Latest news with #DavidHarden
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
AV Alta finding quick success, and strong fan support, in its inaugural season
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. Advertisement '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. Read more: Why one pro soccer team in Orange County has 1,463 shareholders Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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 executive 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement ⚽ 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. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
AV Alta finding quick success, and strong fan support, in its inaugural season
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. 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 executive 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.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
There are 'definitely buying opportunities' in the tech sell-off
Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and ASML (ASML) are dragging the market lower as investors weigh the impact of the US-China trade war and a potential economic slowdown fueled by US President Trump's policies. Summit Global Investments chief investment officer David Harden sits down with Madison Mills and Brad Smith to discuss how to play the tech sector, comparing Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL). To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. It's time now for today's strategy session. US stocks opening in the red this morning with tech leading the losses here. Options data showing investors are positioning for further losses in mega cap tech and semis ahead of earnings. That's according to data from Bloomberg. Joining us now with more, David Harden, Summit Global Investments CIO. David, great to speak with you this morning. Certainly a lot of pain for the big tech names this morning. Thank you. Are you buying big tech at these levels? Well, I think there's some definitely buying opportunities that are coming available. For example, one of the things that I like is Google. Google has $25 billion in free cash flows last quarter. It's it's it's growing at double digits year-over-year. Its profit margins are great. Its return on equity is around 30%. And the PE is now finally getting down into those reasonable levels you can consider 16, 17, 15. So I think I think these are buying opportunities to start accumulating more positions in something like a Google. I think what you're highlighting is the, you know, this one thing is not like the other in the tech trade even as you're looking at what is more of a platform play where there's perhaps more of a reason to believe that the consumers would flow into free products that a Google might offer online versus what we're seeing in some of the products and propensity to spend in some of the other tech plays where there might be a consumer pullback in those discretionary dollars. How do you continue to look across these companies once we get into earnings and see how they're forecasting and guiding for the rest of the year on that? Yeah, I think that's really important because where did their earnings come from, right? And and how are they tied to tariffs? That's really important. And how does those tariffs impact like advertising for Google. So you want to look kind of through those earnings into the consumer and and see what that consumer's doing and how that consumer's acting. And I think that's another play in tech. There is a separation. What? Are they hardware? Like Apple's had to navigate a lot more tariff news than Google's had to navigate, even though they're both navigating it. And we're starting to see individual companies being used as tools in this trade war. Obviously with Nvidia's specific chips being impacted by export controls, to what extent does that change any fundamental view you have on these stocks or should investors look past any of that daily headline news on tariffs? I I I think absolutely, you have to consider that and you have to manage your your risk here. Risk is really, really important in these markets and managing that is essential. So where you have the H20 chip, for example, invidia, they have clearly shown last night on their earnings that they have a difficult time more difficult time than some of these other tech names. So look for tech names that are more US based. Look for tech names that have more um say high-quality earnings. Even though somebody could question Google's high quality earnings, their earnings scores are not very good, but it is more US based. It is more consumer based in the US. And so that's very, very important in tech. It seems like we've all been asking the question of what's the next big catalyst to drive conviction within the markets. Does that mean the AI trade or the fast-paced growth cycle for the AI trade is dead? No, I don't think so because let's face it. Probably 10 minutes ago you were looking at AI, or I was looking at AI, or somebody was looking at some agent and the and the new things that are coming out with AI agents and things of this nature are absolutely impactful. The power of AI is growing. It's not shrinking. We're using it more. And it will continue to spread. So I think that trade's not done. I think there'll continue to be infrastructure build outs and AI things, but it has to go past just the technology. You have to look into the in industrial side of tech and where are they putting and building these centers at. I want to get to one of your cells, but first really quickly, would you buy Nvidia at these levels? Uh probably not right now. No. I would be if you're if you're in it, it's time to hold and be patient. But if you're looking to buy, I think there's better opportunities to buy. And I know one of them is Microsoft, correct? I if you're looking at the two comparison, yes, Microsoft today, Nvidia's down more 6-7%, Microsoft's down in one, one and a half right now. I I think that's a safer play. It's a little bit more if if you will ingrained in our society. The revenues are are more um consistent. And so that's something that I would look at is more something like a Google or Microsoft. Both of those I would consider buying opportunities, especially at these levels. And I know a sell for you is one member of the mag 7. Talk to us about Tesla. Well, I think Tesla's had some negative earnings. We know that and um it's under pressure. I think every Tesla's uh I I saw a sticker on the back of a Tesla the other day that said something like, I bought this post crazy. So this is this is very, very important right now in our society. But having said that, I think Elon Musk is going to tell you when it's the right time to buy Tesla. And he hasn't done that yet. So he he's outspoken. We know what he's capable of. And until he's ready to let us know it's the right time to buy, I think it's you avoid that stock right now. Outside of tech, where's your favorite trade, your top idea right now? And I think I think outside of tech, you're going to have to look at some of the healthcare companies that have really been hurt with the Pharmatech news and other things. It seems like they're next though in the docket for what potential tariffs may look like. Oh, absolutely. So look for those healthcare companies that are not necessarily tied to pharma and they get their revenue, surgical centers and other places that are hospital-based, that are US-based, that we are going to use on a daily basis, but really are not tied to that. Those are the ones that have been kind of the baby been thrown out with the bath water. Their their valuations are very good right now. Absolutely. David, great to see you here in studio. Thanks for taking the time with us this morning. Thank you. Absolutely. Sign in to access your portfolio
