‘Spirits’ In The Arena-League World: Indoor Soccer Coming To PPL Center

“Where does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If it’s [tickets] we can’t buy
There must be another way”

-The Police / Gordon Sumner

Level: Premier

Oh, yeah.  There’s levels to this thing.  And Lehigh Valley will be at the top of the pyramid with St. Louis, Baltimore, Utica, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Tacoma, Inland Empire, and San Diego.  This season the Premier Division played 24 regular season games between late November 2025 and early April 2026 with playoffs starting about two weeks before AHL playoffs.  The weekly schedule seems very similar to hockey with games centered around weekends as much as possible and a two-fer when the road team has travelled a distance.  The schedule for 2026-27 isn’t out yet, but we’re anticipating a similar number of games along with a pre-season game or two, 12 Home, 12 Away.

What other levels are there?  Well, Div 2–MASL2–is the top minor league level, if you want to call it that.  Harrisburg is in that division.  In Div 3 it’s more of a semi-pro and development arrangement.  Delaware is a team close by.  There’s also a Women’s Division with 24 teams!  However, none are very close. Perhaps Columbus is the closest.

The Owners

Rob and Jim Brooks, owners of the Phantoms and other interests downtown, will be the owners of this arena soccer franchise.  We can assume many similarities in management with how the Phantoms are run as an organization.  You’ll see a bunch of cross-promotion.  But it is a different sport and likely a different market, so hopefully it doesn’t feel like a subsidiary.

Season Tickets

It’s more than we were hoping for–but at the top level of this sport it was never going to be a bargain.  Also, it’s disappointing that the inevitable cross-promotion with the Phantoms hasn’t yet resulted in any discounts for duel-membership.  No prices listed for the pink and dark purple areas in the above graphic–they’ll likely be for groups or just kept empty to keep the crowds more compacted, made available on an as-needed basis.  For per-game pricing divide by 12 for regular season games, or 14 if you want to include the pre-season game and the one included playoff game.

Suggestions

Oh, we’ve got ideas.  Once we wrote an ‘Open Letter’ to the Brooks with thoughts about the Phantoms long before they came to town.  It was over on the Noise Nation site, and it had mostly to do with the observations we had made at that time about things that had worked for the IronPigs and things that had not–and specific to this market as well.  So here we go with soccer although some of this stuff has already been decided:

1. Keep it affordable.  Our hockey tickets retail for $69 each on weekends.  That’s a lot.  Soccer is going to be even more family-oriented, we think, and it needs to be reasonable so that some of the immediate community around the arena (gentrification notwithstanding) can afford to come to the games.  Soccer is big in the cities as well as the suburbs, so keep that all in mind.  When the SteelHawks were playing indoor football they made it very affordable and the downtown community did support it.  Even though the season ticket prices above don’t really scream “affordable” there are ways to make access easier for the community through groups sales, promotions, as so on.  Do that not only to fill the seats but to familiarize folks with the product and the brand and to integrate into the community at large.
2. Make the turf available. The infrastructure is in place for this model, as ice time can be hard to come by in the Lehigh Valley, so they have in the past made sure that youth organizations can get access to it if they’re bringing a group or whatever. Remember, winter is tough training time for local soccer players. I’d go one step further:  Consider hosting a tournament–say, MLK weekend–and have teams come from all over.  One of the local clubs can help host it, but you’ll get a ton of exposure for the arena and the team, a bunch of concessions and merch sales, and some future groups to boot.  Also, tournaments make a ton of money.  They’re likely already on top of this, but we would recommend thinking outside the box a bit and not just repeating the hockey playbook verbatim.
3. Don’t make the turf orange.  Seriously.  We’ve heard the rumors about how the SteelHawks were pressured to change their colors to orange and how the Reading hockey team is highly encouraged to use orange.  The Brooks’ love their orange.  But man, if they color the turf orange, I’m out.  We’ve already seen the color scheme and the name mirror the Phantoms.  Expect a bunch more cross-promotion because they’ll be playing at the same time.  We’d caution about comingling the identities too much.  Do you wanna own two teams, or one and a half?
4. The naming.  Spirits are Phantoms, right?  OK, they missed an opportunity to unearth one of the Lehigh Valley’s older soccer franchise names.  Perhaps as an alternate identity at some point, Bethlehem Steel FC or The Keystones “Stoners”?
5. Don’t foget about girl’s soccer.  There are plenty of girls who play ice hockey, of course.  But girls soccer leagues are just as popular as the boys leagues and provide a full doubling in that youth and groups market.  Make sure you are reaching out to them.
6. Remember to sell warm merch.  Look, this is going to be a winter season.  The ice will still be in place so the arena will be on the cooler side.  We’re not going to be showing up in a T-Shirt, so be sure to sell me hoodies, quarter-zips, jackets, more scarves, and the like.  Long-sleeve shirts and polos are also great for layering.  Sell stuff we can wear to the games, please.

What’s Next?

They have a head coach and director in place.  They have an assistant coach and a community relations leader.  The gentlemen they have hired look, from the outside, like they have done it in this sport before and fully know what they’re doing.  Hopefully that experienced leadership–and no parent organization like the Flyers to answer to–will result in a very competitive team and success on the field.  Winning can be a nice marketing idea as well.

There will be an expansion draft and on Tuesday at Chickie’s you can go and see it live.  There will be some “choose your seat” opportunities as well if you’re interested in getting involved.

We’ll have to wait for the schedule, probably until after the AHL schedule has been released.  And, as we know, that has to wait for the NBA schedule–so it could be a while.  We know we’ll open regular season play on December 5.

Stay tuned–this isn’t the “Top Level of the Minors”–it’s the top level of the sport!  But we’ll be there, at least for the first season.  Follow along on social media or by entering your email below.

See you at the arena,

@Kram207