FC Cincinnati at TQL Stadium
In 2018, Major League Soccer announced that FC Cincinnati would become the league's 24th team and begin play the following year. The MLS franchise was the successor of a United Soccer League team of the same name, whose success proved there was a hunger for soccer in Cincinnati. In 2021, FC Cincinnati played their inaugural game at their official home, TQL Stadium, on May 16, 2021, with a match against Inter Miami CF. TQL Stadium has a capacity to host 26,000 soccer fans, but only 6,000 fans were in attendance for the club's first game there due to COVID-19 protocols.
FC Cincinnati History
From the start, the team seemed to nestle comfortably into the folkways of the city. One fan group, drawing on the city's rich cultural heritage, called itself "Die Innenstadt," German for downtown.
It was as if Cincinnatians had decided they were going to get this one right, after years and years of failed attempts to keep soccer in the Queen City. A roll call: There were the Cincinnati Comets and the Cincinnati Kids, the Cincinnati Cheetahs and the Cincinnati Silverbacks. There were the Cincinnati Excite and the 1790 Cincinnati Express. There were Riverhawks, Kings, Saints, and Dutch Lions. None of them stuck.
But FC Cincinnati seems to be here to stay. That may have something to do with the ownership group. Jeff Berding, who previously served as FC Cincinnati's President and General Manager and is now co-CEO, is a former executive of the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals. "Everything we do, I think about, 'How would we want to do it with the Bengals?'" Berding told reporter Andrew King.
The club's current General Manager, Chris Albright, who joined the team in 2021, has more than two decades of experience in U.S. soccer as a player and then Technical Director of the Philadelphia Union. He spent 15 years playing professionally in the MLS with clubs including D.C. United and Los Angeles Galaxy, and has won three MLS Cup titles.
In the inaugural season of the lower-division team in 2016, Cincinnati led the league in attendance, drawing 17,296 fans per game to Nippert Stadium. That summer, some 35,000 people packed into Nippert to watch their home team play an exhibition match against Crystal Palace of the English Premier League.
It was, according to the team, the largest crowd ever assembled for a soccer match in the history of Ohio. FC Cincinnati kept breaking league records until their time in the USL was up. On September 29, 2018, in their last regular-season home game before graduating to the MLS, they drew 31,478 fans to a match against the Indy Eleven. FC Cincinnati won, 3-0.