Featured Stories – New Board Chairman Caesar Lopez
Greater Orlando Sports Commission Welcomes New Board
Chairman Caesar Lopez
By George Diaz
Caesar Lopez didn’t have all the details worked out, but he had two very important things working in his favor as he sought out a career path as a young man:
Focus and passion.
He loved law. He loved sports.
That focus became even clearer after graduating from the University of Connecticut, and while staying in the Northeast to study law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. There was another motivational button for him: His older sister was an accomplished attorney. So why not him?
“I have a very competitive personality,” he said. “And so, when my older sister told me not to go to law school, naturally my instinct was to prove her wrong.”
While on campus, he learned about a group called the Sports and Entertainment Law Society, and that's when everything clicked. He loved sports growing up in Orlando. Soccer was a particular passion. He still has pictures of himself and his father watching games at the 1994 World Cup at the then Citrus Bowl.
Lopez was a standout soccer player at Cypress Creek High School, where he still holds the unofficial scoring record. He continued his playing career at UConn and was a member of the three-time Big East Championship team.
Lopez was a standout soccer player at Cypress Creek High School, where he still holds the unofficial scoring record. He continued his playing career at UConn and was a member of the three-time Big East Championship team.
But years later, and in that moment, he saw his path. Clearly and concisely.
"There's an opportunity to marry my passion, which is the sports side, and a career that I am very interested in driving toward," he recalls. The day after, he wrote a 10-year business plan for himself, tracking his trajectory for the future.
“It was pretty clear,” he said. “I was like, ‘I'm going to be a general counsel of a sports team in 10 years."
He recalls the story while sitting in his office in downtown Orlando at Inter&Co Stadium, where he works for the three highest-profile professional soccer franchises in Central Florida, the Orlando City Lions, Pride and Orlando City B.
His role? Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel.
“When I arrived here in Orlando, that was eight years post-graduation,” he said. “So, I beat my trajectory, but I was really driven to bring that to life.”
Caesar Lopez at the 1994 FIFA World Cup in Orlando with his father.
Sharon Line Clary, Michael Forde, Faron Kelley (all past Chairs of GO Sports) with Caesar Lopez at the 2024 Celebrating Women in Sports Luncheon.
His passion and vision are palatable. And it is one of the reasons he is a perfect fit for the Greater Orlando Sports Commission. He was recently elected as Chairman of the Executive Board, beginning to serve a two-year term in late December.
It’s been a great run for Lopez of late. He was also recently named to the Orlando Business Journal’s Top 40 under 40 list and the Orlando Pride secured the city’s first professional Championship.
“I admire Caesar. His leadership style absolutely resonates. He’s part of a new generation of executive leadership, part old school, part new school,” said Jason Siegel, President and Chief Executive Officer at GO Sports. “He’s a great collaborator and a great negotiator. We’ve been in the room together on multiple occasions with officials from our top event organizers and he has a terrific ability to get the ball over the goal line and get deals done.
“He will do a great job. We’re excited to have him as a chair.”
The feeling and respect are mutual. Dating back to the vision board he created, Lopez is exactly where he should be.
He was hired straight out of law school, working in-house at a German publicly traded company called Beiersdorf. Four years later, he was hired by Major League Soccer. That would eventually lead him back to Orlando in July of 2018, when his focus went from overseeing multiple franchises to one.
“That was a quick jump for me being in New York, and that's really where I started on the path of becoming where I'm at today,” he said. “I took a little bit of a risk jumping into this space, but I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that I had a passion for it.”
The new position came with a different feeling. It always wasn’t instant, but there is a sense of satisfaction of getting things done without all the filters that come working in a league capacity.
Caesar Lopez, Jason Siegel, and Jarrod Dillon with the Orlando Pride regular season and NWSL Championship trophies.
‘I think coming to this team has been special for me, because of this community,” he said. “Coming back, to be able to give back, was always something that I knew was my North Star.
“You can feel the immediacy of your work. And I use this example: Somebody popped into this office maybe my first week and they were like, "Hey, Caesar, what do you think about this? Or think about that." And I was like, "Oh, I like that one." And they were like, "Okay, that's what we'll do." I was like, "Wait a second..."
At a soon-to-be 39, Lopez has settled into a nice rhythm and flow both professionally and personally.
Lopez and his wife Laura live in Baldwin Park with their almost 2-year-old daughter Alia and two Goldendoodles, Hendrix and Kingston. Hendrix is named after the late great guitarist Jimi Hendrix, an homage in part to his father, who loved Jimi’s music. The younger one is Kingston, no relation to the Orlando City mascot, but obviously a serendipitous twist.
“It's been an adjustment, an exciting adjustment, because you're so focused on one thing and then now you have this family that you have to take care of,” he said. “It's been a really exciting development in my life.”
That excitement bleeds over to the professional side. Orlando City advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history but lost, 1-0, to the New York City Red Bulls last November.
The Pride had an even more inspiring story to tell: They defeated the Washington Spirit, 1-0, to win the 2024 National Women’s Soccer League Championship last November, their first in team history. They also went undefeated in their first 23 matches, a league record.
“Somewhat surreal,” he said. “I'm standing on the field at the end of the championship game, watching the confetti coming down. Seeing all of the smiling faces and tears of joy. Wow, we did it.
“Something that we've had on a vision board, a mission statement, some of the work that we did behind the scenes, we had to change a lot of our staff and leadership, changing the team.
“It had been a couple of bumpy years, so it felt a little bit sweeter, I'll be honest. It felt like, "Wow, we've had the highs and lows and this is the highest high." We feel very accomplished, very excited. But I also feel like it's just the beginning. We want more.”
That vision board, both professionally and personally, remains a work in progress.
And that’s a very good thing. Stay tuned.
