I thought I would have the honors of starting a new thread on our new Los Angeles NWSL team. pic.twitter.com/5oB54lQcYo— Mia Hamm (@MiaHamm) July 20, 2020 Looks like tomorrow's announcement is Angel City FC, a new #NWSL team, and it will launch with "We Are Angel City" as its branding. Appears Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder, and Mia Hamm are involved, but LAFC is not, per @GrantWahl. Also Natalie Portman, per @byIanThomas.— Caitlin Murray (@caitlinmurr) July 21, 2020 Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Serena Williams, Alexis Ohanian and many former USWNT stars involved in the LA NWSL ownership group.— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) July 21, 2020
The time has come to reshape expectations on & off the soccer field. This is the place. The time is now. Welcome to the beginning. #WeAreAngelCity pic.twitter.com/M3bvsmiAfm— Angel City FC (@weareangelcity) July 21, 2020
Wow, that's one of the best-written NWSL pressers I've seen in a long time! There's a bunch of fun information included all in there... Serena's *daughter* is included in the ownership group. There's a shout-out to the NWSL LA Twiter fan account. Damn but this will help getting better TV deals and league sponsorships too. =-) Bring on Angel City!
Sorry, I just now saw this thread. I posted 2 Athletic articles in the other thread about the new team, but honestly I don't know if they have more info than the informative NWSL piece. Good quotes though from Ohanian, Uhrman, and Portman in the 2 articles. Q&A piece with Natalie Portman Athletic article with quotes from Ohanian and Uhrman
Should we start doing player speculation already? I wanna speculate players. X-D I'm guessing that Press and Morgan will pull their WNT-strings to try to get to LA, probably by intentionally being left open in the expansion draft. There are plenty of SoCal players in the league, but if both of those two go to LA, that might hamper anyone else getting their wish, including any recent or 2021 college graduates. I would guess the team's three internationals would probably be Latin American players of some sort, but with the draw of Los Angeles and the massive ownership group involved, I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to pull one or two top-tier UEFA players either. Also, do any of those WNT owners step in to become the first coach?
Although both have strong ties to California, I think Press is even more likely than Morgan, at least initially, with Morgan now having additional ties to Florida with her husband now at USL's Fort Lauderdale team, not that they couldn't both uproot to move to CA if the situation was right. And who know where Carrasco will be over a year from now? I guess being near family would be a plus with a new baby, too. On timeline, the Athletic article says that this year's agenda includes getting a venue partnership and finalizing name and brand. The Angel City name is not locked in. Next year they'll start more on the soccer operations side. So, let's also go ahead and speculate on venue as well. And if you have complaints about the name/brand, it's time to get those in, too.
I don't really know much about the ethnic distribution of Californian population, so I really ask to know: how big is the Asian community in Los Angeles? You know, I have fond memories of Aya Miyama at Los Angeles Sol...
That's a good point! My impression was that the Asian population was higher the further up the coast you get (e.g. Bay Area up to Seattle) but there's probably a good Asian crowd in SoCal too. Still, it's dwarfed by the Hispanic/Latino population: from the LA Wiki page, Latinos (of any race) made up nearly half of the population in LA County as of the 2011, compared to 14% Asian. (The 2010 census for Los Angeles city itself produced similar numbers.) =edit= San Bernadino and Ventura counties have similar numbers to LA, but Orange County is noticeably less Latino and more Asian than the other three - but still 20% Asian to 35% Latino.
In some less satisfactory news.... do y'all remember when the Pride joined the league, and the USSSA Pride (Orlando-area fastpitch team) cried foul for branding? Well, Angel City Derby (LA's roller derby league) is now in the same situation with the Angel City soccer ownership group, even if the LA NWSL team takes on a different name.
Next to San Francisco bay area which I believe might have the edge on largest asian population, I believe we have the second largest population of various asian communities. We might be able to gain Chinese and South Korean internationals in addition to of course our favorite Japanese players. I remember meeting Miyama at a fan meet and greet for us season ticket holders and she was very quirky and funny. On the contrast, I couldn't get within 10 feet of Marta, there were too many people swarming all over her lol
LA at 483,000 + has more Asian/ Asian Americans than San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego there are pockets of higher percentages ( Fremont is 54%) NYC , at 1,135,000 dwarfs them all. Almost more than the top four CA cities combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._communities_with_Asian-American_majority_populations by percentages in cities over 100k, 9 of the top 10 are in CA. The leader is Honolulu with a 68% Asian American population.
While I'm not one to think an Asian American population is the only (or even the most important) metric to determine whether Japanese or Korean players could do well in LA, I just want to remind everyone that the designation "Asian American" includes groups like South Asians who might not find a Japanese player playing in the NWSL much of a draw. For example, Fremont definitely has a huge population of Asian Americans, but the largest percentage are from India and Afghanistan (I used to live in the Bay Area and spent a lot of time in Fremont; there are a good number of Chinese as well).
i haven’t seen any indications South Asians would follow a team of South Asians if it wasn’t their country, have you? There is another issue, I think. other than Serena Williams, the owner demographic seems white and female. One has to ask what the connection would be to any Asian population. Ussoccer or the previous LA ownership groups haven’t made any inroads into the Asian community any more than they have the Latino community, which is ten times larger. Here’s the sort of issues they are up against. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-soccer-latino-neglect/ Is the new ownership going to step up? Ussoccer won’t. the last teams in California operated under the assumption that because the cities had Spanish names there would be support from the Latino population. how did that go?
I mean I don't mean to brag, but this is a big city opportunity, whether its mens leagues or women's leagues... you come to Los Angeles and you get treated as a prince or a princess.... and you get extreme fandom just for the property. Many top women's players are going to be thinking about this opportunity...
not to be a Debbie downer...I’m struggling with what will make it work. The LA Sol had Marta, Camille Abily, Aya Miyama , Han Duan, and several USA and Canada NT players, won the league, and managed just over 6,000 a game with the kind of roster you think is the answer. They folded after one season. LA is pretty fond of winners. Not so much losing teams. galaxy attendance has gone down the last two years. Chivas never captured LA fandom.LAFC hasn’t yet matched the Galaxy. The Sol couldn’t afford the rent at the Home Depot center then. Now that’s its dignity health, will they be able to afford the rent now? It can’t have gone down. or if they play at Bank of California, will they be able to afford that rent? Will they be playing somewhere else? They don’t seem to be affiliated with either MLS team, Mia Hamm notwithstanding. So I don’t see any stadium rent subsidy from either MLS team. I think we need to see more about the business model.
Well, Utah got damn close to getting two OL players just this year; I think an LA team with otherwise the exact same situation that they have in SLC would be a much bigger draw. This isn't quite accurate... It's part of the bigger picture, yes, but the main problem with the LA Sol was that AEG only agreed to get the team off the ground and WPS couldn't find a year 2 buyer. Considering what happened with WPS in the following two years, I think this was more a problem with the expectation and business model of the league overall and less a condemnation of LA Sol itself or LA as a market for WoSo. We certainly need to see more about the current model for this LA team, yes - but at the same time, we've seen that NWSL as a whole seems to have found a working model. We're past the "growing pains" point and I think this ownership group will be entirely conscious of that. Heck, with *so many* people in the group, I bet this team will be very, very stable, since it would take quite a wide-ranging scene change to get enough people out that pulling in replacements would be hard.
here’s from an article after the Sol folded: So AEG didn’t just bail because they only agreed to do it one year. They were divesting MLS holdings while paying themselves THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION DOLLARS in rental fees charged to the Sol and three million in operating expenses in addition to Martas half million a year cash. The only buyer, the firestone family, wouldn’t pay those rentals and wanted to move the team to Fullerton’s soccer field. https://funwhileitlasted.net/2012/02/09/2009-los-angeles-sol-soccer/ Salaries will be lower, but where is the business model that says they can afford the rentals and expenses in the same stadium again? ijust don’t see that a team in LA is an slam dunk success unless they think they can get Thorns-like attendance without being linked to an mls team that owns the stadium. they didn’t exactly fill up the Rose bowl last time.
I hadn't ever heard that part of the story about an actual owner being found with that many details, thanks for the link! I know there had been talks that fell through, but never saw any names or locations attached. I wonder why that didn't enter popular discourse much at all; I don't recall seeing that here on the WPS boards back in the day, at least, and we're a fairly tapped-in group. I know they've been in discussions with the Galaxy, but nothing has sounded close to finalized, so I would think that even if they do end up in Digny, it wont' be as bad as the Sol had it. (I'm thinking akin to how the Red Stars have, over time, negotiated a rather low rent at Toyota Park.) Plus such a large ownership group probably is better-equipped to soak high rent than the weak agreement AEG set up was.
Complete aside: If LA NWSL's first match isn't an owners-vs-players exhibition match, their marketing person deserves to be fired. X-D
Bob Williams @WilliamsBob75 10h NWSL expansion team Angel City has brought in new front office staff members: - Jessica Smith as Head of Corporate Partnerships - Kim McCauley as Director of Recruitment and Analytics - Catherine Dávila joins as Head of Community
Ah, expansion forum is a thing! Yeah, I highly doubt they build a new SSS, especially in a city with two top-notch SSSs already present, and probably many more than that when you look past the two MLS teams. If they don't rent with one of the MLS teams, I bet they rent with a local school and *maybe* pony up some money to improve/expand that stadium to NWSL standards.
Based on the school facilities I have been to (which is quite a few), I do not think they will be looking there. For what is expected in terms of a high level professional sports fan experience, there are very few -- if any -- school facilities that come close to being able to provide it.