Lights Owner: On-Field Performance Has To Match Off-Field Success

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

He looked like an older college student, sitting at a work cubicle in a co-working section at Zappos’ downtown headquarters.

 

He got up to greet a visitor, found a private office with glass walls and began summarizing the inaugural season for Las Vegas’ professional soccer team, the Lights FC.

 

All the crazy non-game stuff like the helicopter cash drop, the llamas, the dispensary sponsor, the colorful ex-coach who smoked cigarettes with fans after he was tossed from a game and the “betcast” partnership with VSiN for the season finale brought smiles to Lights fans.

 

But, Lights owner Brett Lashbrook acknowledged, the team’s performance on the pitch has to catch up with the first-year success of the Lights off the field. The Lights won only 8 of their 34 games in the United Soccer League, finishing a dismal 15th out of 17 teams in the West. Meanwhile, the good news was that attendance was a shade under 7,000 a game with 3,000-4,000 season ticketholders anchoring the fan base in year one. Lights’ attendance was easily top 10 in the United Soccer League.

Brett Lashbrook, pictured here.

 

“Our on-field needs to match our off-field,” Lashbrook told LVSportsBiz.com in an inteview at the Lights’ business operations at the Zappos co-working area at Zappos’ downtown headquarters.

 

About two weeks after former Lights coach Jose Luis Sanchez Sola left the team in mid-September before the season ended, Lashbrook began chatting with one of the biggest names in U.S. soccer — three-time World Cup player and former U.S. soccer player of the 1990s, Eric Wynalda.

 

The talks moved fast and Lashbrook had a new man to lead the Lights — the confident Wynalda, the former striker who told the owner that he made 21 of 21 penalty kicks when he played for the U.S. national team. LVSportsBiz.com caught up with Wynalda Thursday morning.

 

“He played with a swagger, a demeanor every American fan know,” Lashbrook said. “That swagger is consistent with our culture. We lead with our chin.”

 

Lashbrook said Lights fans come from three demographic groups — the Latino base, the hipster/young family demo and the suburban soccer moms/youth soccer clubs. He said Wynalda has street credibility across all ethnic groups and will help pull more white fans from the Las Vegas suburbs like Summerlin and Henderson.

 

Wynalda said he wants to stabilize a roster to lower the turnover rate of players so that fans can connect better with players.

 

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The transition from Cashman Field as a baseball park to a soccer-only venue in 2019 will also help the Lights. Lashbrook has big plans for Cashman with the aim of making the downtown stadium the Fenway Park or Wrigley Field of professional soccer. The game plan is to build a seat structure behind the right field and left field fences to create a U-shaped configuration around the soccer field.

 

But the Lights cannot move into Cashman Field as the sole tenant even though the Las Vegas 51s Triple A baseball team is building a new $150 million ballpark next to City National Arena in Downtown Summerlin. The 51s’ owner, Summerlin master developer Howard Hughes Corporation, has paid rent to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) for the rest of 2018 to use Cashman Field.

 

It’s unclear whether the new Las Vegas Ballpark next to the Vegas Golden Knights’ training center will be ready for Big League Weekend in March — so the possibility of Howard Hughes staging Big League Weekend at Cashman in March is still possible. Big League Weekend brings together two Major League Baseball teams for two spring training games in Las Vegas.

 

But Lashbrook can’t wait to move the Lights offices permanently into Cashman Field. But for now, 22 Lights workers are based temporarily in the Zappos co-working space at the Zappos headquarters off Las Vegas Boulevard in downtown.

 

Lashbrook said he remains as bullish as ever on professional soccer in Las Vegas and believes Wynalda can build on the Lights’ maiden season.

 

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