It’s three and a half hours before players will take the field at BMO Stadium. But one Angel City Football Club staffer is already putting miles on her Nikes.
Monica Mendez is the soccer franchise’s Vice President of Events Operations. On gamedays, it’s her job to ensure that the venue is ready for athletes, staff and the tens of thousands of fans who attend Angel City matches. For Mendez and her team, this means preparing every space and every screen to match the branding and the spirit of the club.
“We have just made a really pointed effort to have our signage visible at every entrance, at every place we can,” Mendez says as she walks down the sidewalk on the west side of the stadium. “So you really feel as a fan [that] you’re coming to an Angel City game.”
This task is complicated by the fact that Mendez’s club is not the only one hosting matches at the seven-year-old venue. BMO Stadium – formerly known as Banc of California Stadium – was built for Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), a men’s soccer team that plays in Major League Soccer. So when it’s Angel City’s turn for a home game, Mendez, her colleagues and a collection of contractors have to transform the space in as little as ten hours.
As the primary tenant, LAFC retains the right to keep some of its black-and-gold branding visible. Prior to Angel City’s match against the Orlando Pride on Aug. 21, a multi-story promotion for LAFC’s newest star player, Son Heung-Min, was plastered over the glass doors and windows of the North Zelle Grand Lobby Entrance.
For Mendez, figuring out where Angel City can best display its crest and colors is an ongoing affair.
“We do a really great job at balancing what we can and what we have access to, and every year, we evolve and ask for a little more,” Mendez says as she enters the team store.
“Every offseason, we walk and we go, okay, ‘Well, what else can we do? What else do we have budget to do?’” she adds. “And then [we] go and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to take over this space, design something for it.’”
This iterative process has led to significant changes around the stadium. At the northeast entrance, there is now a permanently installed Angel City crest, which Mendez particularly appreciates given its visibility from the very busy Figueroa Street.
Such fixed signage is accompanied by a series of temporary installations that are added on gamedays and removed after matches, including column wraps featuring players and custom boards with the club’s branding.
In some spaces, Mendez’s team has gotten particularly creative. At the field level, “Day One” scarves dating back to Angel City’s home opener in its inaugural season cover up LAFC logos underneath.
Above the supporters’ section, an area that originally featured individually submitted fan photos behind a plexiglass covering has been replaced with a placard depicting those images in order to make the display easier to set up and break down. And in the Directors Box, Mendez has incorporated pink lighting to try to ensure that the team’s crest is as visible as its glowing LAFC counterpart after the sun sets.
Whatever the space or the challenge, Mendez’s goal remains the same: making a very visible transformation virtually invisible.
“We want everything we do to be intentional and not look like it’s just slapped together,” Mendez explains, standing on the concourse just inside the northwest gates. “And so for me, if people don’t know all the detail and all the hard work and how much goes into putting this on, that’s okay because it’s my job to make it look flawless and seamless and like we belong. Because we do, right?”
Much like soccer, setting up for gameday is a team sport. Mendez’s Events Operations team has three other full-time employees, and they are supported by an army of contractors.
Meghan Hartley is the in-stadium producer, controlling everything from the video boards to the on-field pyrotechnics. On gamedays, Hartley supervises a team of approximately 50 individuals, including control room operators, stage managers, lighting technicians, the DJ and the public address announcer.
Just like Mendez, Hartley strives to mask all the effort and chaos that the production team must navigate.
“My goal as a producer is always to make the cleanest show for the fan experience,” Hartley says. “And things will change on the fly, but [the goal is] making it so that the fan has no idea what the script is.”
There are occasionally major changes to that script. On June 14, the club launched an “Immigrant City Football Club” campaign in response to the federal immigration raids in Los Angeles. This meant that the team’s signature sol rosa (pink), asphalt (black) and armour (gray) was replaced with black and white for the evening — and the staff had to figure out how to print, mail, and hand out the thousands of corresponding T-shirts in a compressed timeframe.
Senior Manager of Events Operations Kelsey Uruburu recalls the long days and nights it took in the week leading up to the resulting reconfiguration. But for her, the toil had a significant payoff.
“That was really special because it took every single department,” Uruburu says, adding, “By the time the game kicked off, there were already fake shirts being sold online. So that’s how you know you’ve made it — especially in L.A.”
Working with other departments is the norm for Mendez’s team. Whether a request comes from executive leadership, Marketing, or Commerce, the Events Operations quartet is charged with translating those needs into tangible experiences.
On Thursday night, this included supporting an activation from Bandai Namco around its Tamagotchi franchise.
For Chief Marketing Officer Julia Victor, partnerships with gaming companies present a new area of growth for the club.
“There are different levels of fans that we’re trying to bring in, and a lot of these theme nights and things really allow us to bring back fans that 100% are here for the team and the sport, but also, it’s entertainment, it’s L.A.,” Victor says. “We’re competing against so many things. So sometimes you’ve got to add a little extra, a little fun, a little something to, you know, choose to come here versus any other thing you have a choice to go to.”
These activations can present their own challenges. Mendez points to a temporary tent installed near the northwest gates and suggests a liaison from stadium operations might note that it needs to be moved back to allow for more room for fans to walk through.
But no matter what obstacle arises, Mendez insists it’s all worth it to support the growth of the game that she loves.
“This did not exist for women’s sports when I was young,” Mendez says. “And so having that to share with [my daughter] — and all the thousands of fans that come through these gates every game and watch us on TV — and the change that we’ve been able to make in women’s sports has been the most rewarding thing in my career.”