By Paul Nicholson
February 23 – The MLS has bought back the Chivas USA franchise from Mexican owners Jorge Vergara and Angelica Fuentes (pictured) with immediate effect. The Los Angeles team will compete this season under the Chivas name, but will have a new president appointed by the MLS who will take over the running of the business. Head coach Wilmer Cabrera, who only joined the club on January 9, will remain in charge of the team.
Next season the club will have a new name, new logo, new owners and potentially have taken the first steps towards a new stadium. For the 2014 season Chivas will continue to play at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
In an open letter to fans, MLS commissioner Don Garber said: “In the coming months, the league will work to find a new ownership group that will establish a new vision and plan for the team, and will be committed to building a new stadium in Los Angeles. We have already had initial discussions with a number of very qualified potential owners and it is our intention to transition the team to a new owner sometime this year.”
Vergara was part of the original ownership group that purchased an expansion team that began play in 2005, and he and Fuentes became sole owners of the club in 2012. The plan was to attract the Mexican football fans in Southern California and give them a team they could identify with. The common ownership with Mexican top tier club Chivas Guadalajara was reckoned to be the golden ticket.
Garber said he believed that the concept for Chivas USA was the cause of the problem but rather a series of bad decisions.
“There were a wide variety of decisions made both by the league and by ownership that just weren’t right,” said Garber. “That was 10 years ago. If we were to do it again, and we launched this exactly as the way it was intended, who knows if in today’s environment, whether it would have been more successful.”
Vergara said: “When Angelica and I gained full operational control of the team for the first time 15 months ago, we were hopeful we would be able to turn it around. However, there is only one Chivas de Guadalajara, and we have realised that it will require more time, further resources, and a level of commitment that would divert too much of our focus from our other business interests. We explored opportunities to sell to other groups, but we believe selling the franchise to MLS on an expedited basis is in the best interests of all parties, including the team’s players and its dedicated fans.”
No figure has been announced for the sale back to the MLS, though Garber said that the league had paid “market price”. The new Orlando franchise that will being play in the MLS in 2015 cost $70 million, plus the commitment to build a new stadium.
David Beckham’s Miami franchise came via the exercising of a $20 million option he had to acquire an MLS franchise. But he needed to find a city that would support the build of a stadium for the franchise. When he joined with the city of Miami the Chivas franchise was not available, though a franchise in LA where he had played for the LA Galaxy and lived with his family may have been an interesting option for him.
Garber said that “it’s time to turn to a new chapter here. That new chapter will start with us finding a new ownership group – we’re pretty good at that. And developing with a stadium plan – we’re pretty good at that, too.”
The league will “lead discussions on the stadium front, and hopefully be in a position to hand them over to a new ownership group”, said Garber. The preferred site is the current location of the LA Sports Arena in downtown Los Angeles near the campus of the University of Southern California.
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