Tuesday, December 8 was a busy day at the USL offices because Central Valley Fuego FC officially became the newest franchise to join the league. Planning for a 2022 start, Fuego FC will be located in central San Joaquin Valley, somewhere around Fresno. This won’t be the Fresno market’s first stint in USL, the former Fresno FC played in the Championship in 2018 and 2019 before ownership put the club on hiatus with a rumored move to California’s Central Coast in Monterey. The idea that a franchise would be awarded to an ownership group in a market that has already left the USL once seems perplexing at first, but it does make sense that this new franchise would decide to join USL League One instead of the Championship.
You will find many similarities between the Fresno and Omaha markets, including in several specific benchmarks that the USL looks for when evaluating markets for potential League One expansion. Fresno and Omaha have almost identical population statistics. Both have metro populations with roughly 1,000,000 people (the upper threshold set by the USL for League One) with city centers making up roughly half of the population, though Fresno is slightly larger in both measurements. Neither metro has a major professional sports franchise, another element the league finds appealing. Omaha’s closest major sports teams are almost 200 miles away in Kansas City, while Fresno’s are about 150 miles away in the San Jose metro area (just as an aside, this includes the city of Santa Clara, which is now the home of the 49ers. As a native Californian and a Niners fan, you have no idea how much this pisses me and a lot of other people off).
Other elements of the athletics makeup of these areas are quite similar. Both cities have successful Minor League Baseball franchises in the Pacific Coast League (AAA) with average attendance around the lower-half of the league (around 5,800 for Fresno in 2019, roughly 5,000 for Omaha). College football in the Football Bowl Subdivision is by far the most popular sport in each metro, Fresno State Bulldogs football will average roughly 30,000 fans in a good year, while the Nebraska Cornhuskers routinely average three times that in nearby Lincoln. So both of these markets are ripe for the picking with a professional sports franchise that’s run properly.
How does the new market stack up to other current League One markets? Fresno will become the third largest market of all independent teams in the league behind Richmond and Tucson. It fits more in the top half of the league when considering metro populations, with a group of cities that are large enough to have things like Top Golf, but not quite large enough for a major sports team along with Richmond, Tucson, Omaha and Greenville (comically, Fresno actually doesn’t have a Top Golf but these other cities do. Please let me know if one is announced in Fresno, I might need to scan my apartment for bugs). And while they aren’t necessarily a college town, Fresno is home to a state university that plays major college football along with Tucson, Madison and Statesboro. Fresno, as mentioned before, continues the trend of independent markets that also have minor league baseball teams. Their inclusion means that League One will continue to have a collection of independent markets where more than 50% have minor league baseball teams (Only Tucson, Madison and Statesboro do not, although Tucson does have an Independent team and Forward Madison’s owners also own a team in the Northwoods League).
Fresno is now the furthest road trip for most USL League one teams instead of Tucson, though it’s still a 700 mile drive from Tucson to Fresno. However, in a future where the league may continue to weight schedules based on proximity, this will matter. It’s much different for Tucson to have North Texas as their second closest rival (a little more than 900 miles away) than it is Omaha (almost 1,300 miles away).
Welcome to League One, Fresno!
Who Gives A Hoot? 