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David Harden has spent enough time writing and producing TV content to know that few shows really follow the script. So he had little expectation his first foray into funding a men’s soccer team would go as planned.
And it didn’t.
“It’s way better than I thought,” he said last week. “For the first 16 months, before the stadium was finished and before we had a team that we could see on the field and the community in the stands, it was an idea, numbers on a spreadsheet.
“But once you come to a game, you know it’s real. And so we pinch ourselves.”
Here’s how real: Five weeks into its history AV Alta FC, a fledgling club in the third-tier USL League One, is 5-3-0 in all competition, two of its three losses coming on the road, followed by five straight wins at home.
By allowing virtually anyone to own a slice of the team, Orange County Soccer Club has found a way to increase fan involvement with the team and the community.
Last week the club knocked out Orange County SC, a perennial playoff team in the second-tier USL Championship, from the U.S. Open Cup and next month it will travel to Texas to play FC Dallas, an original MLS club, in the tournament’s round of 32.
The AV, by the way, stands for Antelope Valley, which hasn’t had a professional sports franchise since minor league baseball’s Lancaster Jethawks were disbanded in 2020. The valley has never had a professional soccer team.
But the reception Alta FC has received suggests this one was long overdue: The team sold more than 2,000 season tickets and sold out the stadium’s 11 suites before it had played a game. And in the last four months it sold $250,000 in merchandise, including $85,000 on the day of its first league home game — one that drew more than 5,433 fans to its 5,300-seat stadium.
It has averaged 4,500 for its three league games, about 85% of capacity for a team that didn’t exist two months ago.
“It feels pretty good to have some kind of home pride again,” said Andrew Montez, who has attended three of the team’s first five home games. “I’ve always been a soccer fan. Now you only have to drive a few minutes to go.”
Next to him stood Carlos Madrigal, who was holding a green Alta FC flag. Madrigal has made the 115-mile round trip to BMO Stadium to see LAFC play but is considering throwing his allegiance to the local club.
“It’s awesome. We have a home team now. It brings the community together,” he said. “The crowd here, the ambiance, the fans — all together they become something much bigger.”
The team was the brainchild of John Smelzer, a longtime sports and media executive who served on the 1994 World Cup organizing committee before going on to work with the NFL, then Fox Sports and NBC. In the fall of 2023 he began proselytizing about the need for a team in the Antelope Valley, quickly gaining the support of Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris — whose law firm bought the sponsorship rights to Alta FC’s uniforms. Harden, along with Bob Roback, chief operating officer of the United Talent Agency, a sports, entertainment and advisory firm based in Beverly Hills, helped Smelzer raise the club’s operating capital while Harden and his wife, Sarah, put more than $1 million behind the effort, making them the team’s majority owners.
The Hardens were also among the early investors in Angel City, the NWSL expansion club that grew into the valuable women’s sports franchise in history in less than five years.
“John’s passion was important,” David Harden said. “As an investor, you want a founder who’s not going to lose interest. You’re looking for grit and a real measure of grit is passion. But I was most attracted to the opportunity.
“Soccer is growing. Live sports is a super sexy investment category. So we’re just riding a lot of trend lines in the right direction.”
As Smelzer and Harden looked out on a Tuesday night crowd of more than 3,200 at the Jethawks old stadium, which the city spent $17 million to retrofit for soccer, each searched for evidence to prove their investments of time and money had been wise ones.
“Look at those kids,” Smelzer said, pointing to three grade-school boys, cheering fanatically from their front-row seats late in the second half. “They’re still into the game.”
What more proof? When a U.S. Open Cup game with LAFC’s NextPro team went into extra time late on a chilly weeknight, few in the crowd left. When the game with Orange County went to penalty kicks last week, hundreds of fans crowded behind the south goal, which likely intimidated the visitors and buoyed the home team.
Those fans were cheering for a team that includes national team players from El Salvador, Benin, the Philippines, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago as well as homegrown players such as former MLS winger Miguel Ibarra and three other players from the Antelope Valley, who were signed to academy contracts. The idea was to show kids there was a path from here to there; that professional soccer had a pathway for players from the valley to the pros.
Sean Franklin played at Highland High in Palmdale then won two MLS Cups, two Supporters’ Shield, was named the MLS rookie of the year and made an all-star team with the Galaxy. If he can do it, anybody can do it.
But the market could be a bigger factor than the roster in the team’s chances at success. The valley’s population of approximately 500,000 makes it about the size of Sacramento and Kansas City. And while putting an NBA or NFL team in that market would be ambitious, a third-tier soccer team seems like a good fit.
“When John first came to me, I thought that I would come to a couple of games. I thought I would write him a check and wish him good luck,” Harden said. “But as weeks went by, I was more involved, writing a bigger check. I can’t get enough of it. The community that’s up here, they’re amazing. And they have embraced us and what we’re trying to do in ways that go beyond our expectations.
“Antelope Valley is this lost little diamond in L.A. County. And there’s not a lot of competition for people’s attention.”
AV Alta FC has certainly drawn the people’s attention. The question now is can they hold it.
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
