 Welcome to Start Up The Storefront, presented by Aurobora. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Dan from Orange County Soccer Club. Thanks for coming. People who don't know, what does your company do? What is the thing you're doing? What's your pursuit? First of all, thank you very much for having me. Well, hopefully the name's sort of in the title. So Orange County Soccer Club, we are a professional soccer team in Orange County. I'm obviously English and I would love to call it football. But in this country, I have to keep calling it soccer. We're a professional team. So everyone, I think, has heard of the MLS, which is obviously the top league here in America, and we play in the USL, which is the level below. So it's the second tier, but it's still fully professional. We play in front of 5,000 sometimes drunken fans every other Saturday from March to October in Irvine in Orange County. And it's a really good standard of soccer in a really fun, family-friendly environment. So if you're a sports fan, it's a great place to go. So if you're a soccer fan, it's a really interesting concept because it is different from what you might see on television, but it's a great place to go. I want to have you on for a couple of reasons. One, obviously, the MLS is exploding at the moment. We could actually say it's been exploding for some time. There's always been these moments where someone like Massey comes on, whether it's Beckham or some of these other players that have come on prior. But here we are in sort of what seems to be a real soccer explosion in America where even Apple TV is getting involved. And so there just seems to be a lot more eyeballs in this, even the female side of it with the Angel City. There's a lot more content being created. And so it seems like there's a bigger buzz. Ryan Reynolds goes ahead and he's buying a team, not at the quite the Premier League, but nonetheless he's in mix and he's bringing buzz to that. And so what made you want to do this? What did you see opportunity wise, business wise, that you said, you know, this is besides of being a fan, what opportunity did you see? Yeah, it's a really interesting moment in soccer here. Because obviously soccer has been around for a long time. And theoretically, some of the best players in the world have played in America, albeit in what felt more like an exhibition format when Pele used to play at the New York Cosmos. And obviously the World Cup was here back in 1984. And so that should have been the moment that sort of sparked the growth of the game. And it certainly made a difference, but it never really caught on quite the same way, so the major four American sports stayed on top. I would say in the last probably two or three years, it's really started to really catch fire and then probably the last 18 months. And it's a weird combination, I think of four factors that feel like they shouldn't be related, but somehow are. So Ted Lasso, which, you know, it's the most optimistic man in the world. Yeah, I mean, it's just a TV show, but it's also a TV show that somehow, you know, I think people were looking for good news and a fun, positive story. And it just happened to be set around soccer. And the number of people in America who might not know anything about soccer, but watch that show, I think that starts bringing the sport into the orbit of some people who didn't know. So you've got that. Then you've got the whole Ryan Reynolds, We Are X and things. Everyone knows that, you know, the power of Hollywood. But what where it's worked actually really well for our team is, you know, he buys a team that's lovely, but he hasn't bought a Premier League team, as you say, he's bought a team who were in the fifth division when he bought them. They're now in the fourth division. So Americans who never really understood the concept of promotion, relegation, but also the concept of there being anything other than the top league, there's plenty of people in America who don't know there's a G league and an XFL, they just know, you know, the big sports. So why would there be in soccer a second tier? I think We Are X has helped people understand that in advanced soccer countries, there's multiple levels. And in terms of level, the league two, which is where Rex and now sit, is probably the equivalent of the USL. So I think our teams would, if Rexon played against Orange County. What a dream that would be. It would be a dream. I mean, they were in San Diego recently and we did try and see if we could do something with them. But level wise, I think they would beat us in in Wales because our players wouldn't be used to the the wind and the rain and the snow, but I think we could beat them out here. So I think that's made a that's brought, you know, football, sorry, soccer into people's consciousness. Then you've got the fact that the World Cup's here in three years time. And the way America does sporting events, however much you hate soccer, when it comes, you'll know it's here. There'll be so much media. There'll be so much coverage. It will be everywhere. And it's in the Americas. It'll be Canada. I think, yeah, all of North America. Yes, it will be all of North America, but the way the Americans will do it will be like, you know, 50 Super Bowls in a month. So it will be it will be huge. So the soccer fans will lose their money. There's not a single game in LA, by the way. Well, they're still working that through. I think I'm really hoping that at least. Yeah, there's some weird strange pitch width issues that they're trying to work through for so far. But I think it will be amazing for the sport to have it here, because you just won't be able to avoid it. And then I think the fourth piece is Lionel Messi coming here. And again, he's one of those sports stars who transcends the game. So if somebody in the world knows one player's name, it will be his. They won't know the offside law. They won't really understand the game, but they'll know who he is. And I think, again, that that's super stardom in America, particularly play so well. So you had those four factors together and sort of everyone now is becoming a fan. So you've had your diehards for years who get up at five o'clock on a Saturday morning to watch their EPL team. But now you've got people just taking a this broader interest in the game because of these different factors. And I think it it makes a massive difference. And you're starting to see it now with things like. So Tom Brady, who obviously everyone's heard of from his sport, has now now owns part of a soccer team in England. JJ Watt now owns part of a soccer team in England. Obviously you've got Ryan Redwoods and what he's doing. And I think soccer has become sexy now. It's not this sort of nerdy sport with slightly complicated rules. Everyone wants to play it. And the American women are the best in the world and have been for a very long time. So that definitely helps as well. And so what opportunity did you see in there other than like more specifically as it relates to what does the upside look like? And so what I don't know anything about this is why I find this fascinating. And so when I think about Magic Johnson as a cool story, where when he first got into like the professional business arena, so outside of basketball, he learned that he could take an AM radio station and flip it to FM. And that's how he made his first amount of money. And so the idea is you buy a station, no one listens to it. You get it popular enough to where there's a bunch of listeners. Then you acquire or, you know, you have now the audience that garners specific attention to the heights of an FM radio station, which sounds so antiquated today. But once you once you flip it, then you've basically bought an AM asset, right? So in the real estate game, an underutilized asset, and then you've built something really interesting, and now it's worth a lot more. Same asset, you just did something. And so you can do that in digital space, AM FM. Is soccer the same way? I think it is now. So. So that's what you see in there. That's the. Yeah, 100 percent. I think sports teams are not always, you know, there's certainly in England, there used to be this joke around, you know, how'd you become a millionaire? You start as a billionaire and you buy a soccer team. And, you know, there's something in that sports is not known. It's known as a place where rich people can write off some of their tax losses and have some fun all the way. And that was, you know, that was definitely the case. And in the USL, the league we play in, it would be fair to say teams are not turning a profit at the moment. But there's a real opportunity because of the growth of the game and because beyond the MLS, there's so much upside opportunity. The the franchise value is where the real opportunity is. So, you know, as a team, I think that's super. We can definitely there's a there's a real sort of revenue opportunity in the traditional sense. So we sell all the things you'd expect us to sell. We sell merchandise like that. Wonderful scarf that you're wearing. Thank you. The gnome, the mascot. We also sell tickets. We have sponsorship revenue. We have a unique opportunity in our league. So in America, in if somebody's moving from an NBA team to another NBA team, you'll be trading them for a player or maybe for draft picks or some future value. In soccer, everywhere else in the world, people are paying money for players. And we've seen an opportunity. Interesting. OK. We've been the first team to do this really significantly here in America. So we've sold six players to European teams. So those transfer values are not huge at the outset. So it can be a few hundred thousand dollars. But the way these things work is so we sold a player the other day to Feyenoord, who are the Dutch champions, and we sold him for it. It was a few hundred thousand dollars. He's now playing over there. They are the sort of team who will develop a player and then sell them to a man United or a Newcastle or a PSG for 10, 20, 30 million dollars. And we get some of that. OK, so you get a future value. Some kind of sort of it depends on the player and on the deal, but these things can be somewhere between 10 and 20 percent. So wow, you start getting checks for that's a lot of hot dogs you have to sell to match what you can get from selling a player. Just so I understand it. And so when you think about the business, you think, OK, my revenue models, right? And so if there's a list of three of them, the number one revenue source is sourcing these players, identifying talent, I guess, and then selling them. Is that number one? So not yet. So the traditional model has been like every sports team. It's say it's sponsorship. It's merchandise, it's ticket sales and, you know, concessions in the stadium, all that sort of usual. And we have that and it's growing because the sport's growing and we're selling out the stadium. But we have, I suppose you would call the fifth quarter, as it were. So we've got this extra opportunity which teams haven't really been doing in the American soccer market, which is about player value. So in America, if there's a good player who's 15 or 16, the dream for his or her parents is go to college and the scholarship is covering the tuition. That's what you want. That doesn't really work for high level soccer. If you are Barcelona or Rio Madrid, you don't want a kid who's now 21, who spent three years playing against other kids. Like that's not how you develop a player. You want a player who's 16, who you can teach the way you want to play, you know, the methodology of your club. You manage all their nutrition. They're not having to worry about studying for some sports science degree. When I was 13 or so, I was in Massachusetts playing soccer. And so we ended up getting plucked to go play in Belgium, a small group of us. And for people listening, that's when that's when it all happens. 12 to probably even at 14, you're probably a little bit you're on your way out if you're not really that talented. So 12 to 14 is when you start to get plucked into these farm teams into this like grooming and it's always overseas. It can be in South America. It can be in Mexico. It can be but mostly for the most part, if you want to make it, it's in Europe. Yeah. And at that time, for me, personally, that's when I knew my career was over because I was now on on the pitch on the field with some crazy talented people. You know, it would be like here's Federer like you're seeing Federer. You're playing on the field with him. You might be a year, two years older, younger, doesn't matter. But the talent level is so insane. That's when I knew for me it was over. I tried to make it work, but it didn't. And then to your point before, then you're playing in high school in college is effectively a complete waste of time. Unless you some people do, they have later, you know, later on things click. But for the most part, it doesn't work that way. No. And, you know, obviously American colleges, you know, playing division one soccer is a real thing. You know, there's very talented player. But as you say, there's a fact, you know, sometimes Americans struggle with this as a concept, but there are people in the world who are better at things in the major American sports. You know, the World Championship is the domestic league. But obviously in soccer, everyone knows that the best soccer is played in Europe at club level. So even though, you know, maybe the best nation might be Brazil, but all of their best players go and play in Europe because that's just where it is. And part of the reason the American soccer team are doing so well at the moment is because their players, and this is no disrespect to the MLS, but their players are not playing here. They are playing at Chelsea and AC Milan and Juventus and Barcelona. They're testing themselves at the gates, the very best in the world. Yeah, the top strikers at Chelsea, right? And then they're bringing it back and playing for the national team at this new higher level because they've seen a different way. Which is what every other country does. Which is what every other country does. That's pretty standard. And it hasn't been a thing in American soccer. So we've started making it a thing. So we've sold more players to European teams than any other team in North America. So more than MLS teams. Wow. And how do you do that? What are you sourcing them? So I think it's a couple of things. So we would never talk about players as commodities as it were, but this is a business-facing podcast. So, you know, there's a horse betting. There's a bit of supply and demand here. So you need to find the players, you need a system to develop the players and then you need a place to send them. And there are some teams here who are amazing at one or two of those things. But you have to do all three because you can't sell players if they're not good enough. If you get brilliant players and can't do anything with them, there's nothing really to sell there. So you need that ability to recruit. You need to really work at how to develop and then you need somewhere to go. And I think for us it almost started at the far end of this. So we had an incredibly well set up network because our sporting director was Swiss, had played at a good level, had worked as an agent, had worked as a coach. He had amazing relationships with European teams. His deputy was formerly the chief scout at a Premier League team. So he was very good at sort of understanding player skills. And we had a good young player. So he was a player who was the US under-18 goalkeeper and we used our network and we sold him to Rangers who were team best team in Scotland or second best team, depending on if you ask the other team in Scotland. And we sold him there and I think when we sold one, people started thinking, what is this that they're doing because it's so different to any other model? And we used that first one to show it can be done. And then we started recruiting on the basis that come to us, you get to play in a real level of football in front of real fans. So against men and with men, not just people your own age and you will learn the game in a different way. And then we'll show you. And that's our deal. We come to us, play for a while and then you'll go. And as part of your pitch, come to Southern California. Yeah. I mean it has to be, right? There's certainly something in that because there's worse places to live and to work and to play. But we hired a guy out of Inter-Miami's Academy, young guy called Kobe Henry. He came to play for us. He played central defense alongside a chap called Michael Orozco who'd played 28 times for the US national team. So you've got a very experienced older player with this young guy. We win the national championship. So we get a star on our logo in the logo. I like that part of America, you don't get that in England. It's on the scarf. It's everywhere. The star is everywhere because we've got it. And then we sold him to a team in France for what was then a record transfer fee for our league. And then, and he was the US under 19 captain. We've also had the US under 18 captain who we just sold to Feyenoord. So the other day we ended up recruiting probably the best 16-year-old in the country. He was at Atlanta United and he came to us. Maybe some of it was the weather, but also because he can see the future and the future is play for us for a year or two. Learn from some of the best. Yeah, we'll integrate you into the first team because you can't start these kids too young because then they get brutalized in quite a physical league. So you've got to time it and then you go and you see these players earning real money and having real opportunity over in Europe. And it's becoming a conveyor belt now. That's pretty cool, yeah. So taking it back to the business, this year we will have done maybe 10 to 20% of our revenue will be from the transfer model. If one of these players gets that second transfer, then somebody's writing you a check for one to five million and that starts being really significant. So what do you do with that as a businessman? Do you start thinking to yourself, how do I reinvest it in the business and then what do you reinvest it in? Is media and opportunity is streaming? I don't know, TV right, that's big enough for that. Some of the TV stuff is through the league, we've just actually announced a deal with CBS. So games are gonna be on CBS and Paramount, which is great for us. I think for us, it's about then developing the next players. So it's finding them. So go back to what you're good at, building the better system. There's a sort of twin track to this. So there's one part of it, which is just building the club in all the normal ways. How do we get more people in? How do we increase average ticket revenue? How do we sell more? How many more gnomes can we sell this year? Normal growth of any business. We've got three revenue streams. How do we grow each of those ones? But this player development one, it's a different type of skill set required. And some of it I think is about first mover advantage. And then it gives us this chance to build this up. But then also what you start having is really exciting young players. Some of the best young players in the country are playing for our club. People want to come and see those. Hopefully when the World Cup's here in three years' time, we're hoping a couple of the players in that national team will be our former players, which is incredible for branding, both for recruiting more players, but then also back to selling tickets, merchandise, sponsorship, and so on. So if you get it right, it's a really interesting model. I think about it like, OK, so you understand the concept of sort of getting the asset. In this case, it's the players. And then I think the hardest part would seem like you want to get the right coaching or the right scouts, the right people that the players can also trust, saying this guy has found and has identified. Yeah, it is. And there's a whole methodology. I don't want to give away any trade secrets, but actually, much as I'd like to say this whole thing is me, the guys on the technical side of the business are the ones who've perfected this model. But there's a whole thing. We've got the first team. We've got the reserves. And they're in different locker rooms. And they train on sort of adjacent fields. And there's a way of just helping the younger players. Someone has a good session or is showing the right sort of characteristics. You let them train with the first team for a while. But then you send them back appropriately as well. Just to get that balance right, give them opportunities. There have been games where we've had a couple of injuries. So we've put a young player on the bench with no intention of playing him. So he goes on the flight with the grown-ups. He sits on the bench with the grown-ups. He sees where the TV cameras are. He hears the thousands of fans in the stadium. That whole thing, it's like everything. It's 10,000 hours. So it's just getting them used to some of this. So when they have their moment, they're not scared. They've been blooded as it were. And there's a whole thing. You can't go too soon. You can't go too slowly. I think a big thing, and it's the sort of thing that you wouldn't think about as a sports fan. You go along and you watch whatever it is. The home runs, the dunks, whatever it is in your sport. But dressing room etiquette and knowing how to conduct yourself as a professional is incredibly important and really highly valued by European teams. And I think in the past, maybe, I think I'm allowed to say this, living in America as a guest of your country. But I think there has been a brashness to Americans that hasn't always gone well in Europe. And if you turn up in a European football dressing room and you think you're amazing because you were the best kid at 12 years old in your high school in Ohio, as you say, the experience you had, you go and see these players, they're like, who is this guy? And you can get eaten up really quickly. So there needs to be, you've got to have the self-confidence, but there needs to be the ability to be coachable, to be teachable, to be part of a team. And for us, that's a really big part as well. It's the sort of, how do you behave on road trips? How do you conduct yourself? Because if you go into Europe and you're not ready for that, there's a load of kids who are about the same standard who do know how to do that, and then you just get thrown on the pile. That's so incredibly true. I think the way I would phrase it is, I definitely didn't have it. I think I was the brash American you're referring to, unfortunately. But I think what I learned was the quiet confidence matters a lot. So just once you get your moment, be willing to step up to the plate and know you have it, but don't ever say anything you don't have to say. Tell me about your trip. So obviously, I know you went as a group, not as like an individual trial, but I know you said you realized quickly that you weren't at the level, but how did the group take it? Did everyone come away thinking, maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was, or how did that play out? Yeah, and so a bunch of us went, I remember the first time we practiced, the coach, we all end up going to this field, and the coach just throws the ball up and goes, all right, you guys make your own teams eight on eight, go. And nobody knew each other. None of us had known each other. Some of us had knew each other because we've seen each other play, or happened to play against each other once or twice at like regionals, but no one knew each other. And so we were like, okay. And so you immediately, the coach is really just vetting out who's the leader here, right? And so you're on the spot immediately. And so it went from all of us getting our Adidas bags, which had home and away jerseys and us being like, wow, you know, to balls up fields. And I'm just walking, like I'm like lost. I was also really young. I was the youngest kid on the team. So I really had no idea. And the coach is yelling at me the whole time. He's like, you're never gonna play. This is not gonna work for you. Like assert yourself, what are you doing? You know, and I was like, oh my God, this is the worst that I could have ever signed up for. So that was fun. And then we get, you know, to Belgium and we end up playing a lot. I think teams from all around Europe, but most of the players were Dutch. And we're playing these guys and all the games were at the stadiums. And so we're playing in the stadiums. Obviously they're empty, but you're in it. You know, I think as a soccer player, as a young player, you remember the grass. The grass is something you could use, the smell, the feel, the quality. And so for the first time, a lot of us were playing on like the best grass we had ever seen. The lines were painted the best. Everything was just next level. And we were able to hang out in the locker rooms, which was also just so next level. And so we'd take like buses there and we'd go and I'll never forget. So the one thing that I'll never forget forever is basically this really good player on our team kicks a ball that I would say in any world is a goal, upper 90, you know, and the goalie on the other side's like 13, 14. So he's not six foot four. He's small still, we're all small, right? Some of us are like bigger than others, but for the most part, no one's fully developed. And this kid somehow like an acrobat, like a spider just saves the ball upper 90 on like a regulation goal at a stadium. And I stopped moving for 30 minutes. I was just watching like this is unbelievable. And that's when I knew the talent level. That's where the moment I was like, oh, this is something completely different. Of all the players that went with us to answer your question, while the players ended up going to Belgium, zero of them I think ended up playing soccer in college. Some of them ended up running track and so which goes to the American game, right? The American game is very fast wings. And so we had some elite athletes on the wings. We would win games because we just had players that were just faster and knew how to shoot. So we had great wingers very much the American game. And so I think four of the guys ended up playing or running D one track. Yeah, I don't think anybody else played like soccer. I think they got recruited to play in college, but not from what I understand, no one really wanted to do it. I've heard versions of that story, obviously from Americans going over, but also frankly, the other way, like I had friends who played basketball at a good level and they were like in the Scottish national team and then came over here and they're like, you know, they couldn't get in a high school team over here. So, you know, it's what people grow up with. And I think that's why Europe is where it is in terms of the quality of players, but even just the way the fans are. We sometimes have this ridiculous discussion in Orange County. You know, we've got a five and a half thousand seat stadium. Last year we sold out, I think it was eight games, but in the previous 10 years of the club's existence, we'd never sold out more than two games. We're like, yeah, I wonder if there's just enough soft sort of soccer fans around because, you know, LA Galaxy's just up the road and now there's LAFC and there's sort of San Diego, you know, in this population of millions, you know, are there enough? And then there's this wonderful map that I like to show of London where there's 12 professional teams all in an area that's probably not much bigger than sort of Irvine plus Costa Mesa. And they all sell out those games that, you know, you can get the bus three stops and there's 20,000 people in that stadium and 12,000 there. Like there's plenty of football fans to go right in that country because just the way they've grown up with the game. And I think in America, we're nowhere near there yet, but it's definitely beginning to grow. It's funny from a real estate perspective, that's the one thing I always look at is density. And so I always think if we can create a product that's a little bit better than what's already on the market, then LA in general has the density. 100%. And so we're blessed in that way where you could build something that isn't great, but as long as it's better than what's on the market. Yeah, no, indeed. And I think teams in the USL play against teams in the MLS every year. There's something called the Open Cup, which is every team can enter it. And I almost wish they had it in other sports. I'd love to see the Rocket City trashpans that's played in New York Yankees in the first round of the National Baseball Cup. But that's obviously not how it works. And so they do the celebrity games instead, but yeah. But in soccer, you have this. So we play against teams from the third and fourth division who used to play in front of 20 people. And once we lost one of those games a few years back and vowed never to let it happen again. But teams in the USL beat teams in the MLS every year. So we lost, unfortunately, to LAFC a couple of years ago and to Portland last year. But there are teams in our league who have beaten MLS teams. There's normally half a dozen of these sort of victories every time, which shows that if it was a league and there was actual promotion relegation, the best USL teams could definitely compete with the weaker MLS teams. But there's no promotion relegation for very obvious financial reasons. But if you were to go to our game and forget about the size of the stand compared to a bigger stadium, just watch the product on the field, you might not be able to tell the difference between USL and MLS. So it's, you know, it's really good soccer. But we pride ourselves on being a sort of community club. So at the end of the season, the players all sign the fans' jerseys and they sit on the field for an hour on tables and the fans just walk past and get things signed. There's a real connection there. Our players know the names of some of the fans' kids who sit in the sections near the tunnel. Like it's a real close connection, but it's a great product. And I think we're getting better at telling our story, but you can bring your entire family to a game at Orange County Soccer Club for less than the cost of the parking at LA Galaxy. And I think that's where, you know, there's a real accessibility. So there's a sort of, we don't see ourselves as a minor league sport, but it's the equivalent of, you know, how easy it is to get Dodger's tickets and the experience you have there to what you get if you go and watch the, you know, the Cucamonga Dragons. You know, it's you're closer to the field. You've got action, but you get to see really good players. It reminds me of like the Cape Cod League in terms of baseball. And so in baseball, there's this place in Cape Cod. And so a lot of like the greats will go up, will go there, they'll play there for a little while before they make it. And so it sounds like you're building that where it's like you're giving these kids these ambitious soccer players who are growing up and their families are, their whole life is soccer. And somewhere you're giving them a window into a future. That's a big part of it. There's a slogan that we have which is community heart, global vision. And I think we want to be that club that families come and watch. And we've got families who, the parents will sit and watch the game and have a beer. And the kids will be running around going on the inflatables that we have in the fan zone. And it's just a, it's an entertainment company, not just a football team. And I think that's a big, big part of it for us. And we tried and experiment the other day, which I've been wanting to do for years. So the team I support in England, they're called AFC Wimbled, and we were actually in Wrexham's league. So we're in the fourth division. We played Wrexham the other day and didn't lose, which is good. So I don't know if we make it into the documentary or not, but it was nice to play them. I'm a fan of that club and I have been for my whole life, but I'm also an owner of that club. So they did a fundraise to raise money to build their stadium and I bought some shares. So if you go to the stadium, there's bricks with my name and my kid's name on the stadium. But anyone who knows me knows that I'm not just a fan of this club, an owner. Because, like with vegans, you tell them, throw you away. So I talk about the club differently, because I'm not just a fan, I'm an owner. And I've always wanted to do that with Orange County. And last year, sorry, last season, which is just finished, but a few weeks ago, we signed a new 10-year stadium deal, which effectively secured the future of the club. So it felt that the time was right. So we've put a percentage of the club up for sale for fans to buy in. And it's one part to raise capital, but for me, it's about fan engagement and integration and giving people a chance to be sort of part of our journey. And so far, we've raised a few hundred thousand dollars, but the bit that interests me the most is the number of fans. So we've got nearly 900 new owners and the minimum investments are hundred dollars. And a lot of people have come in at a hundred dollars, which is not, as you'll know, not a huge financial investment. And no one's sitting there thinking, I hope this hundred dollars turns into 300 dollars in eight years time. They're doing it because they wanna tell their friends down the pub that they own a piece of a soccer team. And it's like the Green Bay Packers model, except there is actually a return potential here. So we've also got people who've come in at five, 10, 25 thousand dollars, who also want to be part of something, but also are looking for a real return because they see that there's an asset that's only gonna appreciate because the way soccer's growing. And so the owner of the club is very happy because there's capital coming in. I'm very happy because it allows us to build that community more strongly because if you can own something, you just have that different relationship. And I think it's been, it's a really fun endeavor and we've been really pleased at the way people have received it because it is, it's, everyone wants to own things now or join clubs. And I think the pandemic inspired that. Whether it was, Peloton was one part fitness and one part finding a community when you were stuck in your garage. And obviously now life is back to normal and Peloton's not doing so well, but people want real life experiences. And they get that, but they also get to be part of a community. And that's a, it's a fun thing to see how excited people are to tell their friends that they own things. Let's go to the fun stuff. What's the mascot? So his name is, sorry, its name. We're very specific around this in today's modern world. It is called Nali. Yeah. So it is a creature. I think it's the best way of describing it. From the beaches of Orange County who, as you can see from its boots. It's got like a Hawaiian shirt. Yeah, it's a Hawaiian shirt. It's got boots where its fur is, the actual mascot has furry feet and the poke through his, it's, get this right? It's worn out soccer boots from all the, all the playing it does. And it was very odd for me as an English person when I joined the team three years ago, we didn't have a mascot. So every American sports team that seems to have a mascot. Yeah. And as an Englishman, I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm natively at home and comfortable with the principle of mascots. You don't need a, you don't need a mascot to inspire people to come and watch soccer. But obviously in America you do. So anyway, we, we found, we found Nali and he's become, it's become a fan favorite. How many different choices did you go through before you landed on Nali? It's a great question. Like what were the other considerations? The world of mascots is unbelievable. You need to have a mascot creator come on here. Cause it's growing business because every sports team has one or more. But, you know, the process of ideation and then the design, how flexible do you want it to be? Do you want it to be the one that can do, you know, backflips and, and dunks off trampolines? Or do you want it to be the ones that kids can cuddle? You know, there's a whole, there's a whole world around it. But we, you know, we didn't design a mascot. We found him it on the beaches of Orange County, but it's resonates. Some kids crying are scared of him, which is an unfortunate downside to mascots. But he's also, it's also very friendly and, you know, people love the merch and love, there's so many wonderful pictures of kids, little kids at the stadium just running up and hugging the mascot. And he's a sort of orange gritty. It's, it's been great for us. And then the no. Yeah, let's go with the no. I mean, so look, well, first obvious question. How many gnomes do you have in your garden? This time, zero. That will obviously change within an hour of the podcast ending. So I'm not sure Americans are necessarily gnome people, but in England, I think less so now, but when I was growing up, that you go past the house in the countryside. Garden gnomes everywhere. Garden gnomes, they're fishing, you know, they're, you've got ones that are lying down with their lunch on their, on their big bellies. You know, gnomes, the whole thing, there was four different TV, you know, movies about the gnomes that they made. It's a real thing. And I joined the club and I sat there with our head of merchandise and said, we've got to have a gnome. And they all said, don't be ridiculous. It's just fair enough. So we worked on it. And it took me, I think two and a half years. And we finally, so he's got the same shirt as Nali, but he's just our little gnome. And it has been the fasting selling non-apparel item we've ever had. And people all over the world have been buying them and have now got them in their gardens. It is a fun California gnome in some way, right? It is. It's one of these odd things. It seems, it's not a big deal. It's just a gnome. And, you know, in terms of going back to business, in terms of revenue, it's, you know, it's not a lot, but it's the principle. We are enough of a global soccer team that we earn the right to have a gnome that lots of people around the world want in their gardens. I've got a friend of mine who has three houses in three different countries, and they all have a gnome proudly in front of them, one in England, one here in the Hollywood Hills and one in France. That's awesome. And it's important. What can he tell us? When's the season start? Well, when people listening, how can they support, obviously, the investing stuff is pretty interesting on the ownership side. That's good. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're raising with a company called Republic. We've done a lot of these sort of crowd-based raises. And the reason we chose them is because they are the parent company of a company called Cedars, through whom in England I bought into AFC Wimbledon. So when we were looking to do it here, I found that whole process very seamless. I want to use the people that they used here. And we're actually going to launch in the UK as well through Cedars. So we're going to do a transatlantic raise because the people who have become fans of our club because they've bought our players or they've heard of us because of what we're doing, we want to give them a chance to become owners as well. So I think we're the first. Plenty of soccer teams have done the whole. Our club's about to go out as a distance. Please buy into us to save us. Detroit did it, Chattanooga did it, Oakland have just done that. Ours is not, you know, we're desperate, we're going to go out of business. Ours is, do you want to invest in the future of American soccer? You know, do you want to be the place that hones these young players who then go off and play their talents around the world? And so it's a different sort of investment. So there's obviously, you know, we're raising the money through Republic and that's been really interesting about who's come into our community and started by merchandise and that sort of thing as a result of that. The season starts in March. So pre-season starts in early January. So where are you, you know, early January, the players come back, we get ready, we're playing a couple of MLS teams in the pre-season and then we kick off in March and we play broadly every other Saturday through until October. And, you know, if you're in LA, it's not a wonderful drive to Orange County, I'm not going to pretend. Although I think I can get to Irvine quicker. I can get to Irvine quicker and I can get to the crypto.com arena from my house in the valley. So it's fun, it's friendly, it's very accessible and it's real value. And if you're there because you love watching soccer, it's a great standard of play and you can sit very close to the field. If you're there because you want to ditch your kids and let them run around when inflatable so you can have a beer at the other end of the stadium, that works as well. Five of our home games we do beer fests, which are these amazing, good old fashioned, all you can drink beer fests. When we started them, it was a really interesting concept. So we're doing our thing. So you buy a bracelet or something, how does that work? Yes, you get a wristband, you go in, you get a little tasting cup and you go around this 50 different breweries and you have your little drinks. And when we started doing it, there were some people who turned up who didn't even know there was a soccer game going on, sort of 25 feet away, they were just there because it's set up like any other beer fest. And we've been obviously tracking the numbers. So many of them have now become season ticket holders. So there are people who come for the beer and stay for the soccer. There's people who come for the soccer and stay for the beer. We've tried to get sort of, we are about entertaining people and beer and sport works incredibly well together. Programming matters. How do you think about the marketing side of it? And so do you guys do a lot on socials? Is there a bang for buck there? Is it more community driven things work better? Yeah, I mean, every sports team does their socials. And I think we've struggled a little bit with the concepts around it. So if you're a major league sports team, whether it's baseball or basketball, your players, you know, if a player appears on a video, everyone's watching it for that player. Now people don't know who our players are yet. So some of it's been sort of team led, but we're trying to let people see these players. So we've got a wonderful young man called Bryce Jameson, who's just come back from the under 17 World Cup where he was representing the US. And he's got such great personality and he's a sort of player who you can expect to see in the national team at some stage. And we expect him to go to Europe within a year. But he's got a great personality and he's not a household name, obviously, but we're trying to give him a profile. So a bit of it's been team led, but we're getting better now at trying to tell the stories of the players because we've got fascinating players who've come, we recruit from all over the world. So we've got really interesting players who've played at World Cups. We've had players who've played in the Premier League and they're now with us. And we like to tell their stories. But we do a lot of digital marketing. We probably don't do TikTok enough of in a way that every brand is now. And I think we need to be better because we probably need to lower the average age a little bit at the stadium because I think soccer's growing. And the sad part is they're probably people who live in the Great Park in Irvine who don't know that there's a soccer team playing in that stadium. And I think we need to be better at telling the story of that. And some of we're doing through building the community. So there's a lot of word of mouth. We do this bring a buddy scheme where season tickets can bring a friend to certain games for free. And we've done that because there's no better way to build your base of season ticket holders. We've rarely met someone who hasn't come to a game and enjoyed the experience, but not enough people are coming to the game for the first time. And even though you were a soccer player, you're a soccer fan, I don't think you'd heard of Orange County Soccer Club. After the Belgium experience, I didn't watch soccer until the last World Cup. I couldn't watch it until not that long ago at all. Just because you realized that you just... There was just something about it where I was like, I loved it, I just loved it. And I thought like I had a feel for the game. Like I thought, if I had any strength, I could just see things before they happen. And so when I watch it, it's like I'm tapping into the thing I was actually really good at, which is just seeing the play before it happens. And now I can't even do that. And I don't want anything to do with it. And so I started playing tennis. Interesting. So tennis has become my new obsession. But, you know, obviously, I did watch the last World Cup, almost religiously a single game, basically. So our head coach was there with the Danish national team as a coach as part of the Denmark setup. And he's now our head coach. And I love talking to him about his stories, about what he saw at the World Cup in terms of just the craziness of the place they were in. But also just the way teams prepare now is extraordinary. But look, you know, you've got a scarf. You've got a gnome. You've even got, you know, the plush of the mascot. I'll tell you, I'm excited. I feel like you should come to a game. I'm going to come to a game, whether there's beer or not, doesn't matter. I'm going to come because I like it. I like the story. I want to support. But where can people find you? Tell them where they can find you. So website all that. We're orangecountysoccer.com. And we're on all the social channels as Orange County SC. OK. And, you know, if people are interested in this whole ownership thing, if they go into Republic, search Orange County, I think that's great. And I want the club to do well because it's my job. But it's become, I've always loved the sport and I've grown up probably outside the Premier League ground. So a lot of people, the casual football fan, you know, who do you support? You know, you support a Liverpool or a less-o-man United at the moment, but a Manchester City. And I think when I was a kid, my team was Wimbledon, who were in the Premier League. Well, it was actually, it wasn't even called the Premier League. That's how old I am. But the league that was the top league before the Premier League, I was a Wimbledon fan. But even when we were in the top league, they were the least popular team. So the four lowest Premier League crowds are all Wimbledon games. We've had more people at Orange County than watched four Wimbledon games in the Premier League. That's how, but had their crowds were in the Premier League. So I'm used to smaller teams and I used to referee at a reasonable level. I refereed semi-pro football in England. And so I was used to these sort of grounds which hold a few thousand people. And I think part of it for me, the attraction has always been the community aspect. I love seeing the fact that our players are friends with the fans in a completely different way to you see it at that top level because there's an accessibility to the stadium. And I like that growth, because that's not how American sport from the outside, it's all flashy NBA, NFL, where you're not even sure what some of the players look like because they wear helmets. College games with 100,000 people watching. It's not that community in a way and I think we're building that in a different way. And it's so fun to be part of the growing sport in a community-based club. It's funny when you say that, there's people I know that sort of grew up with some of these sports. And so at one time in the NBA as an example, you could go to a game and you could even go into the locker room. Like it was just so new. And people, it wasn't really working. And so your access to the players was undeniable. So they moved it from anyone had access to just the reporters all of a sudden. So that happened in like the 80s and 90s, which is crazy to think about. And then you think about today and it's just like the press room. But at the time it was like the game's over. You could go on the court if you wanted. You could go to the locker room if you could bother them. Really interesting, cause they weren't like famous. They weren't, they were just guys you supported. And I've always liked that sort of sport. My wife is really into track and field. And I remember when we lived in Europe, we'd go around watching the European championships. And you'd stay in a hotel and you're in the same hotel as the athletes because they're not household names and people don't bother. You're having breakfast and the person on the next table is maybe not the morning of the race, but they could be having breakfast they often have won a gold medal and they're just there. And I've always liked that, that access. And I used to be a sports journalist. In a first life. And I liked the fact I knew players and some of that was very high level. I interviewed David Beckham and Usain Bolt. But what I like is just getting to understand people. Now social media has changed a lot of how you feel like you know people because you're reading their comments not filtered through a journalist. But on a level, people actually know them. You see our players will come off the field and high fiver a 10 year old kid and say I saw that video you made the other day. So one of those one young guy is a seat and ticket holders kid who's a really good young player. And he's followed by half of the players and the team on Instagram. So he'll post a video of some skill that he's learned and the players congratulate him in real life. And I just, I can't imagine seeing that somewhere else. If you've been a soccer fan for years here you won't say the sport's new but it feels like it's young in this country. And there's a chance to sort of get in at the bottom level as a fan and get in before it becomes ridiculous. And maybe MLS is already ridiculous with billion dollar valuations and Leonor Messi running around playing and ticket prices going through the roof. But I think our level just feels like really interesting time to get involved in the sport. And we're excited to tell the story and see new faces in the stadium. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it. Well, thank you very much. This has been, it's great. It's great to talk to someone who unfortunately probably is better at soccer than I was when I was 12. I don't know about that. Well, thanks Dan. I appreciate it. Thank you Diego, cheers. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share with your friends, your family or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. 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