There is a reason I continue to believe in the project.
It is not because building a professional football club in Los Angeles is easy.
It isn’t.
It is because the opportunity has never really been about putting 22 players on a pitch and building some seats around them.
The bigger opportunity is to work with a city, a community and investors to create something that football helps bring to life.
That is increasingly where our conversations are heading.
City first
Los Angeles City Planning has now introduced the Los Angeles Aztecs project to the Mayor’s Office as we continue exploring potential locations for a permanent home.
That matters.
Not because a deal has been agreed.
It hasn’t.
Not because a site has been selected.
It hasn’t.
And certainly not because the City has somehow promised us a stadium.
It hasn’t.
What it means is that the conversation is beginning to happen at the level where it needs to happen.
Because our question is no longer:
“Where can we find 20 or 30 acres to build a football ground?”
The better question is:
“Where could a football club help Los Angeles achieve something it already wants to achieve?”
That is a completely different proposition.
Football as an anchor
Our vision remains an initial professional football stadium of approximately 5,000–7,500 seats, designed so that it can expand over time.
But the stadium is only one part of it.
We are interested in locations where football could anchor a wider district incorporating youth and community football, entertainment, events, hospitality and complementary commercial development.
Potentially residential development too, if that strengthens the overall scheme.
The objective should be to activate land, create economic activity and build something useful 365 days a year.
A football stadium that opens twenty times a year is not enough.
A district with football at its heart can be something considerably more interesting.
The City has already helped broaden the search
During our conversations with Los Angeles City Planning, several potential areas were raised for us to investigate.
These included:
Wilmington.
Warner Center.
Sepulveda Basin.
Piggyback Yard.
And the potentially enormous redevelopment opportunity surrounding Whiteman Airport.
Some of those overlapped with areas we had already been studying independently, particularly Wilmington, Warner Center and Sepulveda.
That was encouraging.
But these are ideas to investigate — not approved stadium sites.
There are enormous questions around ownership, planning, infrastructure, environmental issues, community support, transport and economics before any location could become realistic.
That is exactly why working with the City matters.
Regeneration changes the investment proposition
Football investment on its own can be brutal.
Anyone pretending otherwise should probably not be raising money for a football club.
Player wages rise.
Promotion is uncertain.
Relegation happens.
Owners burn through capital surprisingly quickly.
So our objective cannot simply be:
Find investors willing to finance football losses.
The proposition has to become stronger than that.
If football sits inside a broader regeneration and development opportunity, investors are looking at something fundamentally different.
Land.
Infrastructure.
Commercial activity.
Hospitality.
Events.
Entertainment.
Development.
Long-term economic activity.
And a professional football club sitting at the centre of it.
That doesn’t remove risk.
But it potentially creates more ways to generate value than selling tickets on Saturday afternoon.
Fan ownership still matters
There is another part of this project that I do not want lost as it grows.
Supporters.
The Los Angeles Aztecs should not simply become another American sports asset controlled entirely by whoever writes the biggest cheque.
I want meaningful supporter ownership built into the club.
Private investors will be important.
Development partners will be important.
The City will be important.
But supporters should have a genuine place in the structure as well.
Football works best when the people filling the stadium are participants in the club rather than simply customers of it.
That principle remains central to what we are trying to build.
The order matters
Over the last year I have probably thought about this project in every possible direction.
League.
Investors.
Stadium.
Land.
Commercial partners.
Ownership.
Heritage.
Sometimes you have to go around the houses before the structure becomes obvious.
For me, it increasingly looks like this:
City first.
Site second.
Development structure third.
Investment fourth.
Football fifth.
That might sound strange coming from someone building a football club.
But it is precisely because I want the football club to survive that the foundations have to come first.
Find a city objective worth supporting.
Find the right land.
Build a development structure around it.
Create something private capital can realistically finance.
Then put the football club at the heart of it.
The Aztecs name opens the door
The Los Angeles Aztecs have something many startup clubs would spend millions trying to manufacture.
History.
Johan Cruyff.
George Best.
Los Angeles.
Soccer History.
A story people still remember nearly half a century later.
That heritage gets attention.
But nostalgia alone will not build the next Los Angeles Aztecs.
The name can open the door.
The project behind the name has to make people walk through it.
That means building something a community wants, a city can support, supporters can believe in and investors can understand.
We are still early.
There will be sites that don’t work.
There will be ideas that disappear.
There will almost certainly be people who say it cannot be done.
Good.
That is what this stage is for.
Because the goal isn’t simply to find somewhere to put a stadium.
It is to find the part of Los Angeles where bringing back the Aztecs actually makes sense.
And if we find that place, the conversation changes completely.
The Los Angeles Aztecs stop being an idea looking for money.
They become an opportunity looking for partners.