Featured image credit: New York City FC
Major League Soccer team New York City FC has officially commenced work on Etihad Park, its new all-electric stadium, which is scheduled to open in time for the 2027 season.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday (Thursday) and attended by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Councilmember Francisco Moya, Queens Borough president Donovan Richards, and representatives from the club.
The 25,000-capacity Etihad Park is being privately financed by the club and will also include retail, food and beverage facilities, office space, and a City Square plaza. The stadium will form part of a wider transformation of the Willets Point area that will also include 2,500 homes, a hotel and a public school.
Etihad Airways, the club’s shirt sponsor, acquired naming rights to the stadium last month as part of a 20-year deal. Etihad Park will replace Yankee Stadium as NYCFC’s home stadium and will be within walking distance of the New York Mets’ Citi Field and the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
The groundbreaking comes approximately a decade after NYCFC was founded.
NYCFC vice-chairman Marty Edelman said: “New York City FC committed 10 years ago to build New York City’s first-ever, soccer-specific stadium in the five boroughs, and today’s groundbreaking of Etihad Park in Willets Point, Queens, brings us one step closer to delivering that promise to our fans and our city.”
Mayor Adams added: “Today, we are breaking ground on Etihad Park – our city’s first-ever soccer-specific stadium – for New York City FC to call home and finally deliver New Yorkers the soccer stadium they deserve.
“Along with co-hosting the 2026 World Cup with New Jersey, this stadium puts us on the map as a world-class soccer destination, and it makes Willets Point the city’s premier sports hub. This stadium is part of our Willets Point transformation, building a neighbourhood with more housing, public space, and a new school out of the Valley of Ashes.
“We are scoring the city’s largest all-affordable housing project in the past 40 years, a new 650-seat public school for our students, more than 40,000 square feet of public open space, and good-paying jobs and economic opportunity for local residents.”
Etihad Park will be the first fully electric sports stadium in New York City and MLS. It will also be the first major-league sports venue to be built in New York City since 2012, when Barclays Center, home of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, opened its doors.
Share this