Rhode Island is the 14th best soccer market in the country, and soccer, per a 2021 Gallup poll, is the fastest growing team sport in the nation. Baseball, meanwhile, is the fastest declining. The team has already set USL records for season ticket deposits. The city and state chose this development over the PawSox because this offered a lot more to the city and state in terms of private funding in addition to public funding.

Everyone here seems eager to immediately get angry and dismiss this out of hand. “No one cares about soccer”, they’ll say, or “we should have kept the PawSox.” But the numbers disagree, and I think once the team gets going even more people will see the value in having a team in the fastest growing sport in the US at the heart of the largest urban revitalization project in Pawtucket’s history.

If you don’t like soccer, that’s fine. But there’s a lot of Rhode Islanders who do, and I’m choosing to embody Rhode Island’s motto of “Hope”. And this stadium doesn’t have to be limited to RIFC. The USL is forming a women’s professional soccer league, the Super League, and certainly an XFL or USFL team could end up calling the stadium home as well. This is a hopeful development for the city and the state. I honestly can’t even begin to convey how excited I am for it.