[Music]
sports teams have a voice in their
community unlike any other and it’s my
belief that they can and should use it
to make their community a better place
soccer’s tapped into the millennial
generation unlike any other sport and it
uses their method of communication
social media to great effect at orlando
city across all our platforms we have
about one one and a half million
followers but if we add in superstars
like cacar and alex morgan that number
rises to 65 million which gives us a
very unique platform to get a message
out both nationally and internationally
when I came to Orlando in 2011 there’d
been a history of failure for sports
teams and we were told this will never
work
so we not only had to make this
community aware that there was a new
team in town but we also had to persuade
them to come to Camping World Stadium a
sixty two and a half thousand seat
stadium built for football the other
kind so what did we do well the first
thing we did community is the pillar of
this this actual this club and so we
sent our players out into the community
we went to events we went to youth clubs
we went to hospitals and we made them
very accessible to this community we
also involved our supporters in every
single thing that we did and social
media became a really kind of marketing
tool for us and our VP of Marketing had
this great idea that we did not realize
was going to take off quite in the way
that it did we made it difficult to
obtain an Orlando city magnet you could
only get them on magnet Monday and of
course everyone wanted one and so it
became this incredible success story and
now you see them not just in Central
Florida they’re there I mean we get
pictures from abroad with people with
them on their their vehicles the the
other thing we did was when we were
awarded the Major League Soccer
franchise the normal idea is that you
have a press conference
in a hotel somewhere but that’s not who
we are we wanted to involve our fans and
we wanted a party so we we closed off
part of Church Street we managed to cram
1700 people into the venue and then we
had 4,000 people partying outside with
purple beer for quite a long time
actually as well similarly when we were
about to break ground on our new stadium
we closed down part of the street again
and our supporters came and we marched
so we had flags banners drums smoke
flares and we marched from from downtown
and to the site of the new stadium we
had special hand-painted shovels that we
broke ground with but we’d also shipped
in 25 tons of purple sand so anyone who
was there that day managed to take home
a special Orlando City container with a
memento of the day as part of being
awarded the franchise Major League
Soccer stipulated that we had to have a
downtown stadium and it was going to be
a public-private partnership which is a
you know kind of the norm in all of
these things and we needed 20 million in
tourist tax dollars from the county so
it had to obviously go to a vote so we
decided we would galvanize our
supporters so we chose a different
Commissioner each day we knew the Mayor
was on board but we had to get four of
the other six commissioners to also vote
yes so we chose a commissioner each day
and we asked our fans to call them email
them go in person tell them why this
stadium was so important which they did
and then on the day of the actual vote
we also galvanized the fans again and we
said please come to the council chambers
and give actual public testimony did
they come they came in huge numbers this
sea of purple we took over the whole of
the council we were even in the
cafeteria there were so many people
there it was just amazing to see it was
our support groups iron lion firm it was
the ruckus it was soccer families it was
businesses nonprofits that we’d we’d
worked with it was obviously our staff
players everyone was there the main
council chamber was just this it was
packed to the rafters there was people
standing all around the back and we
found out afterwards 200 people had
registered to speak for two minutes
pretty incredible it was so loud and
noisy in there as well the people had
got scars and people were chanting and
yelling in fact at one point we were
asked instead of cheering every single
time could we do a little silent pretty
funny to see actually a whole audience
just doing this little quiet fist pump
so after two hours the mayor called a
recess and she implored us to call off
the fans so we tried but they were
determined to have their say and it was
honestly one of the most incredible
outpouring of fan loyalty that I’ve ever
seen
and I they really believed that they
could affect the result and that this
was something they could do for their
club so three hours later and by this
time by the way we were passing candy up
and down the rows to try and keep
everyone’s energy levels up we’d been
there a long time if people were
flagging but it came to the vote and we
we did get the vote it was five to two
against and so afterwards of course
spontaneous parties broke out all over
Orlando and that we went and visited
with with the fans in one of the pubs
and when I was talking to them what they
were saying was if that vote hadn’t gone
through and I hadn’t spoken I would have
felt I would never forgive him myself so
it was it was all of that kind of
community outreach came back to us in
encounter with interest so after that
various funding things happened that
meant it was going to drag on and on and
on and so our majority owner took a very
brave decision and he decided to fund
the stadium privately
just pretty unheard of in the sports
world but it was great for us because it
meant it was our stadium and we had
autonomy and we could do what we wanted
with our stadium and what’s what’s now
happened has also meant it kind of toned
down any of the objections that there
were to the site of the stadium and in
fact what it’s done is it’s it’s it’s
given growth and rejuvenation to that
area it’s an underserved area our two
colleges are coming in UCF in Valencia
they’re building a downtown campus
there’s a new school in the area there
hasn’t been one there for 50 years and
that opens this fall and there’s also at
least a billion dollars in in other
projects that are going to come to that
area so what are we doing with the space
that we have well the first thing we do
is we use our foundation to improve the
health and wellness of our community
especially in those underserved areas
where childhood obesity and all of its
knock-on effects are prevalent we build
safe places to play their size of a
tennis court purple of course there are
many pitches and then we bring our
programming there as well and that
teaches not only soccer skills it
teaches those healthy lifestyle choices
too we also invest in community gardens
so residents are actually able to grow
their own fresh food and we use our
players to reinforce all of those
healthy messages we bring them into our
programs to help those children but more
than that we’ve become an advocate for
equal rights it’s something that’s
become very important to us we’ve had a
pride night every year at our stadium
but we’ve also funded the Pride Parade I
think there was 50,000 people there last
year and we’ve gotten involved in LGBTQ
organizations and our response to the
pulse tragedy in 2016 was to provide an
avenue to begin that healing process we
honored the victims families the first
responders the pool staff we had a game
six days after the tragedy had happened
and so this was an opportunity for our
community to come together so we had
everyone down on the field we actually
put 49 ray
balloons up in one of the stands to
represent those taken from us the
players came out to all you need is love
not the usual anthem and we stopped the
game in the 49th minute which is
something for a moment silence which is
something that’s never been done before
and our fans are incredible they’ve made
signs and banners thousands of rainbow
flags I don’t think I’ve ever seen so
many and they actually managed to
organize the stadium into a rainbow
itself where each section was a
different color which is such an amazing
an amazing thing to see and since then
we’ve obviously memorialized the 49 in
our new stadium we have 49 rainbow seats
in one of the stands we also designed a
t-shirt that had a rainbow heart on the
front with the hashtag Orlando United
and that raised over half a million
dollars for the one Orlando fund and we
also have received awards for our
response to to pulse including the ESPN
inspire award it’s given to people and
teams who take a risk and who used their
position in sports to help the
disadvantaged it actually came with a
hundred thousand dollar check which
we’re going to give back to the
nonprofit’s that are still working with
those affected by pulse we will continue
to be a champion and a voice for those
oppressed and marginalized communities
and we hope that you will join us
[Applause]
sports teams have a voice in their
community unlike any other and it’s my
belief that they can and should use it
to make their community a better place
soccer’s tapped into the millennial
generation unlike any other sport and it
uses their method of communication
social media to great effect at orlando
city across all our platforms we have
about one one and a half million
followers but if we add in superstars
like cacar and alex morgan that number
rises to 65 million which gives us a
very unique platform to get a message
out both nationally and internationally
when I came to Orlando in 2011 there’d
been a history of failure for sports
teams and we were told this will never
work
so we not only had to make this
community aware that there was a new
team in town but we also had to persuade
them to come to Camping World Stadium a
sixty two and a half thousand seat
stadium built for football the other
kind so what did we do well the first
thing we did community is the pillar of
this this actual this club and so we
sent our players out into the community
we went to events we went to youth clubs
we went to hospitals and we made them
very accessible to this community we
also involved our supporters in every
single thing that we did and social
media became a really kind of marketing
tool for us and our VP of Marketing had
this great idea that we did not realize
was going to take off quite in the way
that it did we made it difficult to
obtain an Orlando city magnet you could
only get them on magnet Monday and of
course everyone wanted one and so it
became this incredible success story and
now you see them not just in Central
Florida they’re there I mean we get
pictures from abroad with people with
them on their their vehicles the the
other thing we did was when we were
awarded the Major League Soccer
franchise the normal idea is that you
have a press conference
in a hotel somewhere but that’s not who
we are we wanted to involve our fans and
we wanted a party so we we closed off
part of Church Street we managed to cram
1700 people into the venue and then we
had 4,000 people partying outside with
purple beer for quite a long time
actually as well similarly when we were
about to break ground on our new stadium
we closed down part of the street again
and our supporters came and we marched
so we had flags banners drums smoke
flares and we marched from from downtown
and to the site of the new stadium we
had special hand-painted shovels that we
broke ground with but we’d also shipped
in 25 tons of purple sand so anyone who
was there that day managed to take home
a special Orlando City container with a
memento of the day as part of being
awarded the franchise Major League
Soccer stipulated that we had to have a
downtown stadium and it was going to be
a public-private partnership which is a
you know kind of the norm in all of
these things and we needed 20 million in
tourist tax dollars from the county so
it had to obviously go to a vote so we
decided we would galvanize our
supporters so we chose a different
Commissioner each day we knew the Mayor
was on board but we had to get four of
the other six commissioners to also vote
yes so we chose a commissioner each day
and we asked our fans to call them email
them go in person tell them why this
stadium was so important which they did
and then on the day of the actual vote
we also galvanized the fans again and we
said please come to the council chambers
and give actual public testimony did
they come they came in huge numbers this
sea of purple we took over the whole of
the council we were even in the
cafeteria there were so many people
there it was just amazing to see it was
our support groups iron lion firm it was
the ruckus it was soccer families it was
businesses nonprofits that we’d we’d
worked with it was obviously our staff
players everyone was there the main
council chamber was just this it was
packed to the rafters there was people
standing all around the back and we
found out afterwards 200 people had
registered to speak for two minutes
pretty incredible it was so loud and
noisy in there as well the people had
got scars and people were chanting and
yelling in fact at one point we were
asked instead of cheering every single
time could we do a little silent pretty
funny to see actually a whole audience
just doing this little quiet fist pump
so after two hours the mayor called a
recess and she implored us to call off
the fans so we tried but they were
determined to have their say and it was
honestly one of the most incredible
outpouring of fan loyalty that I’ve ever
seen
and I they really believed that they
could affect the result and that this
was something they could do for their
club so three hours later and by this
time by the way we were passing candy up
and down the rows to try and keep
everyone’s energy levels up we’d been
there a long time if people were
flagging but it came to the vote and we
we did get the vote it was five to two
against and so afterwards of course
spontaneous parties broke out all over
Orlando and that we went and visited
with with the fans in one of the pubs
and when I was talking to them what they
were saying was if that vote hadn’t gone
through and I hadn’t spoken I would have
felt I would never forgive him myself so
it was it was all of that kind of
community outreach came back to us in
encounter with interest so after that
various funding things happened that
meant it was going to drag on and on and
on and so our majority owner took a very
brave decision and he decided to fund
the stadium privately
just pretty unheard of in the sports
world but it was great for us because it
meant it was our stadium and we had
autonomy and we could do what we wanted
with our stadium and what’s what’s now
happened has also meant it kind of toned
down any of the objections that there
were to the site of the stadium and in
fact what it’s done is it’s it’s it’s
given growth and rejuvenation to that
area it’s an underserved area our two
colleges are coming in UCF in Valencia
they’re building a downtown campus
there’s a new school in the area there
hasn’t been one there for 50 years and
that opens this fall and there’s also at
least a billion dollars in in other
projects that are going to come to that
area so what are we doing with the space
that we have well the first thing we do
is we use our foundation to improve the
health and wellness of our community
especially in those underserved areas
where childhood obesity and all of its
knock-on effects are prevalent we build
safe places to play their size of a
tennis court purple of course there are
many pitches and then we bring our
programming there as well and that
teaches not only soccer skills it
teaches those healthy lifestyle choices
too we also invest in community gardens
so residents are actually able to grow
their own fresh food and we use our
players to reinforce all of those
healthy messages we bring them into our
programs to help those children but more
than that we’ve become an advocate for
equal rights it’s something that’s
become very important to us we’ve had a
pride night every year at our stadium
but we’ve also funded the Pride Parade I
think there was 50,000 people there last
year and we’ve gotten involved in LGBTQ
organizations and our response to the
pulse tragedy in 2016 was to provide an
avenue to begin that healing process we
honored the victims families the first
responders the pool staff we had a game
six days after the tragedy had happened
and so this was an opportunity for our
community to come together so we had
everyone down on the field we actually
put 49 ray
balloons up in one of the stands to
represent those taken from us the
players came out to all you need is love
not the usual anthem and we stopped the
game in the 49th minute which is
something for a moment silence which is
something that’s never been done before
and our fans are incredible they’ve made
signs and banners thousands of rainbow
flags I don’t think I’ve ever seen so
many and they actually managed to
organize the stadium into a rainbow
itself where each section was a
different color which is such an amazing
an amazing thing to see and since then
we’ve obviously memorialized the 49 in
our new stadium we have 49 rainbow seats
in one of the stands we also designed a
t-shirt that had a rainbow heart on the
front with the hashtag Orlando United
and that raised over half a million
dollars for the one Orlando fund and we
also have received awards for our
response to to pulse including the ESPN
inspire award it’s given to people and
teams who take a risk and who used their
position in sports to help the
disadvantaged it actually came with a
hundred thousand dollar check which
we’re going to give back to the
nonprofit’s that are still working with
those affected by pulse we will continue
to be a champion and a voice for those
oppressed and marginalized communities
and we hope that you will join us
[Applause]
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