San Diego FC: Tory treasurers, tribal leaders and a $500m California dream

A soccer commissioner, an Egyptian billionaire and a Native American tribal leader walk into a bar. Hmm, let’s try that again. OK, they walked onto a stage in San Diego on Thursday to plant a flag in Major League Soccer’s latest frontier: the city beat Las Vegas to become the 30th team in American soccer’s top division beginning in 2025, after this ownership group paid a record expansion fee of $500m for the privilege.

The aforementioned Egyptian, Mohamed Mansour – a dual British citizen who is the senior treasurer for the UK’s Conservative party – and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a local casino-operating tribe, partnering to launch a California-based football team sounds like something only Thomas Pynchon could conceive of, as clever people on Twitter have noted. It’s not the movie star and athlete-leaden ownership group of the NWSL’s Angel City FC in Los Angeles. But Mansour, who owns a global youth football development academy called Right to Dream, brings a unique proposition to the league. It was all feted at a splashy media event on Thursday at Snapdragon Stadium awash with local politicians, football supporters’ groups, business leaders and an astonishing number of suit-with-dress-sneakers ensembles.

As these launch events tend to go, there was no club-name announcement in sky writing (for now there is only the inspired ‘San Diego FC’ placeholder); no coach, kit, or star-player reveals. This was simply a welcome party, a baby shower for that aging couple who were finally able to conceive.

Though MLS has expanded rapidly in the past decade, San Diego has been teased, talked about, leveraged and carrot-dangled as an expansion-team destination for even longer. But launching a sports team is rarely easy