Fort Wayne Football Club’s Chief Operations Officer, Scott Sproat, looked out at the construction site that will soon become Fort Wayne FC Park and marveled.
“I’m really excited,” he said smiling, while touring the grounds at Bass Road and I-69 this week.
Fort Wayne FC Park is being built to be the home of Fort Wayne Football Club starting in 2026, when the club will start play in USL League One – a professional level of soccer – and the stadium will have a match-day capacity of 9,200.
“This is going to be a world-class soccer facility,” Sproat said. “It’ll be soccer-specific, in addition to concerts and trade shows, private events and corporate events. But for the most part this is being built for the Fort Wayne Football Club, and the Fort Wayne soccer community, and we’ve got a lot of really exciting things coming down the pike relative to that.”
Fort Wayne Football Club has been accepting $25 deposits on 2026 season tickets for fans wanting to get to the head of the line for what will be one of the premier venues in the nation, one that isn’t costing a cent of public money to create.
“It’s privately funded and we’re extremely proud of that, and extremely thankful to our majority owner, Mark Music, for that,” Sproat said. “It’s just got all the right things for Fort Wayne to be proud of. Our goal is to bring an elevation to the entire soccer community.
“Am I excited? Yes, I’m excited and so are the rest of us with the club.”
Fort Wayne Football Club will soon announce full season ticket pricing for 2026, but it has already announced tickets will cost as little as $300 to see the club play in USL League One. The league will have 21 franchises across the nation next year and while the details of the 2026 schedule haven’t yet been finalized, this year’s USL League One regular season runs March to October.
Coming off a successful run in pre-professional USL League Two, including division championships in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and trips to the conference semifinals the past two seasons, Fort Wayne Football Club’s staff is hard at work preparing for the move to the pros while getting Fort Wayne FC Park built.
“When you’re trying to build the foundation of a club while building the foundation of the stadium, what you learn is there’s a lot of prep time in all of that,” Sproat said. “The question I get a lot is: ‘Is the stadium going to be done in time?’ It is. It being an outdoor venue, once the main structure is done, everything will happen pretty quickly.”
And it’ll happen while boosting the local economy with local companies, such as architectural firm Design Collaborative, doing the work.
“Fort Wayne has a lot of talented people – subcontractors, general contractors, excavation companies, design companies, architects,” Sproat said. “There’s some sourcing out happening, but for the most part this is a Fort Wayne project through and through. The dollars are staying here, the jobs are staying here, and from that standpoint it’ll get done. The big upside is what’s coming.”
Sproat wouldn’t put a percentage on how far along the stadium build is, but he was emphatic it’ll be done in time for the 2026 season – with all the amenities, from parking to food, available on site.
“We are plenty percent along as where we should be, 100% sure we’re going to be done on time, and 100% excited about the project,” he said.
About Fort Wayne Football Club
Fort Wayne Football Club, founded in 2019, is moving to the professional ranks of USL League One in 2026. The club is building a new state-of-the-art, soccer-specific stadium, Fort Wayne FC Park, that will open at Bass Road and I-69 in 2026. In pre-professional USL League Two, Fort Wayne Football Club won Valley Division championships in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
About United Soccer League
Founded in 1986, the United Soccer League (USL) is the largest and fastest-growing soccer organization in the United States, impacting more than 200 communities nationwide. The USL is the first and only organization to offer a comprehensive youth-to-professional pathway for both men and women under one ecosystem. This structure includes four men’s leagues: the newly announced, top-tier professional Division I league, the USL Championship (Division II), USL League One (Division III), and USL League Two (pre-professional). The women’s pathway includes the top-tier USL Super League (Division I), which debuted in 2024, and USL W League, the country’s leading pre-professional women’s league. The USL also oversees USL Academy, a progressive talent development platform, and USL Youth, a premier national youth platform.