Additional reasons and information:

 

The number one thing that seems to bring the whole community together are professional sports teams. There's something about the atmosphere on game day that even though everyone is different and may not like the other people around them, they all put their differences aside and come together to support the team(s) that are representing their community.

 

Sports are known to United the residents of the community and deliver a since of pride that everyone can relate too. This is a perfect way of bringing people of all walks of life together regardless of what culture they may be from. Not everyone may realize this, but everyone is standing in an environment that's completely diverse of many different cultures. Sports appear to be the only time when everyone of several different cultures come together and united as one; otherwise for the most part, they rarely interact with the other cultures and/or communities, or worst not at all. 

 

There are some fans that go the extra distance and continue to influence the community before and after the games. Not only do they attend and watch the games they also have pre and post games parties that bring people closer together. In addition, these fans also arrange other events (beyond supporting their sports teams) that really gets the community engaged all year round.

 

This cluster of fans are known to as a "supporters group", which consists of hardcore fans that are very passionate about the sport and/or team(s) through thick and thin. Supporters groups have been widely popular all over the world for many sports teams especially in soccer, and studies have shown that supporters groups have boosted the team(s) popularity exponentially. It's a great way to bring people together that have some common interests with each other and gives everyone a chance to make some new friends as well. Lots more information about supporters groups can be found at the following links: 

 

Wikipedia pages:

• List of fan-owned sports teams 

• Supporters Direct 

• Supporters' trust 

• Supporters' groups 

YouTube Video: How Fan Ownership Works

Website: Supporters-Direct.org

 

In some cases, the supporters’ groups also partially or completely owned the team. These are commonly referred to as fan-owned teams because the fans owned some or all of the team and have a direct say in what happens to the team. Some fan-owned teams are run like corporations in which the fans are shareholders of the team and have more or less control on team operations depending on how much of the team the shareholders own. Others have the supporters’ groups own a flat equity stake in the team regardless of how many people are in the supporters group.

 

This concept is small in the United States, but it's the standard for most teams throughout the rest of the world and it's very slowly catching on here. It's especially popular in the U.K. where every soccer team and some rugby teams are partially or completely owned by the fans/supporters themselves. They even have an organization that helps supporters’ groups with financial needs such as establishing a supporters’ trust-fund and raising capital to purchase shares of the soccer club they follow. Australia also uses fan-ownership for many sports teams including those in the Australian Football League. 

 

I truly believe the supporters/fan owned model is the best way to get the residents of The Valley engaged with the team(s) that could potentially play here. The newer generations of the world are loving this type of ownership as it gives people the power to make decisions, so the United States could soon follow the rest of the world and adopt the supporters/fan-owned model for all sports teams.  

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On a small note, The Valley doesn't have a stadium big enough to draw large crowds. Ideally, a 20-30 thousand seat stadium would serve well as a professional venue for many different events including sports, music, and community use. The Valley really needs something like this to help re-establish what was once the greatest area of Los Angeles and get people to look at us as the place to be like it was decades ago. The stadium should feature all of the historical cultural values that make up the heart of The San Fernando Valley and be a place for people of all cultures to come together. 
 

So we would need to generate enough support and money from many different sources for this to work. The more support we can get for this idea; the better chance we will have of getting investors to fund for the project. Nowadays, there are ways to construct a modular stadium that is cheaper to build, but still has that same professional look and feel to it. For example, there was a 27,000 seat facility built from scratch in Vancouver for only CA$14.5 million under the name Empire Field II. 

 

To sum it all up, having supporters’ groups for sports teams and other events like music, festivals, shows, and conventions is a great way to get people from all walks of life together in one place. There are a ton of possibilities out there that we can take advantage of if we execute them correctly. 

 

If anybody wants to help make this happen, or if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me back or reply/sign up on the temporary website down below. I would appreciate if you can give this some thought and consideration as a fan-owned team could truly happen very soon. I would also appreciate if you could spread this message out to your audience(s) as some of them may be interested in the idea as well. Thank you all so very much for taking the time to read this message and I hope to hear from you soon.

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