After a new logo, stadium renderings will be next for Orlando City
Team president Phil Rawlins said now that the new team logo is launched, the re-branding process can officially begin.
May 14, 2014
The next few months will be very exciting for everyone that has followed the Orlando City soccer club. Their transition to becoming an MLS team is moving on pace, and this summer should be filled with plenty of exciting news and events.
“Now that the new logo is launched, that gives us our new brand, it gives a platform this summer to do a lot of things that we wanted to do,” said Phil Rawlins, team owner & president.
“Obviously all our new merchandise, it also gives us the opportunity to get ready for the World Cup, which is in a months time. We’ll brand that with our logo, we’ll do watch parties all across the city,” added Rawlins.
After the logo launch Tuesday, the team will now continue to finalize plans for their new stadium.
“We’ll hopefully have the stadium renderings in a few weeks time, and then of course its going to be breaking ground at the stadium.”
The stadium is projected to be ready in 2016, and after a sales-tax rebate, funds to work with will go from about $85 million to $115 million.
“We’ve sat with two plans for awhile. Obviously you can do a lot with 30 million…we’ll go back to plan B, that we had in our back pocket for the extra $30 million,” said Rawlins.
“It will mean a lot of new and extra facilities in the building itself. We’re really excited what we can do with that stadium now.”
Another hot topic for the club will be player signings. The lions have made it clear that they want a marquee player on this squad, which would make the draw for season ticket sales even greater.
“We’ve made no secret we have a lot of interest in Kaka, and I know he has the same interest of coming to the United States, in particular in playing for Orlando City. Negotiations are ongoing so we’ll see where all that comes out,” said Rawlins.
“These negotiations always take awhile, it’s very complex. You bring in someone, a major, major world star from another continent into another continent, into another league theres a lot of details to be ironed out, but I’m pretty confident we’ll get there,” added Rawlins.
