As the Fire’s partners at Excel Sports Management begin their search for a brand to put its name on the new building—and other teams in the city seek public funding for stadiums of their own—the club continues pitching its building to the public, potential partners, and tentpole events as marketing efforts make its 2028 opening date seem closer to kickoff.
“It’s rare that you have an opportunity as a brand to effectively name a neighborhood, and that’s really what we’re talking about here. You can almost think of it as how Wrigley Field helped give rise to Wrigleyville,” said Jason Miller, evp of commercial revenue and head of properties for Excel Sports Management. “This is not a sports sponsorship. This is a civic investment that places the partner at the center of a cultural and geographic redefinition of downtown Chicago.”
Marking their position
During the 1994 FIFA World Cup that led to both MLS and the Fire, Chicago hosted five matches. Not only will the city miss out on the 2026 World Cup completely, but it was skipped for the CONMEBOL Copa America tournament in 2024, and both the CONCACAF Gold Cup and FIFA Club World Cup tournaments this summer.
Even before the Fire’s new stadium is completed, the team has been working to ensure Chicago isn’t skipped on the world soccer stage again. In March, the Fire opened its $100 million Endeavor Health Performance Center on the city’s Near West Side with five and a half fields, a 10,000-square-foot inflatable dome, and a 56,000-square-foot performance center of athletic and medical facilities.
The facility recently hosted Manchester United for more than a week during its English Premier League Summer Series tour of the United States.Â
“That wasn’t a goal of building the Endeavor Health Performance Center, but I think it’s recognition that, as we build a world-class club and we build world-class facilities that sit behind it, it’s going to open doors for hosting both European and international clubs, but also like international federations and then tournaments down the road,” the Fire’s Moriarty said. “Chicago not hosting a World Cup game is disappointing for me personally—I also know it’s disappointing for a lot of fans—but the way we think about that internally is it reinforces why investments in the performance center and the stadium matter.”
Providing some idea of just what kind of impact a 22,000-seat stadium could have, Miller points to how Q2 Stadium in Austin, Texas—which Excel negotiated the naming rights for—seats just 20,500 and hosted a CONCACAF Gold round. He also compared the Fire’s new facility to a FIFA Club World Cup site that hosted the Bundesliga’s Borussia Dortmund and Liga MX’s Pachuca.