Year One for LAFC couldn't realistically have gone too much better.
The club were a success on and off the field: LAFC broke the record for most points by an expansion club, successfully opened state-of-the-art Banc of California Stadium, ingratiated themselves to Los Angeles seamlessly while their now-unmistakable black & gold brand was a huge hit.
“It exceeded our expectations on pretty much every level," LAFC co-owner Tom Penn told MLSsoccer.com last week. "We’re thrilled with the quality of our on-field performance, the North End performance with our supporters’ section that created this incredible, unique atmosphere in Los Angeles. The overall way that our stadium and training facility that came online really gave us the foundation for great growth and success.
“In general, as far as the launch phase of what we wanted to do, we feel like we hit our goals and exceeded our expectations," Penn added. "Now we can build on it.”
So what do they do for an encore?
"What we’re saying is 'better in every way,'" Penn said. "We want to double down on what we do well. … We’d say our on-field aspirations are to significantly improve and perform, play our exciting brand of football that scores a ton of goals and gets us a ton of wins. Our in-game atmosphere is second to none and we feel like we can improve upon that. Our commercial metrics, we have the ability to add more sponsorship partners and more corporate partners. We have the best premium inventory in the league and we’re adding more of that. I’d say our theme is to get better and do more of what we do really well.”
Banc of California Stadium | USA Today Sports
Part of the aspirations for Penn and co. come outside of soccer. With Banc of California Stadium being slightly modified to make it easier for the venue to host concerts and other events, there is growth to be had in the realm of entertainment.
“We’re a robust entertainment center, so we’ll host a lot of music concerts and festivals around our building," Penn said. "(The goal is) our building to become busy on virtually every day of the year.”
One of the club's top accomplishments in 2018 was how popular the brand became. An immediate success, the black & gold "LA" logo is helping the club become identifiable well beyond the city's limits.
“Our brand is already becoming globally recognized in part because of the two words “Los Angeles” in front of it," Penn said. "Then our definitive style with black and gold has achieved a lot of recognition around the world. As our play and players grow in stature, that’ll help. I think you’ll eventually see us as relative players in the global transfer market. There have been interest in a lot of our players already, as well as the movement of players to and from Europe, South America. We sit in an interesting place because we’re such an attractive destination for all sorts of global talent and we’ve proven with our style of play that players can transition out of here (to other leagues.)"
LAFC's name, and distinct brand, were in the global transfer market recently, as reports emanated from Spain that Barcelona were interested in signing Carlos Vela.
Carlos Vela celebrates | USA Today Sports
Vela shined in his first MLS season, with 14 goals and 13 assists in 28 appearances, but has a wealth of experience of success in Spain, starring for Real Sociedad from 2011-18. A potential move back to Spain never materialized last week. Penn is happy, but far from surprised about the interest.
“We love Carlos, he’s our (Lionel) Messi," Penn said. "He’s the face of our club and has been such an incredible part of our foundation. He’s in his prime, I’d expect other global clubs are going to have interest in him because there aren’t many guys on the planet as good as him. He’s truly world class. He’s really happy here and we’re thrilled to have him here.”
As LAFC gear up for Year Two of their rivalry with the LA Galaxy, Vela will be a leading figure once again. El Trafico got off to a tremendous start, organically becoming a can't-miss derby in MLS, another facet of LAFC's season that arrived ahead of plan.
“I was surprised at how intense and interesting the rivalry was right away, that really happened on the field with those epic games that we played," Penn said. "In the marketplace, we’ve always been a little different. In terms of location of our venue, everything’s new — our approach to how we build our brand is different than them, so there’s always these distinguishing factors. With the Galaxy, we’re shoulder to shoulder as partners in building the league in the boardroom, then we go nose to nose as competitors on the pitch.”
