Major League Volleyball announced its Los Angeles expansion franchise for the 2027 season, with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong leading the ownership group alongside Ben Priest. The league declined to disclose the expansion fee, though two people familiar with the structure said it sits between $8 million and $12 million, paid in tranches tied to venue commitments and local sponsorship benchmarks.
The Los Angeles franchise becomes MLV's eighth team and its first in a top-five media market. The league launched in 2022 with teams in Austin, Atlanta, Omaha, Grand Rapids, Salt Lake City, Columbus, and Nashville—all markets with lower venue costs and quieter competitive calendars. Los Angeles changes the equation. Soon-Shiong, who owns the *Los Angeles Times* and holds a minority stake in the Lakers, brings media optionality and corporate Rolodex depth the league has not yet accessed. Priest, a former Nike executive who spent six years building Overtime's basketball infrastructure, handles operations.
The timing matters for two reasons. First, volleyball's participation numbers in California high schools and club programs outpace every state except Texas, but the professional product has never monetized that density. AVP beach tours collapsed twice. Indoor leagues folded in 2019 and 2021. MLV's bet is that the sport's problem was never demand—it was distribution and sponsorship naïveté. Second, Los Angeles loses the Clippers to Inglewood's Intuit Dome this fall, and several mid-tier venue operators are hunting for anchor tenants to fill weeknight inventory. MLV's schedule runs February through May, overlapping minimally with NBA and NHL, which creates pricing leverage the league has not enjoyed in secondary markets.
The franchise will play in a 5,000-to-7,500-seat venue, likely downtown or in the South Bay, with an announcement expected by September. Two people close to the negotiation said the ownership group is prioritizing a building with existing broadcast infrastructure and corporate hospitality inventory, which suggests the Toyota Sports Performance Center in El Segundo or the Galen Center near USC. The Galen Center would put MLV on the same floor where the Trojans' women's volleyball program draws 3,200 fans per match, the fourth-highest average in the Pac-12 last season.
Soon-Shiong's involvement signals a different commercial model than MLV's early franchises, which relied on local real estate developers and minor-league sports operators. His portfolio includes stakes in Magic Johnson Enterprises, Anthem Blue Cross, and multiple biotech platforms, which opens sponsorship categories—health insurance, pharmaceuticals, medical devices—that volleyball has never accessed at scale. One sponsor executive who has negotiated with MLV said the league's existing deals are "heavily regional, heavily B2C, heavily sampling-focused," meaning local QSRs, automotive dealerships, and beverage distributors. A Los Angeles franchise with Soon-Shiong's backing could shift that mix toward Fortune 500 categories.
The league's media situation remains unresolved. MLV currently streams matches on its owned platform and syndicates highlights to YouTube, but does not have a linear or tier-one streaming partner. Priest's hire suggests the league is preparing a broader distribution push; his Overtime tenure included deals with Amazon, Snapchat, and Overtime's own subscription app. One media buyer said MLV's Los Angeles announcement is "the card they play in Q3 negotiations," meaning the franchise gives the league a West Coast late-night window and a market that moves Nielsen numbers.
MLV's average attendance last season was 2,400 across seven markets, with Salt Lake City leading at 3,100 and Nashville trailing at 1,800. Revenue per franchise, according to two people who reviewed league financials during expansion discussions, ranged from $2.5 million to $4.2 million, with ticketing representing 40% to 50% of the mix. Sponsorship and merchandise lag behind minor-league hockey and Major League Rugby in comparable markets, which explains why the league is chasing a media deal before it adds a second coastal team.
The Los Angeles franchise will begin hiring front-office staff in July, with a general manager announcement expected by late August. Player signings start in November, after the league's draft in Columbus. Soon-Shiong and Priest are expected to attend the league's Board of Governors meeting in mid-September, where venue finalization and local sponsorship targets will be presented.
The franchise fee structure includes performance escalators tied to local sponsorship revenue in Year One, meaning if the Los Angeles team secures more than $3 million in local deals before opening night, the ownership group pays an additional tranche to the league. That mechanic, used in MLS and NWSL expansion deals, protects existing franchises from dilution while rewarding operators who can monetize their markets above baseline.