Cincinnati's fans were rewarded Tuesday for their eye-opening support of professional soccer.
Major League Soccer announced the city has been granted an expansion franchise, which will begin play next season ahead of the planned opening of a new stadium in 2021.
Officially confirming what the world already knows: @fccincinnati will officially begin play in @MLS with the 2019 season. pic.twitter.com/hAAVwkTDwV
— Justin Williams (@Williams_Justin) May 29, 2018
SIGN UP to watch MLS games live and on-demand in Canada on DAZN.
Playing in the second-tier United Soccer League, FC Cincinnati has been a sensation in its three years in existence, with a better average attendance than some MLS teams from the very beginning.
Those numbers are at an all-time high so far in 2018, with an average of 24,417 coming out to home games at the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium. That number is more than double the next-best average in the USL and would rank fifth among MLS's 23 teams this year.
That support has made Cincinnati a favorite in the current round of MLS expansion, but the city had to sweat it out as stadium details were finalized and Nashville was awarded one of two available franchises late last year, leaving Cincinnati to fend off Detroit and Sacramento for the other.
Now Cincinnati will join the league a year ahead of Nashville (and the long-awaited Miami team), making the transition next season. It will continue to play at Nippert for at least two more seasons before the planned opening of a soccer-specific stadium in the city's West End in 2021.
MLS still plans to add two more teams in the coming years, bringing the total to 28.
