Lexington has tried and failed with pro sports before. Why is soccer different?
From 1996 to 2001, Thoroughblades Hockey took to the ice at Rupp, from 2003 to 2009, Horsemen Indoor Football sacked on indoor AstroTurf at Rupp, and since 2001 the Lexington Legends have attempted to hit home runs but keep striking out, losing fans and affiliations. We continue to attempt new sports while neglecting to see we have a full portfolio of sports in Lexington already.
Midsize cities have attempted to create community and economic drivers through sports for decades with flashy stadiums and large hopes. We are pretty far behind the bandwagon with soccer as Louisville and Cincinnati are filling the regional void. Should we give up our best piece of available land for a 10-year trend? Cincinnati is the perfect market for soccer and has drawn many folks from our own town to make the drive up there with their trial run at the University of Cincinnati’s field and a now new and lavish stadium. Louisville has tried too but as you see driving by on the interstate, there is no life there besides game days. Their difference is the land was under-utilized and borders a highway, not a respectable and historic neighborhood. Soccer teams are already realizing grim futures, Tim Sullivan of Louisville’s newspaper reported in 2020 “since 2015, at least 22 USL championship teams have either folded, rebranded, relocated, gone on hiatus, left the USL entirely or dropped to a lower level.” What makes our team different?
Lansing, Michigan attempted a USL League team and dissolved the team after one year after seeing attendance average less than 3,000 spectators per game in a where their projections sought 7,000 fans per game, according to the Lansing Journal. Even their owner Tom Dickson said, “We really thought it would do better,” upon their dissolution of the team. According to NCAA, published pre-pandemic University of Kentucky Soccer averaged 1,769 people per game. Lexington is not a soccer town asking for semi-pro-soccer; the semi-pro-soccer is trying to make Lexington a soccer town just like Thoroblades and Horsemen did with hockey and indoor football.
The Lexington Center & Rupp Arena board should be wary about risking the most valuable piece of land in the most development restrictive city regionally to build to an unproven sport and flashy organization with good marketing and deep pockets. Just because horse people propose it, doesn’t make it a wise land use policy for our downtown and for the rest of the city. We need more reasonably priced apartments downtown, not high end. We need stores and restaurants people want to go to every day, not just game days. We need something that will bring sustainable and diverse life to the downtown all hours a day, every day instead of chained off empty parking lots, like right now, or scary alleys of an usually empty stadium and a behemoth parking garage. We need something that fits into the character of our downtown.
In the hands of government-appointed members, the Lexington Convention Center board of directors needs to see their responsibility to represent everyone and use this once in a lifetime chance to design and build something that will last forever and age well. Our city deserves something that will draw everyone to downtown not just the limited stereotypical soccer fans, and high end apartment renters to the heart of downtown.
Lexington, we need to double down on supporting the student athletes in the stadiums that we already have at the University of Kentucky, Transylvania, Georgetown and Eastern Kentucky University and remember our best sport of Thoroughbred racing before we fall into a fad that will have the predictable script of a strong start out of the gate that turns to having to give away tickets, vuvuzelas and scarfs.
Peter Walsh is a sports fan and automotive guy who has lived in Lexington for almost 30 years.
This story was originally published January 28, 2022 at 9:34 AM.