Forget Las Vegas. Sacramento is the city most likely to land the next MLS franchise — and it isn't particularly close.
A study commissioned by Casino.org assessed 25 non-MLS markets across the United States and ranked Sacramento first, ahead of Louisville, Providence, Raleigh, and Jacksonville. Las Vegas, which has dominated the expansion conversation for years largely on vibes and stadium speculation, came in 12th. The methodology wasn't guesswork either — researchers weighed USL and NWSL attendance figures, existing facilities, potential ownership groups, and population data.
What Sacramento actually brings to the table
Sacramento already has skin in the game. The Sacramento Republic are an established USL Championship club, currently fifth in Group B, with a fanbase that has been pushing for top-flight soccer for years. That infrastructure matters. MLS isn't just handing franchises to cities with a big population and a dream — it wants markets that have already demonstrated they can support the sport.
The catch is obvious. If Sacramento gets an MLS team, the Republic almost certainly disappear. It's a pattern MLS has repeated before — San Diego Loyal dissolved in 2023 once San Diego FC was confirmed as an MLS club. A community that spent years building a lower-division club ends up watching it get swallowed whole by the top-flight machine. That's a real cost.
The USL, for what it's worth, is moving toward a promotion and relegation system by 2028 — a structure that would give lower-division clubs a genuine pathway to the top instead of simply waiting to be replaced. The timing of any Sacramento MLS decision matters enormously for how that ecosystem develops.
The Vancouver elephant in the room
While Sacramento focuses on expansion, Vancouver is in survival mode. Rumors linking the Whitecaps to a Las Vegas relocation have triggered the #SaveTheCaps movement, echoing the #SaveTheCrew campaign that kept Columbus in Ohio back in 2017-18. The Crew stayed put, and Austin eventually got its own expansion side in 2018. The precedent exists — fan pressure can work.
Franchise relocation is standard practice in North American sports. In European football, it remains almost unthinkable — the Wimbledon FC saga, which ended with the club being uprooted to become MK Dons and fans forming AFC Wimbledon in protest, is still treated as a cautionary tale decades later. MLS operates by different rules, but the emotional logic is the same: fans build identity around a club and a city, not a brand.
Sacramento looks like the smart expansion pick. Whether MLS pulls the trigger before or after the World Cup co-hosting boost becomes clear is the real question — and the answer will say a lot about how seriously the league takes its lower-division ecosystem.
