In October 2017, Major League Soccer announced that the 2018 MLS All-Star Game would be played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta — a decision that would have been unthinkable two years earlier, when the city did not have an MLS franchise and the stadium was still under construction.
Atlanta United had changed the math. In its inaugural season, the expansion team averaged 48,200 fans per game — not just an MLS record but a figure that would have been competitive in most European leagues. The single-game attendance record, set during the season finale against Toronto FC, reached 71,874. MLS Commissioner Don Garber called it "one of the most impressive and successful team launches in professional sports history."
The Stadium's Event Résumé
The All-Star Game was not an isolated booking. Mercedes-Benz Stadium had barely opened when it began accumulating the kind of event résumé that typically takes a venue a decade to build: the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship in January, the MLS All-Star Game in August, the 2019 Super Bowl, and the 2020 men's basketball Final Four. Each event validated Arthur Blank's $1.5 billion investment — and each one brought tens of thousands of visitors to downtown Atlanta.
Blank, who owned both the Falcons and Atlanta United, was direct about the stakes: the city would deliver on its hosting responsibilities. Mayor Kasim Reed, in one of his final years in office, highlighted the unifying effect of soccer on the community — a sport that cut across the demographic lines that often divided Atlanta's fan base.
What the All-Star Game Meant
The MLS All-Star Game's arrival in Atlanta was a recognition that the city had become, almost overnight, one of the most important soccer markets in North America. Atlanta United had proven that a downtown stadium could fill 70,000 seats for a sport that American skeptics had spent decades dismissing.
That proof of concept reverberated. When FIFA selected its host venues for the 2026 World Cup, Mercedes-Benz Stadium's application carried the weight of those attendance numbers, that event history, and the evidence that downtown Atlanta could mobilize a soccer crowd at a scale that few cities in the world could match.
The 2018 All-Star Game was a milestone, not a peak. Atlanta United would go on to win MLS Cup later that year in front of a record crowd. And the stadium that hosted it all would, eight years later, welcome the world.
Original reporting by GPB News, Georgia Public Broadcasting, October 24, 2017.