SPOKANE, Wash. — A month after the announcement that professional men's and women's soccer teams are coming to Spokane, KREM 2's Mark Hanrahan had the chance to sit down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with the teams' owners to talk timelines, tickets, and why they think the United Soccer League is a good fit for the Lilac City.
Mark Hanrahan
What about the Spokane market attracted you to launch professional soccer?
Katie Harnetiaux
I mean, Spokane is a sports town, right?
Ryan Harnetiaux
We really felt like putting a truly professional sports organization in Spokane was a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the city.
They are the couple behind the effort to bring pro soccer to Spokane. Katie and Ryan Harnetiaux are the faces in front of a private ownership group. And they are knee-deep in everything logistics, rosters, team names and crests. Just last month, a couple announced they're launching not one but three United Soccer League teams to play in the new downtown stadium slated to be completed next fall.
Mark Hanrahan
For folks who are not familiar with (USL) soccer, it's professional soccer but kind of where does it fall in terms of professional soccer?
Ryan Harnetiaux
So USL has two men's professional leagues. One is the championship League, which is tier two, which would be right below MLS and then tier three is the league one team that Spokane will get.
Ryan, a Spokane native and Gonzaga graduate, says the goal is to launch the men's professional team in April of 2024. A few months later, they'll debut a women's pre-professional team that will consist of college or even high school athletes then shortly after they'll debut the professional women's club.
Katie Harnetiaux
We were attracted to the USL from the get-go because they have pay equity, and gender equity, which is part of their model, and we believe in that really strongly. And so for us, it was okay this isn't about joining a situation like MLS that already exists. This is about us being able to build out something that's right.
The couple says each team will have about 20 players on their roster, the professional teams will play roughly 14 home games per season. And they tell me they are already hearing from agents and players who want to come to Spokane.
Ryan Harnetiaux
The pro teams. Those players are coming from all over the United States and even outside of the United States. There's a lot of interest in coming here to play pro soccer.
It's been a long and somewhat controversial road to get here. In 2018, Spokane voters approved a bond measure that included funding to renovate the aging Joe Albi Stadium. And in an advisory vote, people suggested keeping it at its current location. But after three years of back and forth, the Spokane Public School Board decided to build a new 5,000-seat stadium downtown where the city's local high schools can play their games. Then in 2021, Brett Sports who owns the Spokane Indians and Chiefs pitched bringing a tier two major league soccer team to the city. But the public facility District's Board of Directors voted to go with the USL's proposal, which included a $4 million investment into the stadium.
Ryan Harnetiaux
It's going to be very loud, and it's gonna be very fun. And you're going to really feel like you're right there. So I don't think there'll be a terrible seat in the house is going to be really awesome.
Mark Hanrahan
In terms of tickets, you'll sell season tickets. And will the season tickets be for just one team or all the clubs, or how will that work?
Ryan Harnetiaux
So right now we have a season ticket deposit list. And we have about 2,300 season ticket deposits down right now. So when we release those and start converting those into actual season ticket packages.
At that point, Ryan says people will choose between tickets for the men's or women's team. He says their intention is to sell about 34 to 3,500 season tickets and keep about 2,000 seats available per game for the public to walk up and buy a ticket.
Katie Harnetiaux
Our goal is to keep it affordable so that families can go and get tickets to a men's game and women's game. That way you could have a weekend of soccer and it would be a really great and affordable family activity.
There is a lot of work to complete in the next 18 months. The Harnetiaux's say they're still looking for corporate sponsors to partner with, coaches to hire, rosters to fill, and a ton of logistics to iron out. And then there's the pressing task of deciding team names and crests that the community can rally behind.
Katie Harnetiaux
It has been late-night phone calls. It's been crowdsourcing. It's been voting with our kids. It's been that this has been a monumental process.
Ryan Harnetiaux
Yeah, so we hope to be able to roll out the crests and the team names before the end of this year. That's our hope.