ORLANDO, Fla.—If anyone wants to study the business model behind Orlando City SC’s ultra-successful majority owner Flavio Augusto da Silva, they need only look at a website called Geraçao de Valor. Here, widely open to all comers, is a blueprint for prosperity that includes Da Silva’s essential principles for life and success.
It is all in Portuguese, but when you talk to the man himself, it quickly becomes obvious that his philosophy of pragmatic philanthropy is at once both a life’s calling and a call to arms.
It also goes a long way to understanding how Orlando City is funded and run, and underlines how the basis for sporting success can be achieved with sound business ideas that are rooted in community values.
Geraçao de Valor translates as "The Value Generation," but the phrase includes a play on words, as it is both an economic expression for generating value as well as “a new generation with (different) values.” It is a fundamental part of this self-made multi-millionaire’s ethos and goes a long way to lifting the lid on how he sees the world, as well as his vision for Orlando City.
“The reason I created Geraçao de Valor was from a desire to show people what they can achieve,” Da Silva says. “It shares what I have done in coming from a poor background in Brazil and lets them know what they can achieve, too.
“I understand not everybody will be a millionaire or buy a soccer club. What I am saying is that everybody can have a better life if they discover this DNA, the key point of this philosophy. This is also the DNA of [founding owners] Phil and Kay [Rawlins], and it is something that comes from the heart.”
Remarkably, Geraçao de Valor is a powerful social engine in Brazil, one of the biggest and most popular in the country, and Da Silva has become one of the most well-known people in his homeland as a result of his drive to help others.
“We have to have a mission in life,” he explains. “People need to know their opportunities, that they can be an artist, an athlete, a humanitarian or social worker instead of only getting a job to pay their bills. If you have a mission in life, you’re going to do what you really love to do. 100 percent of the money Geracao de Valor makes, I give to social works.
“Sharing richness, you can do this. Sometimes it’s necessary. For example, there are people who are hungry. They need to eat. But the best way for me to share richness is to share knowledge. If I lose everything I achieved today, I would be able to do it again because I have knowledge and confidence on how to do it. I learned how to do it.”
This translates directly, says Da Silva, into what he is doing at Orlando City and why he found Phil and Kay to be the perfect business partners.
As founder of the wildly-successful Wise Up international language schools that spread from Brazil to Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and China, Da Silva got a foothold in soccer through sponsoring the 2014 World Cup and brought Kaká on board as a spokesman for his company. Prior to that, Da Silva moved to Florida in 2009 to further the expansion of his business empire and found Orlando a perfect fit with its rapidly growing Brazilian tourist profile.
Once he discovered the mushrooming soccer scene in the Sunshine State, from youth to professional levels, he wanted to learn more and actively investigated the possibility of buying his own team in MLS. As luck would have it, he found Phil and Kay, and the ideal match for both his business and personal ethos.
“Phil and I come from simple origins,” Da Silva says. “He also had an education company and sold it. He loved soccer. The way I manage my business, I use a lot of communication and I see a lot of the same strengths in him, so I really like to work with Phil. There is a uniqueness in our relationship because we can appreciate what each other has done in the last few years.
“The results of the club we can see and we can evaluate a leader from his results. We have some results here that are very relevant. Our attendance last year, for example. The sponsorship and corporate sales. The number of jerseys – we are No. 2 in the league. And Orlando is a small marketplace compared to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. There is a movement embracing the city and the city is embracing us. It is something very interesting, very unique.”
That "movement" remains the fundamental bedrock of the club, which has quickly become a ubiquitous part of the Central Florida scene. In many ways, it is founded in sound business practice and a passionate drive to succeed as well as a desire to encourage positive societal values.
“What I saw was the TV rates being raised every year,” Da Silva says. “The valuation of the league and the clubs has been rising very fast. The latest TV deal is approaching a billion dollars. Four years ago, you almost had to pay to broadcast MLS games. Now they are broadcast in more than 100 countries, in 30 languages. The next [TV] deal will be even better.
“These numbers show that soccer is really growing as a sport, as a business and a product on TV. The reason for the success of the Premier League in the US is TV. MLS is now the same way. I believe that between 8 and 15 years from now, the league will be in the top three in the world. The reason is simple: we are going to have as much money as the big leagues to hire the best players.”
Having got in at an early stage in this perceived exponential growth, it is easy to understand why Da Silva wants to be involved, and why he is happy to invest so much of his own money in the prospect, including the better part of $155 million in the team’s new stadium for 2017.
He remains a huge soccer fan – “My earliest memory is of the 1978 World Cup” – and, while he currently splits his time between Orlando and a home in Lisbon, Portugal, as part of a desire to further his children’s education, he promises that he will be fully engaged with the local community when he returns to Florida full time later this summer.
“All the social work here that is managed by Kay is very much in line with my beliefs, and it’s fantastic,” Da Silva confirms. “I hope to be more involved in that in future … Today, I am considered rich, but I always felt rich. I can lose everything I have today and I will still feel rich. Our richness is not related to what we have.
"I will not be hypocritical to say that I don’t like to make money, but it is not what defines me. If I do something, there has to be a reason for it and, in Orlando, that reason is to create a healthy, lasting and valuable team.”
