings, there are updates. There’s a chance for input, things of that nature.

There are also committees. There are always committees, owner-committee levels, and some are more involved in certain aspects of things like this than others. So roster investment would fall under one specific committee, maybe about 12 owners, so they’re spending a ton of time on this. And then the league, and/or any other outside consultants or anyone else involved in the process, would come and meet and share the feedback from the chief business officers, chief soccer officers, et cetera, with the committee. They debate it, and then things come back, and they’ll come back with more feedback, kind of a continual feedback loop, until they get to the point where they have something they want to put on the table for owner support.

It’s been two or three years of continual conversations, three times a year, where everyone gets together. It’s been a lot of due diligence within each of these things.

And things like the calendar change obviously weren’t made lightly. There are cold-weather markets, and getting feedback on how we schedule. There are eight winter markets labeled most weather-impacted. There’s another eight that are second-most weather-impacted, which we’re in that second group. With all this feedback, the top eight most impacted won’t have a home game in the three weeks going into the winter break, or the three weeks coming out of the winter break. The next group, which we’re in, would have no more than one home game in the three weeks going in, and then three weeks coming out. These are all things that, ultimately, because of continual feedback and trying to solve different challenges, you come out with solutions like that. But I’m just using that as one example of the process. It’s not just twelve people sitting in a room, figuring it out, and saying, “this is what’s happening.” It’s this continual feedback, poking holes in things, and how do we try to solve for everyone’s challenges. That’s just one small example of how long it took to get to a point where, all right, now we’ve got this, we can put it to a vote.

They want to get unanimous votes. That’s why things take time, and anyone can debate the merits of that, but a lot of these things take a lot of time because they don’t want to pass something 16-14, or 20-10. It’s like a super-majority. They want to get to the point where it’s unanimous, like on the calendar thing. You know there’s more than eight teams that have bad weather and could be worrisome. And they got to the point where that vote was 29 yeses and one abstention, or something like that. But it takes a while. You’ve gotta poke all these holes. I think they have a really good process, it just sometimes takes some time.

How are you gonna navigate the parking situation with those events? I’m assuming New York City FC games will be at a different time than the Mets’, or later in the day than the Mets, but what about Gotham?

BS: All the parking is the Mets’ parking. So the way it’s set up now is that we have up to 45 major event dates there, which would include New York City FC, Gotham, and other major events that the Mets have agreed to provide parking for. That could be on non-Mets days, or it could be on the same day as the Mets, as long as there’s a buffer period.

So that’s the current structure. We hope, we endeavor, to host more than 45 major events, so we have to work with the Mets on what that means, their availability to make that work. And then, on these smaller events, they’re more, they could be 10 people, 25 people, up to maybe 500 people. So there’s commuter parking right now. There are opportunities for smaller-event parking. There’s a lot of work being done on the parking side because of Metropolitan Park and everything the Mets are doing there.

They’re in the process of building the first of what will be at least two, and maybe three, major parking garages in the northeast corner of the Citi Field lot. I think it’s Lot A that’s under construction now. So essentially, their plan is they’re gonna build parking structures that’ll replace surface lot spots. Once that’s ready to go, they can start the second one, and eventually the casino will also have a parking garage attached to it. Things could also change over time if that ends up yielding more parking.

Also, at some point there will be fewer people driving and parking their own cars on site, as driverless cars become more common and more readily available. So maybe parking will become less of an issue over time, but initially, that’s the structure.

I just wanted to ask about MLS Next Pro, and the announcement that they’re going to do a third-party private equity partnership, where teams can opt in to have that entity take over their commercial operations. Do you think that’s something NYCFC II might go that route with?

BS: Yes.

And what do you think it’ll do for the business? You’ve spoken in the past about wanting NYCFC II to become its own team, and about commercial viability and all that. So will this change really help MLS Next Pro become a more sustainable business on its own?

BS: I think so. Yeah, I’ll give you a quick answer: yes, we’re gonna do it. Yes, I think we’ll be one of the first teams that does it. Maybe the first team that does it.

With a new location and all the rebranding and all that stuff?

BS: Yeah. We see a lot of benefits in it, because right now, you want your players to develop in a positive atmosphere, where you’ve got sold-out buildings. It’s kind of like a minor league baseball atmosphere. Minor league baseball stadiums around the country might have 3,500-seat capacity, or 5,000-seat capacity, or 10,000-seat capacity, and a lot of minor league baseball teams play at capacity almost every night. It’s a fun atmosphere, it’s great family-friendly, affordable entertainment. And you’re playing in front of a real crowd. Unfortunately, right now, the vast majority of MLS-owned MLS Next Pro teams are playing in front of friends and family, a couple hundred people if you’re lucky. And it’s mostly because you don’t have soccer-specific stadiums, whereas minor league baseball stadiums are baseball-specific stadiums. So you’re not running a business, you’re running, at most, an extension of the academy.

It’s strictly a player development function, not a commercial function. I think if MLS Next Pro can get, over the next five to ten years, 30-plus soccer-specific stadiums in the small B- and C-level markets, and they can support a team commercially, that’d be a great outcome. Because then you have players playing in front of 3,500 to 10,000 fans every single night, depending on the capacity of the market. It’s just a better player experience. I think there’s a hole in affordable family entertainment. There’s this boom of minor league baseball, and I started my career in minor league baseball, so I can speak to this, between 1990 and 2010, there were about 150 minor league baseball stadiums built in this country.

I think between 2030 and 2050, that should be the same story for soccer. You could have minor league soccer stadiums built in all these kinds of markets, and have men’s and women’s teams playing in them, 38 to 40 dates, and then use them for other events and things like that. I think it makes a ton of sense.

So I’m bullish on it. We want our players to be able to play in front of a good atmosphere. ❧

Image: Anton Otto Fischer, Chase of the Constitution