RENTON – The idea of the Seattle Sounders building their own stadium is hardly new. Even before they officially joined MLS, they had explored the possibility of building at the old Midway landfill site in Kent as far back as 2003; they went as far as commissioning renderings for a potential stadium on the footprint of Seattle Center’s Memorial Stadium around 2015; and they have been publicly acknowledging since 2023 that they are considering the possibility of building a new stadium on the Longacres property where their training facility currently is located.
In that sense, Adrian Hanauer’s comments last Friday about wanting the Sounders and Reign to have their own stadium are nothing new. What felt different, however, was just how much more direct he was about that desire.
“These soccer teams need a home, a home of their own, that feels, that smells like soccer 100% of the time,” Hanauer told a group of about 15 reporters during a press conference meant to shed some light on the Sounders and Reign now being under one ownership umbrella. “When you’re asking 'Now that you own the team, what’s success look like?' I think that’s going to be part of my answer as well.
“Lumen Field is awesome. It’s been a great home for the Sounders and Reign, and maybe that will never change, but my gut tells me as I’ve traveled around the world and seen what a soccer experience can be in a stadium that’s dedicated to soccer, I think that eventually that has to be part of the answer.”
Visitors in their own home
This follows what I’ve been hearing for the better part of at least a year, that the Sounders and Reign are pretty much focused on the idea that eventually they’ll need their own stadium. It’s not hard to understand why they feel that way.
Every year, it becomes more and more obvious that the Sounders – and especially the Reign – are just tenants at someone else’s stadium. While the vote that made Lumen Field a reality was famously pushed over the line by soccer interests and the stadium was literally built with the idea of hosting high-level matches, it is primarily a football stadium. The Sounders and Reign don’t have permanent locker rooms, they don’t have access to much of the advertising inventory and the only way there will ever be permanent grass is if the Seahawks decide they want it.
But those are mostly aesthetic concerns. The bigger issue is in how the facility is managed. Even though the Sounders and Reign will fill approximately five times as many dates at Lumen Field as any other tenant – including the Seahawks – they are both almost complete afterthoughts when it comes to renovations or scheduling.
For instance, this year about 200 field-level seats were removed from the northeast and southeast corners. Not only were the Sounders unknowingly still selling some of those seats, many of those fans didn’t find out their seats had been removed until they showed up on opening day. If the Sounders had advanced to the Concacaf Champions Cup quarterfinals this year, they likely would have needed to find a secondary facility because there’s a monster-truck rally and dirt-bike race scheduled for that week at Lumen.
These are obviously extreme examples, but they also fit a pattern that goes back at least to the Sounders separating business operations from the Seahawks in 2014.
If the Sounders controlled their own facility, none of these would be problems. They’d also control everything from concessions to parking to the atmosphere outside the stadium.
This isn’t just about more ways to line the pockets of ownership, it’s also a necessity to simply keep up with the other top teams in MLS and the NWSL. Consider that the Sounders have the third-best attendance in the league and apparently sell more sponsorships than just about anyone. Yet, they rank eighth in revenue. That’s because they are one of the only teams in the league who don’t control their own stadium. Among the teams who are apparently bringing in more revenue are relative small-market teams like Charlotte FC, Austin FC, FC Cincinnati and the Columbus Crew.
