SOCCER: The Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) provides an alternative for downtown Los Angeles soccer fans.
By Levi Murtaugh, Staff Writer
Downtown Los Angeles needed a soccer team—the LA Galaxy soccer team is too far, thirty minutes away to be exact, and it didn’t have room for the soccer spirit held within Los Angeles. With this in mind, the Los Angeles Football Club was created with the goal to be Los Angeles’s new soccer club. Right in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, next to the Coliseum, home of the new Los Angeles Rams, it seemed only fitting that LAFC’s new stadium should be built there. With a state of the art stadium, a motivated ownership group, fan focus and fantastic team branding, LAFC is sure to reach their goal.
The owner group responsible for creating LAFC is diverse but experienced and highly qualified. Owners such as actor Will Ferrell, U.S. Women’s National Soccer player Mia Hamm Garciaparra, NBA Hall of Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson , co-founder and co-creator of League of Legends Brandon Beck and life and business strategist Tony Robbins are all ready to make this club the best it can be, along with 22 other partial owners. Although this may seem to be an odd assortment of people listed, they all have a passion and drive to connect LAFC to it’s fans as much as they want to win the Major League Soccer cup.
The new LAFC stadium defines what the club stands for: motivation and fan connection. Located on Figueroa street near the Coliseum and the Staples Center, it’s the perfect place for downtown’s next professional sports arena. With the completion date set for the winter of 2018, construction workers started pouring the foundation for the stadium on December 8, 2016. “This is a major milestone for our team, fans and city,” Tom Penn, LAFC President and co-owner said. “This concrete pour is not only an important step towards the completion of the stadium, but also a significant accomplishment for the community that has helped make this dream possible.” And in keeping their promise to involve the fans every step of the process, two fans were randomly selected through an online drawing to attend the pouring of the concrete.