Pro soccer in Buffalo by 2026? New group acquires rights for men's and women's pro teams, plans new stadium

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – The dream of landing a professional soccer team in Western New York has new life after a Buffalo-born sports executive acquired the expansion rights for a team in the USL Championship, America's second-highest men's professional league.

Peter Marlette Jr., a former overseas professional who stepped down as the general manager of a championship-winning pro team in Omaha to lead this effort, envisions an aggressive timeline: He'd like the team to begin competing just two years from now, opening play in spring 2026. His group, Buffalo Pro Soccer, also plans to bring a top-flight women's team to the area.

"There are three things throughout my life that I've always loved: soccer, my family, and the City of Buffalo," Marlette said in a sit-down interview with News 4 ahead of Thursday's official announcement. "I am endeavoring here to make a community asset that outlasts all of us."

To make his vision a reality, Marlette needs what Buffalo soccer has always needed: Financial backing and a stadium.

He is undaunted by the challenge.

"In terms of actual checks written, we've got a long way to go, but in terms of conversations and interest with people and groups that want to write those checks, we're moving exactly on schedule," Marlette said. "So I'm very confident in our ability to do that."

USL has long eyed Buffalo

Buffalo fans have been teased with pro soccer before. The Western New York Flash boasted some of the best women's players on Earth before the club was sold to a North Carolina group in 2017. USL Championship hopes spiked in 2019 when Connecticut-based developer John McClutchy acquired the rights to launch a men's pro team here, but his plans never materialized.

The USL says it has a strong interest in the Buffalo market and believes Marlette's group is the real deal.

"I know that we're in the right hands," said Justin Papadakis, Deputy CEO of the United Soccer League. "Since Peter has started working on this we've made tremendous progress on all fronts, particularly the stadium side. We have multiple sites with active discussions with relevant stakeholders."

The USL Championship is only surpassed by Major League Soccer (MLS) in the American professional soccer pyramid. But unlike European leagues, U.S. leagues do not have a promotion and relegation system.

Teams in the USL Championship play 34 regular-season games between March and October. Average attendance last season was just over 5,800 fans per game. Games are streamed on ESPN+, with a handful airing on ESPN2.

Papadakis said the USL is working to launch teams in roughly 50 markets across its three divisions, but feels Buffalo is one of its top destinations.

"We know that Buffalo -- they know sports. The affinity of the sports fan in Buffalo is the highest of anywhere in the country," Papadakis said. "And we know that they're going to support their professional soccer teams just like their other sports. They're going to expect results. It's going to be a rough day for Pittsburgh and Detroit and other fans who want to come to the home of the USL team in Buffalo."

'Wealth of options' for a stadium

Buffalo Pro Soccer's stadium project won't be anywhere near the scale of the new Buffalo Bills stadium, which also plans to open in 2026 but has a price tag of well over $1 billion.

Marlette, a 35-year-old Nichols graduate, wants to build a modular, open-air stadium with about 10,000 covered seats. He said the stadium can be fully customized to the club's specifics, pre-made and assembled on-site. He believes a project of that magnitude can be completed in about a year at a cost of only $15 million.

"That's one of the benefits of the modular stadium build," Marlette said when pressed on the cost. "I have actually shown some of my favorite sites that we've identified in Buffalo and the ones that are looking the most feasible to some modular architects and they've given me rough quotes and some designs and, yeah, it's in that range.

"Listen," he added, "if someone wants to, if there's a principal owner who wants to come in and build a $100 million soccer stadium, we can do that too. These things can be built however you need them. But they can be built, and built well, for $15 million."

Marlette's group is exploring possible stadium sites across the city and in some suburbs. He wouldn't confirm any specific locations in consideration but said downtown Buffalo is "probably the ideal location."

"Anywhere that somebody has considered putting a stadium in the City of Buffalo, we've looked at it and had conversations about it," Marlette said. "It's a big list."

One site not currently in consideration is the Buffalo Bills stadium -- present or future.

Marlette said the possibility of playing games at the Bills stadium "was a very serious conversation" for the previous group led by McClutchy, but he doesn't see Orchard Park as an ideal site for what he's envisioning.

"I've identified some sites already in partnership with the league, with some local stakeholders and local individuals and have had really positive conversations on those sites with local government, state government, (or) if it's a private site, which some of them are, the owners or developers of those sites," Marlette said. "Right now, we've actually got a wealth of options and we need to pick the one that's going to work best for the city and this project."

Would the stadium be publicly subsidized?

"I think this stadium and this club could be largely privately funded," Marlette said, "but we are meeting with the governor's office, the mayor's office, with all of those public officials to have those exact discussions. And a lot of it will depend on the site as well, because some of the sites we've identified as well are state-owned or city-owned."

Investors needed

Marlette's official title is President of Buffalo Pro Soccer. To get his project off the ground, he needs to fill the role of principal owner.

U.S. Soccer sets professional league standards for franchises at each level of play, listing requirements for market size, stadium seating, ownership, and more. A USL Championship-level club's principal owner needs to own at least 35% of the team and have a net worth of approximately $30 million.

Marlette has been perfecting his pitch with the help of consultant Forrest Eber and believes this is the perfect time for an investor to get in on the ground floor of a soccer club.

"USL Championship is a highly stable, highly lucrative league that markets all over the country are trying to get in," Marlette said. "And they're able to be pretty picky about who they let in."

Soccer is also well-positioned for growth in America, he believes, thanks in part to a series of international tournaments set to take place on U.S. soil, with none bigger than the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Copa América will also be played in the States this summer, as will the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. A U.S.-Mexico bid is also a finalist to host the 2027 Women's World Cup, with the winner to be announced in May.

"Soccer is already a tremendously popular sport, but the runway we have up until 2026 is once-in-a-lifetime for this sport," Marlette said.

Marlette wants to lock in ownership by the end of 2024 and have shovels in the ground by early 2025. More info for potential investors will be available at BuffaloProSoccer.com.

Team name, FC Buffalo, women's team and more

Buffalo already has a soccer team: FC Buffalo, a top-level amateur club that plays in the fourth tier of the U.S. soccer pyramid and has been building a fanbase for nearly 15 years. Marlette sees FC Buffalo as a strong local partner and believes there's room for both clubs to coexist.

"Instead of competing, I think they actually complement one another very nicely," Marlette said, adding that he'd love to be able to offer FC Buffalo players their first professional contract. Marlette himself is an FC Buffalo alum who played five seasons for the club after a stint in the Australian second division.

Marlette's team is unlikely to take on the FC Buffalo branding, but he doesn't have a team name, logo or colors in mind. He plans to solicit feedback from the community and make those decisions with input from supporters.

"Seeing the powerful growth of the USL Championship from our vantage point at the highest level of amateur soccer in USL League Two, we seek to work closely with Buffalo Pro Soccer to create pathways from the youth fields of Western New York to the grandest stages of global soccer," FC Buffalo owner Nick Mendola said in a statement. "This is an important and exciting step forward that builds on the foundation we've laid in growing Buffalo’s passion for the game."

Competing at the professional level will require an international search for the top players and coaches available. The average player in the USL Championship makes around $50,000, Marlette said, but top players can earn significantly more.

Marlette is also excited about acquiring the rights to launch a team in the USL Super League, a Division I women's professional league opening play this year that is on par with the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). The teams will share the same stadium, though the debut of the women's team might be a year behind.

"I was very intentional about making sure those rights were included," he said.

If stadium construction isn't completed by the time Marlette's team begins playing in the USL Championship, it's possible the team could temporarily play out of a different USL-compliant stadium.

But scenarios like that don't occupy much space in Marlette's mind. He's only thinking full steam ahead.

"I left a very good job in Omaha with a very successful team. I turned down other jobs to do this," Marlette said. "It's because I think for anyone who invests in this project, they'll see great returns and they'll be very pleased that they did."

He's already convinced Papadakis, the USL's Deputy CEO, who sees the stars aligning in Buffalo.

"I think USL is in a different place and women's soccer is in a different place," Papadakis said, contrasting this bid with the 2019 effort. "Putting these pieces together, this time I think we have all the ingredients to not only get it over the line, but to have this team be extremely successful."