Electric City FC delays League1 bid

COVID-19 uncertainty prompts a one-year delay in effort to bring semi-professional soccer to city

Electric City FC has a busy 2021 planned, but it will not include playing soccer games.

A group working to bring semi-professional soccer to Peterborough confirmed Monday it is delaying its application for a League1 Ontario expansion franchise to 2022.

“It’s us being prudent and not rushing this project,” said Neil Morton, a spokesperson for Electric City FC.

“We are building a team from scratch and because of the uncertainty of COVID, we don’t want to launch a team in a season where we can’t have fans in our inaugural season,” Morton added.

“A lot of thought went into this in terms of the timing. We thought with COVID and the uncertainty it would be best to start it in 2022.”

Morton said the club will unveil the hiring of its first employee next month when the team’s president is announced.

The individual, who they are not yet prepared to identify, has experience building a soccer franchise from the ground up. The president will be tasked with putting a coaching staff in place and running the club’s day-to-day operations.

“We are very excited to have secured the services of an experienced project lead and future club president who will be formally announced in February and will be available for comment at that time,” Morton said.

“We will be naming a president who brings a heck of a lot of experience and credibility to this project that will be a gamechanger for Peterborough,” Morton said.

The club is also working on finalizing its ownership structure and hope to make a formal announcement on that by the end of spring.

The club also hopes to finalize plans with Hybrid Sports on the creation of its home pitch at the multi-sport complex to be developed on the former Rona property on Chemong Road.

“We are really excited about all the progress we have made,” Morton said.

“There has been lots of activity on the project behind the scenes over the past few months, building a solid foundation for the professional soccer club to be successful in Peterborough for many years.”

From its discussions with L1O, Morton said they do not expect the decision to delay their application to negatively impact their chances of landing a team.

The league is expected to make an announcement on its 2021 expansion plans within four to seven business days, said commissioner Dino Rossi.

“We fully respect the decision that was made by the Electric City FC group to defer their plans to apply to join League1 Ontario for a year,” Rossi said.

“Assuming we do consider expansion again for the 2022 season, we would welcome receiving an application from this ambitious group at the appropriate time.”

“We are going to be incredibly active in 2021,” Morton said, “when we announce our president. We are working on building an ownership structure and finding owners the next few months.

“We will be very loud in the community this year as we build a lot of momentum behind the team for 2022 and bringing pro soccer to Peterborough.

“This buys us more time in that regard, too, from a marketing standpoint to get everything in place including a website and social media. We will be doing a lot more outreach in the community.”

Even the team name remains in play, Morton said.

“We’re still not 100 per cent on Electric City Football Club. We think that’s the name, but we’re going to be doing more outreach in that regard too for possible names,” he said.

L1O, founded in 2014, is a development league for the Canadian Premier League and is geared toward aspiring players aged 17 to 27.

There were 17 men’s and 13 women’s teams in L1O’s last full season in 2019. The 2020 campaign was cancelled by the pandemic.