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Jason Davis @davisjason.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

For the evening crowd. My newsletter entry on MLS Next Pro's private equity partnership and how American soccer is further bending to the will of the profiteers. jason-davis-soccer-eagle.ghost.io/rhode-island...

You're never going to catch me caping for private equity. There are too many horror stories of how firms (like KKR and exactly KKR) have sucked businesses dry while ignoring the human costs of the endeavor. At the risk of sounding like a blinkered lefty, PE is what happens when "investment" is uncritically flattened into a universal good and the quest for return is allowed to justify any action done in service of it.

If you asked me the ideal way for American soccer to grow, the words "private equity" would never pass my lips. I'd talk instead about local ownership groups, the coalescing of a soccer community around the idea of a pro team, the repurposing of stadiums already built (to better benefit everyone, even the non-soccer fans), and the organic forming of bonds when a club connects directly with its hometown in authentic, genuine ways.

Portland of Hearts of Pine is the most recent club to strike that chord. If only there were hundreds of clubs like them.