Magic City SC

Indoor club not returning

Image credit: Magic City SC

This is an odd tale that feels like it was tailor-made for the Birmingham sports scene. The short version is that the professional indoor soccer club that kicked off in the market in 2024 will not be returning for the 2025 season. Bear with me as I unwind this, but they should have been getting ready to start their season in early December.

Minor Leagues

Birmingham is a minor league professional sports market. There's a huge base of college football fans, and the city ranks among the highest levels of viewership for NFL, NBA, and MLB among cities that don't have (never had) any top-tier sports franchises. This secondary status is almost ingrained in the community, from the time the city was founded after the Civil War (1871), until today. The pro sports scene started almost at the very beginning, baseball's Birmingham Barons starting play in 1885. In that vein, Birmingham is home to Rickwood Field (1910), the oldest professor baseball stadium in America. Those roots in minor league baseball have extended to all other sports throughout the city's history. Today Birmingham has professional soccer, baseball, football, basketball, and hockey - all of it in the lower leagues of the respective sports.

Soccer in the Magic City

Birmingham's history with pro sports is long, but is also littered with the debris of almost every professional league that has ever existed, especially American football. We even had a team in the Canadian Football League for one season. Through all of that time, professional soccer didn't come to town until the Birmingham Legion began play. That's despite the market producing several National Team players on both the men's and women's programs. One of the other quirks of the market is that there's historically been a successful minor league hockey team. That team currently plays in an arena in the southern suburbs of the city. The success there, coupled with the Legion being in the market led to the founding of Magic City SC in a newer professional indoor soccer league.

The Indoor Soccer Scene

Image credit: National Indoor Soccer League

When the original NASL began to fall apart, professional soccer leagues and teams began to pop up. Some of the NASL clubs basically moved operations to indoor teams. Indoor soccer is played in arenas that would typically house hockey or basketball, and are pretty abundant. The first professional indoor league ran from 1978-1992. They closed up shop just in time for MLS to fire up and renew the sport as primarily an outdoor brand. Some of the indoor teams continued to operate in a fragmented landscape, which continues today. The National Indoor Soccer League was formed in 2021. Despite the name, the teams in the league were in the Southeast. One of the unique features of the league was that clubs fielded both men's and women's teams, and played double-headers on game days. Late in 2023, it was announced that an expansion team from the Birmingham market would be joining the league.

Magic City SC

The ownership for Magic City SC arranged to play games at the same venue used by the Birmingham Bulls hockey team, an arena that features an ice skating rink, and seating for 4100 fans for sporting events. I'll pause for a moment to talk about “professional” as it relates to this situation. I've seen reports saying that players in this league got someting like $50-$60 per game to play. So, they get money, but it's not a full-time job. The teams hired a coach, brought on sponsors, and geared up to begin play in early 2024. In addition to Magic City SC, it was announced that the league championship game would be hosted at the same venue. Things were looking good.

The first game day was on the road, and both teams lost in a big way. The next two gamedays were at home, where the men continued to have a tough go, but the women's team won both times. And then… an announcement was made that the league would be merging with Major League Indoor Soccer. MLIS teams are primarily based in the midwest and near west (TX, CO), and the league started play in 2022.

While the announcement said that MLIS and NISL would finish current seasons, that didn't happen. NISL teams just stopped, including Magic City SC. That was in March. As zero information was offered by the team, the old league, or the new league, things looked highly doubtful, to say the least. When MLIS announced an expansion team in Orlando, a market that had included a club from NISL, it was clarified even further. So, I reached out to MLIS to see if Magic City and the other teams from the merger were DOA. They are. That's a very long-winded way of saying goodbye to a club that was only around for a couple of months. Hopefully there will be another indoor team that will try to make it work in Birmingham.