What’s the point of watching sports in person?
You go to a stadium, your team wins, they lose, it’s exciting – or maybe not, if you root for a bad team. But what’s the point?
There’s a “why” there that doesn’t get much attention. Justin Papadakis ’08 sees something deeper about going to a stadium.
“I call it the community living room,” he says of a soccer stadium, especially the smaller stadiums of the United Soccer League, the largest professional and preprofessional soccer organization in the country. Those living rooms are what the USL is building, and has been building since Papadakis’ father, Alec, was part of the consortium that took over the league in 2009. Most of the teams in the USL play in smaller places. “Community is a big part of our mission.”
Papadakis, who played in goal when Duke won the Atlantic Coast Conference soccer championship against UNC in 2005, could be forgiven for thinking the whole point is the final score. But he now works as deputy CEO and chief real estate officer for the USL. And that title of chief real estate officer gets to the core of what he says he and the league are trying to do. They’re creating places where people go to do something together.
USL’s current top tier, the Championship league, is considered slightly below Major League Soccer in the U.S. (“Though last year [2024] our final outrated the MLS final” on television, Papadakis notes). Like other American major league sports, MLS focuses on top-30 markets.
“But not everyone in the United States lives in the top 30 markets, right?” Papadakis notes.
That’s what’s different about the USL. It has levels much like European soccer – the highest levels are the Championship league and the women’s Gainbridge Super League in cities such as Brooklyn and Fort Lauderdale. Below that are League One (18 teams in midsize cities, including Richmond and Omaha), League Two (a preprofessional league with more than 150 teams in smaller cities, such as Durham’s Tobacco Road FC), the W League for preprofessional women, with nearly 100 teams, and the Youth League, with more than 600 teams. USL recently announced a new top-tier, USL Premier, with plans to have promotion and relegation like European leagues: The top teams in each season will advance to a higher league, and the bottom ones will be relegated to a lower league.
But Papadakis talks most about community. A League One team recently started play in Portland, Maine. “This team plays in a relatively small stadium,” he says, “but they represent Maine and people are so proud to live in Maine.” Team founder Gabe Hoffman-Johnson agrees with Papadakis. “The things we shine the spotlight on are very often not even about the team,” he recently told “Good Morning America.” “They’re not even about soccer. It’s about people. It’s about place.”
Papadakis played in USL youth leagues growing up in Atlanta. Now he and his family live in Tampa, Florida, where the USL headquarters is located.
“I have a 2- and a 4-year-old now,” Papadakis says, and he’s already defending against the endless screens he sees in their futures. “I want to have great live experiences away from their phones, and that is what our games represent.” A soccer game, with very few stoppages of play, isn’t filled with the constant media and video of other sports. Says Papadakis, the fans entertain each other: Chants, songs, cheering fill the air instead.
This sense of community isn’t new to Papadakis. “I don’t think there’s an academic institution that fosters that sense of community like Duke,” he says. When people think about Duke, he says, they think about Cameron Indoor Stadium, which mirrors the smaller, homey stadiums many USL clubs play in. “That’s what sports is about, right? It’s not the most expensive. It's not the most state of the art. But it is an authentic experience.”