As LAFC prepares for its first home game, the team tries to forge a lasting identity
The Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) will play its first home game at Banc of California Stadium in South LA’s Exposition Park on Sunday.
As Major League Soccer’s (MLS) latest expansion team, LAFC carries the challenge of building and maintaining a lasting fan base in Los Angeles.
“From the beginning, we wanted to unite the world’s city through the world’s game,” LAFC President Tom Penn said. “It sounds lofty, but we believe that this sport, unlike any other, appeals to the diverse population of Los Angeles. It’s in their blood.”
Before LAFC began its inaugural season in March, Chivas USA was LA’s second professional soccer team. LA Galaxy is the first, having been up and running since 1996. Branded as a daughter-club of Mexican team Club Deportivo Guadalajara, Chivas USA competed in the MLS from 2005 to 2014. They shared the Stubhub Center with Galaxy in Carson for the entirety of their run.
Chivas USA started off successfully, reaching the playoffs in four of its first five seasons. But they quickly fell off of a cliff, failing to make the playoffs from 2010–14 and posting the lowest attendance numbers in the MLS for their last two years. In their final year, the average game attendance was just over 7,000 — still the all-time low for any MLS team. Ultimately, Chivas USA folded in October 2014, creating a vacuum for LAFC to fill. The new team was announced just three days later.
“I think there were plenty of fans in Southern California who bought into what Chivas USA was looking to represent — a club that was very proud of its Mexican identity, a club that tried to play a different style of soccer. But I think it really never managed to develop its own unique identity that would draw and attract people,” said Keegan Pierce, former director of communications and broadcasting for Chivas USA from 2004–09. “It wasn’t able to get out of the shadow of its parent club.”
Chivas USA’s closure generated doubts over whether Los Angeles could support two MLS teams. Pierce believes there is space for two soccer franchises in the city, but also noted the unique challenges the market presents.
“It’s a city that offers so many different options in terms of entertainment,” he said. “As we always used to say at Chivas USA … You’re not just competing with other sports clubs, you’re not just competing with the Hollywood entertainment industry. You’re competing with the beach and you’re competing with Las Vegas and you’re competing with a whole bunch of options for people to spend their free time.”
Pierce sees LA’s eclectic population as another factor sports franchises must consider when establishing a team’s identity. According to him, appealing to the city’s Latino population is essential.
“I think also the diversity of Los Angeles certainly makes it a place where a sports team can be really successful,” Pierce said. “But, sports executives need to be culturally savvy enough to know how to speak to lots of different audiences, and at the same time make all of those audiences feel like they’re part of a bigger thing that’s not just one particular language or one particular neighborhood.”
LAFC will become the first professional soccer team based in South Los Angeles since 1981. While Galaxy’s StubHub Center is situated nearly 20 miles from downtown, Banc of California Stadium is in Exposition Park. Located less than four miles from the city center, it could potentially expose a wider, and more diverse, audience to the MLS.
“We really see it as a community asset,” LAFC President Penn said of the stadium.
He pledged lower ticket prices than most professional sports teams, in an effort to reach fans from varying economic backgrounds. Currently, tickets for the home game against Minnesota United on May 9 are listed for as low as $20 on the team’s website. Comparatively, tickets for the Galaxy’s next home game bottom out at $30.
In his efforts to make LAFC a lasting fixture in the city’s sports culture, Penn isn’t exactly taking notes from his predecessor.
“Everything,” Penn said, when asked what he wants to do differently.
While Chivas USA was marketed overtly for Latin American audiences, Penn has different ambitions for LAFC.
“Our approach is to appeal authentically to all of LA. We didn’t target any specific demographic, or any specific ethnicity and our results show that we have a true cross-section of Los Angeles as our stakeholders,” he said.
Chivas USA may now be a footnote in LA sports’ history, but the five-time MLS champion Galaxy is still going strong. Over the last two decades Galaxy has had time to win over the hearts of the city’s most passionate soccer fans, fielding world-renowned players like David Beckham, Landon Donavon and Steven Gerrard in the last 10 years.
After enduring three straight down-years (at least by the franchise’s standards), the Galaxy signed international superstar Zlatan Ibrahimovic away from Manchester United in March. They have sold out every game since then. That includes their 4–3 win over LAFC at the StubHub Center last month, in which Ibrahimovic debuted spectacularly with two goals against their new LA foe. The rivalry game between the two teams has been unofficially, and hilariously, called “El Trafico,” meaning “the traffic” in Spanish.
If the Galaxy wasn’t considered competition for the brand-new LAFC before, they certainly are now. Not only are the two clubs vying on the pitch, they are also vying for the support of LA’s soccer community.
“I’ll probably stay a Galaxy fan,” long-time supporter Steve Cavella said before the inaugural “El Trafico” showdown on March 31. “I’m happy for the new team though. It’s competitive, you know, it’s like the Clippers and Lakers, so it’s pretty cool.”
Both teams have garnered widespread media attention during the MLS season so far, creating a buzz around the sport unseen since Beckham hopped across the Atlantic to join the Galaxy in 2007. Penn, however, isn’t worried about the Galaxy’s recent resurgence, as he’s confident there’s room for both teams to flourish.
“This is a massive market,13 million people with an enormous economic output,” he said. “So there’s a massive number of people and the ability to support two of everything. Two NBA, two NHL, two NFL, two major colleges. It certainly can support two MLS.”
In a city saturated with “two of everything” in professional sports, Penn believes LAFC will still be able to stand apart from the crowd.
“We really appeal to a different audience,” Penn said. “The demographics or the studies show that. This is an audience that loves this sport and that loves the community aspect of what we’re doing. We’re more affordable than all those others, and we now have a nicer stadium than all those others.”
So far so good for Penn’s team: The first LAFC home game this Sunday is sold out.
