The LA Galaxy is part of the origins of Major League Soccer and its inaugural season in 1996.
About 60,000 fans filled the Rose Bowl for the brand-new league’s game. And it has blossomed from there. David Beckham’s arrival at the Galaxy turned MLS into an international story, and last year the team celebrated a championship – the club’s sixth.
Now, as FIFA World Cup 2026 descends on Southern California, Galaxy President and Chief Operating Officer Tom Braun is considering what comes next. The Super Bowl draws roughly 120 million viewers. A typical World Cup group-stage match draws 200 million. The final pulls in an audience of billions.
For Braun, those numbers aren’t abstract – they’re the business opportunity his club has spent three decades positioning itself to capture. The Galaxy launched as part of the U.S. commitment to FIFA to establish a domestic league.
Braun sat down with the Los Angeles Business Journal to talk about what a World Cup in L.A.’s backyard really means.
The start of FIFA World Cup 2026 is just around the corner. What does this moment mean for soccer in North America, in Los Angeles – and for the Galaxy specifically?
The World Cup is a monumental moment anytime that it happens, and the impact that the World Cup has on local communities and even around the world is a remarkable thing. We’re fortunate now that we have it coming to our backyard. It’s really important that the LA Galaxy has a place at the World Cup and is giving back to the community in a really meaningful way. I think it’s going to bring a lot of attention to our sport and also bring a lot of attention to the communities it’s going to impact.
The Galaxy is in its 31st season. Put this World Cup in historical context for us.
Our league didn’t exist when the World Cup happened in 1994. In 1994, the iconic Rose Bowl hosted the final, and part of that World Cup was that the United States had to launch a domestic league – which was Major League Soccer in 1996. So, 31 seasons later, this is the first World Cup that we are hosting as a country in which we’ve had a domestic league at the same time. The work that our club and our league has done over the last 31 seasons has really set up soccer in a unique way, where soccer is very much at the forefront of everybody’s minds and is very available – more so, I think, than any sport – to young kids in the community. In five to 10 years, I think it’s just going to continue to expand, and the imprint that soccer leaves on the community is just continuing to build.
The game 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 really said: soccer is here?
There are two moments in my head that said soccer is here. One was our first game at the Rose Bowl with Cobi Jones and the Galaxy team – we had over 60,000 people there for our inaugural game.
The second most pivotal moment was when we signed David Beckham. When we signed David Beckham in 2007, our league skyrocketed, probably faster than any of us would have expected. I don’t think anything you see today happens without the contributions of our team back in 1996, led by Cobi Jones, along with the addition of David Beckham in 2007.
Lionel Messi’s arrival in MLS generated enormous attention. How do you think about his impact on the league’s business trajectory?
Arguably, the greatest soccer player to ever play the game now plays in our league, and I think Messi is bringing more attention to our league and our sport, and other players are coming now and seeing this as a league of real opportunity for them to grow early on in their careers. I don’t think that’s the last. I think there’ll be many more players of that caliber that will continue to come to our league.
However, a lot of what the LA Galaxy is about is growing soccer players in our community. We have a player on our team named Mauricio Cuevas, who grew up in South Central Los Angeles. He came through our academy, and now he’s a regular starter on our first team. Another player, Harbor Miller, grew up in Los Angeles and is now a regular starter on our first team. For us, yes, we will always be a team that has big international soccer stars – but every big international soccer star we have is going to be paired with local homegrown talent.
What has American soccer borrowed from the international game – and where does the U.S. market remain fundamentally different?
The business side is similar but different. But culturally, we borrowed a lot of cultural aspects of soccer, because I think the cultural relevancy of soccer is a little different than any traditional American sport. You see that through our supporter groups – the groups that come to our stadium and chant, the flags and the drums putting a lot of energy into our sport. You might not see that anywhere other than maybe a college football game. I think we borrowed that from international soccer.
How important is L.A. specifically to the future of soccer in North America?
Los Angeles is the second biggest media market in the United States and one of the biggest in North America, and the influence that the Galaxy has had on soccer in this city has been unmatched. We are the winningest team in Major League Soccer. We have six championships and the most trophies. I’d also argue we’ve had some of the most meaningful moments in North American soccer, along with some of the most meaningful players. We won a championship about 16 months ago – so not that long ago. A lot of our success comes from winning on the field, but I think equally important is the success we have in the stands and in the community. Wins and losses will happen. But how are we showing up every single day for our community? I’m proud that this past season our community relations team won the Community Impact Team of the Year for Major League Soccer. We really believe that a lot of the meaningful things that happen at our club happen in the stands and in the community – the moments of connection that families have. Sports provide that like no other business out there. We just honored Cobi Jones – an L.A. original. We had a 9-foot bronze statue put up of him in our largest plaza, and alongside that, donated a soccer field in his name to a local school on the border of Altadena and Pasadena, one of the areas impacted by the wildfires. For us, it’s leaving the legacy of our club not just on the pitch, but in the community.
Where are the biggest growth opportunities in the soccer business right now – media rights, sponsorship, youth academies, global partnerships?
The easy answer really is all of the above. Whether it’s media rights – we have a wonderful partnership with (Apple Inc.) Apple is filming the entire match that we have tomorrow on an iPhone, so it’s the first time that Apple has produced an entire sporting event only on an iPhone that all viewers can watch. Anybody who has Apple TV can watch it – the same place you can watch “Ted Lasso” and other shows will be showing our game. Sponsorship – there are always opportunities to grow in different ways. But I think there’s still a part of soccer, whether it’s Angelenos or just the U.S. in general, where people are starting to fall in love with it. And I think that’s when the World Cup is going to have its biggest impact – you might have casual soccer fans that start to watch because of the World Cup, and for us it’s important to capitalize on that moment to get them interested in Major League Soccer, get them interested in the Galaxy.
How is the Galaxy activating around the World Cup to capture that casual fan audience?
Throughout the World Cup, we’re hosting a number of different activations and viewing events that we call the LA Galaxy Soccer Celebrations – whether it’s in Long Beach, Hermosa Beach, Carson, and we’re about to announce a few other locations including Santa Monica – where we are offering free soccer events, watch parties, activations and on certain dates, free community clinics where kids can come play soccer. There’s a sense of community that might only come with a World Cup. Communities of people, whether they’re from Colombia or Mexico or Germany, are going to come together in these local American cities and celebrate. Some people might come to Los Angeles and not even go to a game – they just want to be around it. And that’s really the exciting part. That’s what we’re hoping to create with these Soccer Celebrations – just a sense of community where people can come together and enjoy watching the game and fall in love with it.
The viewership numbers for the World Cup are extraordinary. How does that scale translate into your conversations with brands and sponsors?
The Super Bowl had around 120 million viewers, and in American sports culture, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest things – if not the biggest thing. But for the last World Cup in 2022, each game – not the final, but each game – averaged around 200 million viewers. And I believe the final drew multiples of billions of people watching a singular game. There are going to be over 100 World Cup games here over a six-week period. What’s unique about the World Cup is that it’s not the soccer enthusiasts who are watching – it’s the novice soccer fans, the ones who don’t yet realize they’re going to become soccer fans.
This sport is so easy to fall in love with. The beauty of it is you’re making a two-hour commitment. Other sports could go on for two, three, four hours. We’ve leaned heavily into the family angle – I have two young kids, 6 and 3, and I know their attention span is very narrow. That’s been a big selling point: you know it’s a smaller commitment than other sporting events, but when you come, the excitement is really special. It might come across as a 1–1 score, but there was action the entire time you were there. I think brands are seeing that and figuring out ways to partner and tap into it.
