Pro football stadium will add to legacy • Nebraska check

Dream with me for a while.

Imagine driving into downtown Omaha, seeing a state-of-the-art professional football stadium as part of the city’s gateway, and hearing the cheers of thousands of football fans filling the air. Omaha already knows the excitement of the College World Series at Schwab Field and March Madness at CHI Health Center. Now, there’s a unique opportunity to add the fastest growing sport in the world to that tradition: professional football in the heart of Omaha.

But this isn’t a distant fantasy—it’s already taking shape.

To achieve that goal, the Omaha League, the city’s professional soccer team, is developing plans to build a new home for the club and develop surrounding developments. Our vision is inspired by Omaha itself.

We admire the visionaries who came before us—who dreamed of building a convention center to attract national and international events, who reconnected Omaha to its roots on the Missouri River through the Return to the River project, who secured the College World Series The city has a new baseball stadium. Their bold ideas, along with the efforts of leaders in park revitalization, premier arts and cultural venues, and restaurants and entertainment venues, inspired Alliance Omaha’s plans to bring a new sport to downtown, Creating a Game Unique to Football This stadium will continue Omaha’s tradition of bold creativity, fierce competition and community gatherings.

The project is more than just creating a venue for professional games; it is a vision for a vibrant campus that includes housing, retail, restaurants and hotels that attract visitors, investors and community members. The entire city will benefit from this forward-thinking development – ​​transforming the surrounding area and improving community wellbeing through jobs, tourism and new opportunities.

Football, in particular, will become another important community health activity, particularly popular with young people and the 18-34 age group, further engaging this key demographic with a healthy, active and fun lifestyle.

The ambitious project will be supported by investors across multiple sectors: a public-private partnership for the stadium; a private development for retail and residential development; and an independent non-profit entity focused on youth soccer participation. The combination of these separate efforts on the same campus ensures that while private development leads to economic growth, philanthropy will support Union of Omaha to continue making a difference where it matters most – the youth of our community.

By focusing on youth football programs, particularly in North and South Omaha, Alliance Omaha’s nonprofit arm will partner with community organizations to engage the next generation in meaningful ways. The vision aims to remove barriers such as the pay-to-view model and provide access to top-tier football programming. Not only will Omaha’s youth have a new playing surface, they will also be mentored and coached by professional players, fostering leadership and development opportunities beyond the game. This model can inspire other cities and make Omaha a leader in inclusive, community-focused youth soccer.

The new stadium will help Omaha advance to the USL Championship and enhance the city’s profile, providing a venue capable of hosting national and international events. This new facility will make Omaha the premier destination for professional soccer and major events in the Midwest, enhancing the city’s relevance on the national sports stage.

To demonstrate how serious we are about this vision, earlier this week we announced that we have sold the Storm Chasers baseball team to a nationally recognized organization that will bring further investment to the team based in Papillion. Our acquisition of the Storm Chasers in 2012 was the beginning of our efforts and vision to create and enhance professional sports in Omaha. The decision to sell frees up Alliance Omaha’s ownership to focus full-time on a transformative vision for the team’s stadium home.

The program provides Omaha with an unparalleled opportunity to capitalize on soccer’s rapid popularity in the United States, where it has become the second most popular sport among those ages 18-34. With this stadium, we are not only building for today, but also for the future.

We stand on the edge of something extraordinary.

This isn’t just a stadium; it’s not just a new development with housing, restaurants, and a youth soccer facility, it’s the next critical step in building on the incredible investments Omaha has already made, and will further activate the downtown area, inspire our young people, entertain and retain the workforce, and cement our city’s place on the national football stage. Not only will we build a stadium, we will contribute to Omaha’s future: supporting football is supporting Omaha.

This is not a dream. It’s happening, and it’s going to happen soon.