SEAT Monthly Series : The Phoenix Rising
The key to a successful professional sports team is a solid ownership group with diversity, established relationships and one common goal – to create a winning team that people will be proud to support.
The new Phoenix Rising FC leadership is made up of that special combination, including: CEOs from successful public companies, founders of private equity funds, entrepreneurs, real estate moguls, a highly experienced marketing executive, celebrities, a professional athlete, the nation’s top lawyer from the music industry and two orthopedic surgeons.
Each and every owner is intensely focused on providing Arizona with the highest level of professional soccer and has played and continues to play a vital role in securing a new future for the team.
The Key to Success in Soccer
Phoenix Rising FC Owners from Left to Right: Jim Scussel, Dr. Christopher Yeung, William Kraus, David Stearns, Tim Riester, Berke Bakay, Brett Johnson, Mark Detmer, Brandon McCarthy and David Rappaport.
It all began with former Targus President Brett Johnson’s epiphany while watching the MLS championship game.
Living in Los Angeles, California at the time, Johnson decided he should invest in his favorite sport, soccer, which was rapidly gaining interest in the United States.
Having spent more than 40 years of his holidays at his family’s Phoenix area vacation home, Johnson could not figure out why a professional soccer team did not exist in the Valley of the Sun, “What a perfect place for a professional soccer team,” said Johnson. “With all the expansion in the MLS, Phoenix needs to have a team, and I am going to make it happen.”
Johnson contacted leaders of the MLS and was told that the path to MLS was through ownership of a USL team.
Johnson purchased stake in the original USL team located in Phoenix called Arizona United SC. While they were making inroads, and fans were coming to the games, it still was not progressing as quickly as he envisioned.
As he probed others on how to improve the team, one name continued to come up, Berke Bakey, local business executive and CEO of the publicly traded restaurant conglomerate, Kona Grill.