Inside the Orlando City SC offices, where painted murals adorn many of the walls, one phrase stands out among the rest: Defy expectations.
It’s a motto that Orlando City SC founder and President Phil Rawlins has worked to ingrain in the team since he bought the city’s rights to a USL Pro club in October 2010. At the news conference announcing that purchase, Rawlins said his intention was to bring an MLS club to the city in three to five years.
A little more than four years since then, Orlando City will play its first game in MLS on Sunday. It will take on New York City FC, the other new club joining MLS this season.
“Since we’ve started the club, we’ve continually surprised people in a good way, and defied what they’ve expected of us all along the way,” Rawlins said. “For us, defying expectations is what Orlando is all about.”
The next expectation the club wants to defy is that its hometown is nothing more than a city based around theme parks. “We want the club to be part of the city pride of Orlando, we want people to be proud of us, and we want to represent the new communities being built here,” Rawlins said.
With that in mind, the club has communicated frequently with fans to build a real trust, aiming to create a family-oriented community. Part of that desire came from Rawlins’ background, spending more than 15 years as an owner and director at his hometown club, the English Premier League’s Stoke City FC.
Fans have responded in kind: The team has sold more than 12,000 season tickets and expects to reach its cap of 14,000 by the start of the season. It has sold more than 40,000 tickets to its first game, with an aim of selling 60,000.
More than 10,000 fans registered to attend the team’s first open practice and more than 7,000 showed up. A large number of them tailgated beforehand, and marched and chanted as they walked into the stadium.
“We expect to be in the top five of MLS revenue-generating clubs in our first year, in a marketplace that isn’t as large as some of the other clubs in the league,” Rawlins said. “Our goal is to be one of the top three ticket marketplaces in MLS as well, and we feel confident about those goals.”
The corporate community of Orlando also has embraced the club since its entry into the market, most notably Orlando Health, which has sponsored the team’s jersey every season it has played professionally. Now even those theme parks the city is most known for are getting involved — the team is expected to announce a partnership with Disney before the season.
Orlando City also is looking to prove itself as a top-flight team at the MLS level from day one.
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New players such as Kaka (left) have fired up Orlando City’s fan base.
Photo by: Orlando City SC |
The team found success in USL Pro — finishing in first place three of the team’s four seasons — and has since added a host of new players headlined by Kaka, a Brazilian national team player and now MLS’s highest-paid player. Still, rarely does a true expansion team make a big splash in the standings in its first year. “Most people don’t expect a new team to be a playoff team, and we’re looking to defy expectations there as well,” Rawlins said.
But for Orlando City, the goal isn’t just to be a successful club on the field, but to be a big part of the continued growth of MLS more broadly.
“We want to be the best club to Central Florida, but we also want to be part of the continued growth of the world’s biggest sport with MLS,” Rawlins said.
Brazil is one place on which the team has its sights set. Between the influence of majority owner Flavio Augusto da Silva, a Brazilian businessman, and Kaka, Rawlins said the club already has more than 7,000 Facebook followers in Brazil alone. Orlando is also one of the most popular destinations for vacationing Brazilians, he said.
Given the hard work that Rawlins and the entire team have put forth in the past few years, one wouldn’t blame him for sitting back and just enjoying that first match. However, Rawlins has other plans.
“When that first whistle blows, I may have to take a second to shed a tear and we’ll forever savor that moment, but I know by the time halftime comes around, I’ll be thinking about what comes next,” he said. “March 8 is a milestone day, but it’s not the end; it’s only the beginning.”
