On April 19, 2017, Atlanta United was weeks into its inaugural Major League Soccer season and already rewriting the script for what an expansion franchise could be. More than 30,000 season ticket holders had committed before the first match. The temporary home — Bobby Dodd Stadium at Georgia Tech, rented at $45,000 per game — was selling out. And the team's permanent home, the $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, was months from opening, with the first match there scheduled for July 30.
The franchise was Arthur Blank's second major professional sports investment in downtown Atlanta. The Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner had spent years studying MLS expansion opportunities before securing the franchise. He brought the same infrastructure that supported the Falcons — training facilities, front-office operations, marketing muscle — and applied it to a sport that many American team owners still treated as a side project.
The Roster
Blank did not build a typical expansion team. Atlanta United's inaugural roster included international players from Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and Paraguay alongside American talent — four of whom were Georgia natives. The head coach was Tata Martino, an Argentine manager whose resume included coaching Barcelona and the Argentine national team. Hiring a manager of Martino's stature for an expansion franchise signaled that Atlanta United was not interested in a patient, multi-year build.
The roster's depth showed in its range. Miles Robinson, a 19-year-old defender from Massachusetts and the 2016 ACC Defensive Player of the Year, represented the club's investment in young American talent. Jacob Peterson, a 31-year-old veteran forward, provided the experience that an expansion locker room needed. "It's going to be a work in progress," Peterson acknowledged. "We've been together for six weeks. You know that's hard to build a team."
The Downtown Bet
Atlanta United's decision to play downtown — first at Georgia Tech, then at Mercedes-Benz Stadium — was a deliberate rejection of the suburban stadium model that had pulled the Atlanta Braves to Cobb County in 2017. Blank believed that a downtown location, connected to MARTA and embedded in the Centennial Olympic Park district, was essential to building the urban fan culture that made soccer atmospheres elsewhere in the world electric.
The gamble paid off faster than anyone expected. By the end of the 2017 season, Atlanta United had set MLS attendance records. By 2018, the team won the MLS Cup in front of 73,019 fans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium — the largest crowd ever to attend an MLS Cup final. The inaugural season had not just introduced professional soccer to Atlanta. It had established the city as the loudest, most devoted soccer market in North America.
The franchise's success validated Arthur Blank's broader vision for downtown Atlanta: that the stadium district could support multiple professional teams, year-round events, and a fan culture that treated downtown not as a place to visit but as a place to belong.
Original reporting by Georgia Public Broadcasting, April 19, 2017.
