MLS will officially unveil its new office at 2 Penn Plaza in Manhattan with an invite-only press event Wednesday afternoon. The league moved into the two-floor, 126,000-square-foot space last month, nearly double the square-footage of its prior headquarters at 420 Fifth Avenue. MLS EVP & Chief Business Officer Camilo Durana called the move a “game changer” and reflective of the league entering a new chapter of growth, which it has branded “MLS 3.0.”
“We were running out of space,” Durana told SBJ, referring to the old office. “We were struggling with the ability to add full-time people and still make it comfortable. In this, we have room to grow.”
The majority of MLS’ staff -- nearly 500 employees -- are based at the N.Y. headquarters under a four-days-per-week in-office schedule (about 25 work out of MLS Productions’ space housed in the Studios at WWE in Stamford, Conn.).
MLS worked with TPG Architecture to custom-design the new office. Spread across the two floors are more than 80 meeting rooms, four “wellness” areas (e.g., for meditation or nursing), two outdoor spaces, multiple podcast recording studios, a cafeteria, and an operations hub for match day viewing. There are also LED ribbons throughout that can be programmed to display partner branding or live scores, and pervasive design elements meant to evoke the feel of a stadium, including mesh walls that look like nets, curved archways that mimic the shape of a soccer goal, and club-specific banners.
Durana described the league’s investment to make the move as “considerable,” but MLS declined to comment on the terms of its lease. It had been based at the Fifth Ave location since 2010.
“We’re going through a lot of change and evolution as a league,” Durana said, noting MLS’ recent move to a summer-to-spring calendar, formation of the Hometown Soccer Holdings joint venture with KKR to commercialize MLS Next Pro, and the upcoming World Cup. “To be able to work in a space like this as we present ourselves to the world -- you think about partners, sponsors, media partners walking into this office versus where we were before -- it paints us in a rightful light in terms of where we are in our journey.”
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