CLEVELAND — Cleveland is a sports town through and through and Cleveland Browns Stadium has been a hub for several of them outside of NFL games. From successfully executed Ohio State-Michigan hockey and Cleveland Monsters games to WWE's SummerSlam coming in August, the stadium has shown an ability to host a variety of events.
It also nearly played host to one of the most highly esteemed athletes in the world—soccer superstar Lionel Messi.
Earlier this season, the Columbus Crew, Ohio's Major League Soccer team owned by the Haslam Sports Group, played in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Entering that tournament, there was a scenario that saw the Crew potentially facing Inter Miami—Messi's club.
Josh Glessing, chief of strategy and Development for Haslam Sports Group, detailed the plans to News 5 Cleveland.
"That was one of the benefits of winning the MLS Cup, last year that we were able to participate in this tournament. There was a scenario in which the semifinals would have been hosted by the Columbus Crew against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami and we viewed that as an opportunity," Glessing said. "Had Miami advanced to the semifinals, we really started talking about the opportunity that would present to put Lionel Messi, one of the most famous, if not the most famous people in the world—arguably the greatest soccer player in history—on the biggest stage possible."
Lower.com Field, home of the Crew in Columbus, can house 20,371 spectators. Cleveland Browns Stadium in Cleveland can house 67,431. With the crowd Messi's star power would draw, Haslam Sports Group laid out a plan.
"We would have hosted that match at Cleveland Brown Stadium in Cleveland," Glessing said. "We wanted to ensure that we could host as many people as possible and Cleveland Browns Stadium will host three times as many people as Lower.com Field. And we care about growing the game in the state of Ohio. And then also based simply on economics by having more seats we can also lower the entry point into the stadium so we can engage with more fans, give more people the opportunity to watch the Columbus Crew take on Lionel Messi and Inter Miami and also make the entry price point lower."
Unfortunately, those plans never came to fruition. The Crew moved on to the semifinals but Inter Miami was bounced from the Confacaf Champions Cup in the quarter-finals.
The would-be scenario of hosting a major Crew game at Cleveland Browns Stadium hasn't been quashed. While there's not a game scheduled to be played at the NFL stadium this year, Haslam Sports Group and the Crew hope that in the future, MLS games can find a home in Cleveland for select games.
"How can we make Cleveland fall in love with a beautiful game? Canton and Akron and Youngstown and Toledo? We do so much with this game, we think it's great for the community to have an opportunity to engage with the global game and we've seen the impact that it's had here in Columbus—and we'd love to be able to bring that impact elsewhere," Glessing said.
Cleveland has proven its desire for sporting events of all kinds to have a presence in Northeast Ohio. From a weekend that saw more than 100,000 fans at the Guardians games last weekend to the Monsters owning the title of highest attended games in the AHL to a current push for professional women's soccer to call Cleveland home—sports in Cleveland are highly sought after.
With the biggest sport in the world having an opportunity to host games in the city, there's a hope that the global sensation that is soccer can be well-embraced in The Land, too. And well into the future that could be at a renovated stadium on the lakefront or a brand new stadium in another part of Northeast Ohio.
Whatever the case, the goal remains the same—to grow the game of soccer in Northeast Ohio by using the resources of a high-capacity NFL stadium to do it.
"We want to engage with as many fans of the game and potential fans of the game as possible and we'll work tirelessly to do that. And when the opportunity presents itself to leverage our platform to do that, we're going to take advantage of it," Glessing said.
"We're the first chartered franchise in Major League Soccer history. We've won three MLS Cups. We've won two of the last four. We have hosted major matches in the city of Columbus. We are the birthplace of soccer in America in so many ways. All of the success that we've had with the US men's and women's national team in Columbus is the reflection of that and it all comes down to this. Columbus is a soccer city. We think that the entire state of Ohio could be a soccer state."
