Larry Freedman was there before the jerseys, before the stadium, before the first kick.
Freedman joined Los Angeles Football Club in 2014 – four years before the club played a single MLS match – and built the business from the ground up.
What followed was one of the more remarkable launches in American professional sports: a sold-out inaugural season, a 2022 MLS Cup and a club now valued at more than $1.3 billion. As co-president and chief business officer, Freedman is also co-chair of the Los Angeles FIFA World Cup 2026 Host Committee, putting him at the center of one of the biggest sporting events the city has hosted. The tournament officially kicks off on June 12 – eight games will be played in the region at Sofi Stadium.
The Los Angeles Business Journal sat down with Freedman to talk about what’s changed, what’s coming, and where the real money in soccer still hasn’t been unlocked.
Professional soccer has always been massive in Europe, Latin America and in many other parts of the world. What would you say are some of the pivotal moments that have really made the sport popular in the U.S.?
We had pivotal moment one: the ’94 World Cup and Major League Soccer. Our league was born out of that World Cup. Pivotal moment number two is about to happen (with the start of the FIFA World Cup games).
At that time (in the mid 1990s), there wasn’t a first-division professional men’s football league in the United States – so during that World Cup, you couldn’t say, “Oh, that guy, the captain of Argentina (Lionel Messi), he plays in this league.” This time, we’re going to be saying, “Hey, wait a minute – the captain of the defending reigning champion Argentina plays in our league, in a beautiful new soccer-specific stadium in Miami. The captain of the South Korean national team (Son Heung-min) plays right here in Los Angeles.” Whether you’re in L.A. and you connect the dots and say, “I can go see Son Heung-min at BMO Stadium,” or you’re in another host market and you realize that when LAFC comes to town, you can see him – that connectivity, that storyline, that narrative is a really big moment for our league and the sport in this country.
What are your hopes for the World Cup and its impact on American soccer – and L.A. as a whole?
There will be a very significant – north of a half-billion-dollar – economic impact on our region: hotel room nights, restaurants, theme parks – everybody has an opportunity to benefit. As many of us have been saying who’ve been involved, people will come from all over the world, from all over the United States to be here for the games. (Some) will not come with a ticket, and they have no intention of buying one. They just want to go to the community events, the watch parties and soccer celebrations. That is a great thing for our region, for our economy, for the game itself. It’s the greatest sporting event on the planet. Viewership will be 50 times (that of) a Super Bowl, if not more. Your average American sports fan thinks the Super Bowl is the biggest thing – this is like 48 Super Bowls when you look at the aggregate number and divide it by the number of games that will be played. My hope is that it is a tournament that is filled with high-quality, exciting, dramatic games.
I always get asked: ‘Well, can the tournament be considered successful if the U.S. men’s national team doesn’t get this far or doesn’t get that far?’ The reality is that more than half of the people who live in this country may have a first rooting interest that is not the United States men’s national team.
I hope the U.S. does well – they’re a host country. I hope Canada does well – they’re a host country. I hope Mexico does well – they’re a host country.
But at the end of it, I just hope it’s a great tournament, that the watch parties and soccer celebrations in all of the host city markets are super successful, that everybody takes advantage of these opportunities to celebrate the world’s game and be a part of the greatest sporting event on the planet. As a member of the host committee, we’re very proud that we have a number of programs (to which) we have raised money and granted (them to organizations), so that there is a legacy. The North Star for everyone is the LA 84 Foundation. We’ve got 26 champions who received grants (from the current committee). That’s super exciting stuff. So, it doesn’t hinge on any one team winning or losing.
Soccer-specific stadiums have been central to MLS’s growth. How has that changed the economics of the sport over the last decade?
A lot of the original ownership came from NFL owners who thought, “Great, I have this 50-, 60-, 70,000-seat stadium, I’ll put the MLS club in that stadium.” The reality was those stadiums were too big. Over time, clubs went out and built soccer-specific stadiums – 18,000, 25,000, 30,000 seats – and you could fill them and create an electric environment. With that came this surge in supporter culture. For us, it’s the north end of our stadium, our independent supporter union, the 3252. There is no other sports experience in and around L.A. that is anything like it. And soccer-specific stadiums also provide the opportunity, with 17 regular home season games, to host meetings, parties, conferences – we do film shoots, commercial shoots, galas, concerts, other full-stadium sporting events. We’re doing 250 events a year, and I’m pushing to get closer to 365. You become all-day, every-day, open-for-business. That is a big change from just being a tenant in an NFL stadium.
What lessons has American soccer borrowed from European club models, and where does the U.S. market still differ fundamentally?
(First thing:) Player development. … In Europe and in other countries around the world, they have these youth development systems where players start in academies when they’re very young, and MLS has adopted a similar system – from 12 and under, kids are playing, learning what you’d call the Barcelona way, or the Bayern Munich way, or the LAFC way. We had a young player, Erik Dueñas, who started with us on our very first academy team – right when we didn’t have a team yet, because we didn’t have a stadium and weren’t playing yet. So, we started our academy … (Erik) made it through the academy to play for our first team. That comes from adopting a system and a model like other clubs around the world.
The other thing that I think that we borrowed is supporter culture. In early 2018, we went to Dortmund, Germany. At Signal Iduna Park, Borussia Dortmund’s home stadium, they have a supporter section of 26,000 people called the Yellow Wall. Our stadium holds 22,000 people. It’s considered among the best, if not the best, in the world. We took some of our supporter leadership there to learn, to see how it was done by the best of the best.
I’ve told (the president of 3252) on a number of occasions that there are games in our building where I am convinced that because of what they do, (the team) just innately know when to bring it and go harder – there are games where I’m convinced they won the game for us.
(But) there are some things that are very different. The stadiums here are built more for the fan experience – the club spaces, amenities, and things like that. Elsewhere in the world, they’re just coming around to that. So, when you walk into (a stadium here) – whether it’s a basketball, hockey arena, a major league baseball stadium, an NFL stadium, an MLS stadium – you expect that here, but elsewhere in the world it is not the expectation. They’re coming around to it.
There are newer buildings that have the amenities, some older buildings that have been retrofitted, but I think that’s something that we’ve done more universally, and maybe I would say at a higher level.
Where are you seeing the biggest growth opportunities in soccer right now – media rights, sponsorships, real estate development, youth academies, or even global partnerships, etc.?
It’s kind of all of the above. You have a sport and an ecosystem that’s global – so unlike some other sports, you have the opportunity to develop players that can either play for you, or you can sell the rights to another club. At the extreme, there’s very significant revenue in that, if you develop a player that attracts interest from Europe or South America. And then partnerships – so many brands are doing business globally, and we are fortunate in the City of Angels that if you’re doing business globally, chances are pretty close to 100% that Los Angeles is very important to you. We have a platform and a megaphone to help folks grow their brands. Within our audience, we’re in a wildly diverse marketplace – which leads to us having a wildly diverse, eclectic and beautiful audience. Whether you want to reach everybody or there are particular demographic segments, profiles that you’re trying to reach within the audience, that opportunity is there.
And merchandise is (the) thing. We were pretty impressed going to Germany and elsewhere to see football cultures – you can be walking down the street in Dortmund and see somebody in an L.A. Dodgers hat. There’s just something about (seeing that).
So when we created the brand, picked the color scheme, created the logo, and the L.A. with the wing – part of the thought process was: what if people in some small town outside of Beijing, China, were wearing LAFC hats because they thought they were cool? That would be great for our brand.
Are you surprised by how fast the sport has grown in the U.S.?
I am not surprised by the growth, though the where has been pretty interesting. If I had said to you 10 or 20 years ago, “Do you know where soccer is really going to take off?” – Asheville, Nashville, Minneapolis, Austin, Texas – that would not have been on your bingo card. But it is perfectly logical. You had all these kids playing, and they were going to grow up and want to consume some form of major league global football. There were a couple of tries that didn’t work, but supporter culture and soccer-specific stadiums have really helped it succeed. Nashville built a beautiful stadium and a really great club. Austin, Texas – it’s (an American) football mecca, but the beautiful game has done really well there. The game has grown, and the opportunities going forward in broadcast and in the global player market are where I see the biggest upside.
What part of the soccer business do you think is currently underestimated?
Broadcast. We’ve had a really good partnership with Apple – the uniformity, the quality of our broadcasts, the kickoff times, the destination viewing – so many things have just been gamechangers for us. But what we haven’t found yet is – if you’re in the NFL and you get that broadcast check, you’re good. We haven’t gotten there yet. But I think people are confident that that day will come. Playing a bigger role in the global market for players, attracting higher-level players like Messi and Son Heung-min – that is part of it too. The league is on a trajectory, and what comes after the World Cup accelerates all of it.
