Chief Brand Officer Rich Orosco Talks All Things LAFC & MLS.

From 2011-2012 he was the General Manager of L.A.’s newest sports team, the Los Angeles Matadors, in the World Series of Boxing and an Executive Producer of the World Series of Boxing (2011) TV series on Fox Sports West.

The Knockturnal: So Rich, what we experienced today was indeed an experience. Usually, when you go to these fields, they’re a little bit old and kind of not up to date, but I felt like your stadium belonged in an issue of Architectural Digest.  Talk about little about the aesthetic of it.

Rich Orosco: Yeah. I’ll credit our ownership group first. Because they’re a combo of LA fans and world football fans. So when you have an opportunity to create new club in a global suit like LA and you’re an ownership group that wants to create a legacy for the city, you’re going to go for it. So the idea was to fit LA. So there’s the premium that every LA sports fan wants, but also to be a stadium and a facility for the people to be accessible. Our fan section support section, like we talked about, those are $25 seats and they started at 22.

The Knockturnal: But those are $25 seats forever, right?

Rich Orosco: Yeah. For 3000 fans. So most of the season ticket memberships are, they’re early adopters. Right there when they’re early. But every year there’s always turnover with season ticket members. So the idea is to really come and feel the culture and get it, you kind of got to get what you’re walking into when you’re there and you want to bring it, you want to meet people there and then they will literally, the groups actually give access to extra tickets. Believe it or not, you could always get tickets in the secondary market, but the core season ticket members, you literally have to be about the community and a part of the community for them to share the season ticket allotment, which is pretty… Which is what keeps the culture and it keeps it special.

The Knockturnal: Talk about the community and why it’s so important to actually be a part of it and not just say you’re part of it.

Rich Orosco: So even on our Instagram today in the bio, it’s street by street block by block, one by one. So for us, communities are our identity. It’s not a marketing campaign, it’s not a slogan. We’re not buying around it. It’s just who we are, and who we are that every conversation matters. Everybody’s welcome, and we’re inclusive, but we have to be about it and live by it, which is why it’s still on our social handles. So as long as the entire organization has that headspace of every single conversation matters, you have never been to one of our matches. It’s important for you to experience it and it’s important for me to take five minutes of my day to share about that. That’s how you build community. You don’t build community with a marketing campaign. You can’t do that in LA with 10 sports teams, and I won’t name teams, but teams have tried that as they were new in the city, to throw a campaign up right away saying that they’re fighting for LA, but that doesn’t work.

You got to be on the ground, you got to be about it. And you got to really have that one-by-one patience because of every marketer’s holy grail, is word of mouth. So we just had the long-term patience to create word of mouth. We believe in the product, but then you got to share it one by one. Thankfully now people talk about it and they share it with their friends and that’s what the beautiful thing is. We had to have long-term patience and have depth with the community and not with a lot of people talk “communities”, a super cliche word, but you’ve got to be about it and you got to show up. That’s the hardest part.

The Knockturnal: Soccer is still not at the forefront yet, in America. Why do you think that is and how can we get there?

Rich Orosco: So it’s actually a pretty easy answer. The league is only 25 years old. If you go to Argentina or England or Germany, I’m talking 60, 70, 80, a hundred plus years old, the leagues. So if you look at it that way, we still have time to be baked into the culture. So we’re 25 years old. The NBA I believe is probably at least 60 years old, around there. MLB is perhaps the same. So this is the world’s game. We’ve already seen how it does around the world and how it penetrates culture and is culture around the world. So if you have any common sense, we’re early, it’s already worked all around the world. The US is a super diverse country. Bid on MLS for the future for sure.

The Knockturnal: In the future do you think it’ll be at the same level as the three top leagues?

Rich Orosco: We already have more attendance, average attendance than the NHL. So we’ve already passed hockey, which is interesting because hockey’s very regional right in the parts of the US or Canada actually can play hockey and has that in their culture. So I think soccer and football has a much more powerful, scalable opportunity because it’s everywhere. It’s all over the US and it’s all over the world. So if you saw what hockey did as it grew, and now that we’ve passed hockey and average attendance, we’re the fastest-growing league in the United States Professional League and the youngest skewing league in the United States. So do the math for the next 25 years. So we’ll be up there with NFL, NBA, and MLB for sure. We’re on MLB’s heels. You go to an LAFC match or an MLS match and compare it to a baseball game, we’re right there.

The Knockturnal: Obviously you killing LA, do you stay in LA? Do you expand? 

Rich Orosco: The exciting thing for us is we are a showcase for what can be done in a major market. There are other amazing successful music franchises that are doing great in other markets. Austin’s a great example. They actually have the same stadium architect as ours. Our staffs are close. We have regular dialogue. So we were able to share our key learnings as we establish LAFC to help the next MLS club in the next market learn from us and then create their own recipe for success. And Austin’s a great example. They have our DNA in their ethos, but they’ve also made it their own. With the Verde with Green. St. Louis next year is going to kill it.

The Knockturnal: Well, I guess it makes sense for you to only share what you learned. Because if you want MLS to grow as a whole, then I guess it’s important to share the knowledge.

Rich Orosco: Always. And yes, we’re all about LAFC, but we’re about football culture in the US. Right. We want to see it grow. It is growing. It’s going to happen on its own, but we feel like we have to create the right representation here in LA. We do feel generous in spirit that we got to share our learnings and we want to travel to St. Louis and have that stadium sold out when they play LAFC. We want Austin sold out when they play LAFC and vice versa. That’s when we know we’re a collective success.