Outside90’s Dan Cunningham looks at what Major League Soccer newcomers Los Angeles have been up to in terms of club development.
“This is not a joke.”
LAFC clearly understand the power of a strong narrative – this being the opening gambit from Will Ferrell as LAFC coupled an event to showcase the club’s brand identity with one announcing him as the 26th member of their illustrious ownership group – a who’s who of the biggest names in sports and entertainment.
Getting their wings
LA is a city of stars so this play was not surprising, but behind the fanfare is an orchestrated blueprint for the success of this club.
That plan starts with creating interest, and their identity does just that.
LA is the City of Angels. ‘Wings’ are a special symbol of what this city stands for, so it is no wonder they gave the city a logo celebrating that – the defining feature is a stylised LA with an angel wing protruding through the A. It is simple, black and gold in colour and uncomplicated.
The logo speaks to the glamorous past of Los Angeles and specifically Hollywood’s golden age, when the style of the city fit under the umbrella of ‘art deco’. It is an identity firmly placing them in the heart of Los Angeles and confirming aspirations to create an internationally known brand.
Here is a great piece on the rigour that went into the development of such an iconic logo.
The crest. The colors. Meet @LAFC. https://t.co/H5KOG350LX
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) January 8, 2016
‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’
While LAFC’s identity makes them identifiable (so much so after this event that the club issued an email to fans stating that heavy demand for their Adidas LAFC cap meant it was on backorder), they need a culture to take form around it, as the famed Peter Drucker would advise.
The club made a bold promise, not only to the City of LA but also to soccer – that being “to unite the world’s city with the world’s game”. For this to happen, it needs to ask the brand-shaping questions to help paint the canvas it has been given to design a soccer club. It needs to make its gestures matter.
And so far, LAFC is doing this with a clear message to fans that they are as much the stewards of this team. They call these fans Originals and they are looking for them to help originate the club.
In good company
As things stand, LAFC are a soccer team whose payroll consists of no players or coaches, just an ownership group (with a net worth of more than US$4.5 billion) and a back office tasked not only with growing a club, but making one.
But with aspirations to be on a par with some of the great clubs in the world and to lead where soccer goes in America, its off-the-field team will prove just as significant. Here is some of the calibre so far:
- They hired former MLSer and local John Thorrington as the club’s executive vice president of soccer operations, with a brief to build the organisation from a solid youth academy to serve as a foundation of its whole organisation, to its team roster before the first ball is kicked in 2018.
- Carl Schloessman – a leader and expert in live entertainment and sport – joined to assume the chief operating officer position, responsible for all off-the-field operations and revenue-generating initiatives at the club.
- They named Joanne Wong as SVP of marketing to set the direction of the club’s brand strategy and marketing activities, as well as defining the fan experience within the new 22,000 seat, soccer-specific stadium.
- And they also tapped Jamie Guin from Sporting Kansas City as its SVP of partnerships to work on naming-rights deals and sponsorship opportunities.
Plenty more to come
Despite the unconventional – yet very LA – introduction of its brand alongside Will Ferrell, this is a group of people that is not joking when it comes to making this club succeed.
Only formally granted MLS entry 18 months ago, the club is attracting attention and making all the right moves (a playbook on ‘club development’ for David Beckham’s Miami franchise to follow, perhaps) with more than two years remaining before anybody officially kicks a ball.
But it is easy to focus on being the club of the future if you are not fighting to win in the present moment. So now with that endeavour well and truly in motion, what matters next is how the club surges forward to ensure a high-class performance translates on the pitch and in the league:
- A foundational step in uniting the city is the finalisation of their stadium and how they plan to innovate the fan experience (given its part in the city’s 2024 Olympics to envision Los Angeles as ‘the sports capital of the world’).
- Pushing for plans to have an academy teams on the field this year.
- Furthering conversations about the club fielding a second team in the USL.
- And most importantly, the build-out of their player roster to represents the kind of culture and style that we want to play. Plenty of rumours, none more interesting than the possibility of Cristiano Ronaldo’s American Dream.
Nothing but interesting times in Los Angeles, for the MLS and for soccer on the whole.
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