(WXMI) — Grand Rapids is getting a new professional soccer team that will begin play in 2027 at Amway Stadium. The team is currently known as West Michigan Soccer and will reveal an official team name, logo and coach will all come at a later date.
The team will compete in the MLS NEXT Pro, a development league for Major League Soccer. The MLS NEXT Pro launched in 2022 as a Division III professional soccer league. Currently, there are 29 teams in the league, two of them are independent teams. Grand Rapids and is set to join the league as one of four new independent teams.
"When you're going to an MLS NEXT Pro game, when you're coming to watch your team here in Grand Rapids, you're going to be watching the stars of today and tomorrow compete at the highest level. You're going to see top talents who are getting ready to ascend to the next level, whether it's to MLS, to teams in Europe, or to their national teams," MLS Next Pro President Charles Altchek said. "In all of the metrics that we were able to look at, Grand Rapids is one of those cities where there's a deep history of soccer participation at all levels, but there hadn't been the right professional team to bring it all together, and now we are going to have that."
Other minor league teams in West Michigan, like the Griffins, Gold, and Whitecaps, are affiliates of major league teams. West Michigan Soccer will be independent with complete control of its roster.
"It allows the ownership group, the families, to get together with their management team and really craft a blueprint for what they want this team to look like in the short, medium and long term," said a team official.
More about West Michigan Soccer
David Van Andel and the Van Andel family are majority owners. Dan DeVos and the DeVos family are minority owners in West Michigan Soccer.
More on the Amway Stadium
The stadium, which will sit just north of the David D. Hunting YMCA on Winter Avenue, is expected to host a professional soccer club. The current proposal would have 8,500 seats with a total capacity of 11,000 fans. The Amway Corporation paid $33 million for the naming rights to the stadium.
Grand Action 2.0, the group spearheading the development, says the stadium will attract 160,000 visitors to Grand Rapids each year. A new expansion team in the MLS Next Pro league will call the stadium home, plus it will host roughly 17 national and international soccer matches each year, with another 50 community-based tournaments and events.
The project is one of several large developments that will receive financial support through an increased tax on hotel room stays in Kent County. The Acrisure Amphitheater being built off of Market Avenue on the Grand River's east bank, is another Grand Action 2.0 project that will also receive tax funds.
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