|
The new Major League Soccer team in Los Angeles will officially be known as Los Angeles Football Club -- or LAFC for short -- the club announced on Tuesday. When LAFC begins play in 2018 it will retain the name it used during the league's announcement of the club last year. The club replaces Chivas USA as the second team in southern California, and club marketing director Rich Orosco told the Los Angeles Times that the club will look to differentiate itself from the LA Galaxy. "Our opportunity in L.A. is how do we tell the story differently," he said. "We're going to be big into music, art and fashion. The design aesthetic. "We're going to be a great outlet for creativity. It's one of our club pillars." LAFC is owned by Malaysian billionaire Vincent Tan, American venture capitalist Henry Nguyen and a celebrity-studded list of minority investors including Magic Johnson, Peter Guber, Tony Robbins, Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra. "The name that we chose is true to Los Angeles, authentic to world football and speaks to our global ambitions," Nguyen said. The new club still hasn't chosen its official colors, although its initial publicity materials have been red and black. The ownership group already has revealed plans for a 22,000-seat, soccer-specific, privately funded stadium on the site of the Los Angeles Sports Arena, which will be demolished. The club's new stadium will be downtown in Exposition Park, next door to the University of Southern California and the venerable Coliseum, which has hosted two Olympics and the first Super Bowl. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
|
