LETTER FROM THE EDITOR n
WARREN SMITH SET THE STAGE
FOR MLS IN SACRAMENTO
PHOTO: TERENCE DUFFY
I
t was July 18, 2013, a typical warm summer evening for
the first Sacramento Soccer Day, the brainchild of entre-
preneur Warren Smith and veteran sports executive Joe
Wagoner to help spur interest in their startup minor-league
soccer team. Even if few people remember the outcome of
the “friendly” between Norwich City Football Club of the
English Premier League and Mexico’s Dorados de Sinaloa,
the 14,000 who filled Raley Field will never forget what hap-
pened during halftime.
The group, Sacramento Professional Soccer, announced
the name — Sacramento Republic Football Club, aka Re-
public FC — and colors for the new United Soccer League
team that was scheduled to debut the following spring. The
response of the fans was beyond enthusiastic.
I ran into Smith during the event and expressed skep-
ticism that professional soccer could be successful in
Sacramento — after all, the Knights, Geckos, Scorpions and
Senators had all come and gone — but Smith responded
with his typical optimism. “This is just the start,” Smith
told me (full disclosure: I was sports editor at The Sacra-
mento Bee then). “We’re bringing MLS to Sacramento.”
I wasn’t the only skeptic, especially about Smith’s Major
League Soccer vision, but he had a proven track record. He
had played a key role — along with owner Art Savage and
Bob Hemond, a longtime baseball executive — in bringing
professional baseball back to Sacramento and getting Raley
Field built in West Sacramento as the home of the River Cats,
a Triple-A team that led the country in attendance for many
seasons.
“Feeling good about helping the region grow,” Smith says
now. “They were two elements (River Cats and Republic FC)
that would add fabric to the community.”
Republic FC debuted in Sacramento on April 26, 2014, at
Hughes Stadium at Sacramento City College. Several weeks
before that match, Smith declared at a public event the
match would sell out. “I came back (to the office),” Smith re-
calls, “and they said, ‘How the hell are we going to do that?’”
But they did, with 20,231 filling Hughes, cheering wildly de-
spite a 2-1 loss to the Harrisburg City Islanders.
But Hughes didn’t have space for a full-size pitch, so in
June 2014, the team moved to a soccer-specific stadium at Cal
Expo, and the team set league attendance records — drawing
158,107 for the regular season, about 45,000 more than the
previous best — en route to winning the USL championship.
Smith’s dream is about to come true — without him. It’s
all but certain Republic FC will become an MLS team and
play in a new stadium in The Railyards, likely in 2022. “I’m
really happy for Sacramento,” Smith says.
The road to MLS wasn’t easy. It became obvious MLS
wouldn’t award a franchise to Sacramento without a deep-
pocket investor. Kevin Nagle, cofounder of EnvisionRx, a
health care and pharmacy benefit management company,
bought controlling interest in the team, which eventually
led Smith to step down as president in May 2018. He agreed
to stay on for another year as a senior adviser while also tak-
ing a position as a senior adviser for Oklahoma City Energy
FC, another USL team. But even Nagle wasn’t enough for
MLS; bringing aboard Ron Burkle, a billionaire business-
man, movie producer and owner of the National Hockey
League’s Pittsburgh Penguins, as lead investor seems to
have finally put Sacramento over the top.
Smith is back in the game. He’s joined with Landon
Donovan, the most decorated male player in U.S. soccer his-
tory, to bring a USL franchise to San Diego, where he says he
plans to move this fall. The team will begin playing at the
University of San Diego’s Torero Stadium in either 2020 or
2021, Smith says.
Smith isn’t just about sports. He says one of the things
for which he’s most proud is his role as a board member for
the Powerhouse Science Center, the former PG&E facility on
the Sacramento River along Interstate 5 that’s being revi-
talized and incorporated into Robert T. Matsui Waterfront
Park. “We deserve world-class facilities,” Smith says.
And that’s what Sacramento will have when the
20,000-plus-seat stadium is built in The Railyards. I slowly
warmed up to soccer as Republic FC gained a loyal follow-
ing — I’ve attended about a dozen games — and I am eager
to join what should be a boisterous crowd for opening night.
Tom Couzens
Executive Editor
August 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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