San Francisco deserves a world-class pro soccer team. Instead, it’s getting another lower division league team that will struggle to succeed.
That’s my initial reaction to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s announcement last Friday that a professional soccer team, named Golden City FC, was coming to San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium in 2026 or 2027. “This announcement is more than just a new team—it represents a new era for San Francisco sports,” Lurie claimed.
The catch? It will play in the MLS Next Pro, the third division league on the US Soccer pyramid. It will be an independent team that plays mostly against teams consisting of young developmental players from first-division MLS clubs.
For GCFC to meet the mayor’s lofty characterization, they will need the support and buy-in of the whole San Francisco soccer community to overcome the City by the Bay’s checkered history of pro soccer.
In 2017, the San Francisco Deltas failed after one season despite winning their league championship. The previous pro team, the second-division California Victory, was poorly funded and fans ran many of the club’s functions to make it through the end of the 2007 season. Before them, the San Francisco Seals played pro soccer for a few years at Kezar in the late 1990s. Even further back, the San Francisco Golden Gate Gales played only one season of pro soccer at Candlestick Park in 1967 in the United Soccer Association.
GCFC promises to reverse the trend of short lived pro soccer teams in SF. To purportedly do so, they will play in the heart of the city at Kezar Stadium, the nearly century-old soccer pitch surrounded by a track. Moreover, they intend to invest over $10 million in improvements to the stadium. They are asking for an initial 15-year lease at Kezar Stadium to show their intent that this is not a flash-in-the-pan investment.
Bay Area financial executives Geoff Oltmans and Marc Rohrer are GCFC’s co-founders. According to the SFChronicle, which first reported the team’s launch, they appear to have significant financial backing and are looking for up to a dozen more local investors.
“We truly intend this to be a community team,” Oltmans told the Chronicle. “We are excited to engage with the broader San Francisco community and its even deeper soccer community.”
There is an opening for pro soccer in San Francisco. Still, GCFC must win over fans who already have an established relationship with other soccer teams in the Bay Area and the City. Many in the San Francisco soccer community were not contacted by the investment group beforehand and only learned about the team through Mayor Lurie’s announcement.
One bemused by the announcement was San Francisco City FC. The club’s supporters, who are also the team’s owners, are some of the city’s most dedicated soccer fans and have supported the team for over a decade. The team currently plays home games in Kezar Stadium in the pre-professional USL League 2.
“We want to make it clear – because there can be some obvious confusion – that this is in no way, shape, or form related to us,” SF City explained about their relationship to Golden City FC in a statement on social media.
Construction and GCFC’s tenancy at Kezar will likely force SF City to find a new home field, upsetting their supporters.
Another SF soccer organization, the San Francisco Glens, is part of the MLS Next youth academy. The Glens just built their own soccer-specific stadium on Treasure Island, and the jump to the third division MLS Next Pro seemed like the next logical step for the organization’s development system.
But the Glens appear to lack the financial backing to make their dreams a reality. Their website seeks donations to build a 5000-seat grandstand, lights, a clubhouse, and a scoreboard for the facility.
There is also the competition for fans of the Bay Area’s other professional teams.
Just down Highway 101, the San Jose Earthquakes play in the first division of MLS. Their poor form on the field over the past decade has degraded interest among soccer fans in San Francisco. But the Quakes are finally showing signs of life this season under the leadership of legendary coach Bruce Arena.
Another challenger is a short trip across the Bay Bridge. The Oakland Roots, who now call the Oakland Coliseum home, have appealed to local supporters with good branding and community work and built up a dedicated fan base over the past half decade thanks to their outreach with the whole East Bay soccer community before their announcement.
If GCFC joined the Roots in the second-division USL Championship, it would’ve created an inter-bay rivalry. Instead, the club asks its potential fans to be excited about facing off against mostly youth teams.
MLS Next Pro clubs have also fared poorly competing against MLS or the USL Championship. In this year’s US Open Cup, a tournament open to all professional and amateur soccer clubs in the United States, only 2 of the 10 MLS Next Pro teams won a game against other pro leagues. Even El Farolito, an amateur San Francisco soccer club, defeated the MLS Next Pro team, Real Monarchs, 3-1 in Salt Lake City in the tournament’s first round.
Will the level of soccer in MLS Next Pro excite the knowledgeable soccer fanatics in San Francisco, who mostly prefer to follow the top clubs worldwide, and fill the stands at Kezar Stadium?
True, Golden City FC has up to two years to reach out to the city’s soccer community and build excitement for the club. However, first impressions of a club in the San Francisco soccer community can be hard to overcome.
Example A of a team’s failure to connect with the whole SF soccer community is the San Francisco Deltas.
Despite having a whole year to build up their identity in San Francisco, the club eschewed a traditional marketing campaign, hoping to reach out to potential fans one at a time. They chose a name, Deltas, with no emotional connection to the city’s soccer community. Branded a ‘soccer startup,’ with owners having Silicon Valley roots, some felt the club represented the tech community and the gentrification many in San Francisco resent.
While the Deltas were a success on the pitch, winning the NASL Championship over the NY Cosmos, the club averaged just under 2,600 fans per game at Kezar Stadium and reportedly lost millions of dollars.
The club’s struggles forced the team’s CEO to challenge Delta’s supporters to help fix the team’s attendance issues. Ultimately, despite the efforts of the club’s fans, the plea was unsuccessful, and ownership decided to fold the team before the season ended.
Golden City FC co-founder Geoff attributed the Deltas’ failure to the failure of the second division of the North American Soccer League. “The Deltas proved that there is demand for professional soccer in San Francisco,” the Chronicle quoted Geoff. “Unfortunately the league was on unstable financial footing. The Deltas failed because the league failed.”
Although the NASL had significant issues in 2017 and folded soon after, the league’s successful clubs moved to other pro leagues, including the USL Championship. The Deltas’ self-inflicted wounds and failure to build a connection with many in the SF soccer community ultimately caused their failure.
The biggest issue for Golden City FC’s success will be the same issue all the other failed lower division pro soccer teams have faced in the city by the bay: building a world-class soccer organization worthy of a world-class city like San Francisco.
Maybe Golden City and its ownership are that ambitious. Perhaps they will one day move up to the first division of MLS, team up with NWSL’s Bay FC, and build a soccer-specific stadium in San Francisco. If that’s the case, hopefully, they will succeed. However, it will be difficult for any lower-division club in The City to succeed without buy-in and support from the whole San Francisco soccer community.