Los Angeles Sports Council

Chairman: Alan I. Rothenberg

Alan Rothenberg, current chairman of the Los Angeles Sports Council, is the founder and Chairman of 1^st Century Bank, which opened in 2004 in Century City. Rothenberg is also chairman of Premier Partnerships, a sales, marketing, and consulting firm in Santa Monica specializing in sports, entertainment, and major public facilities and events, serving clients such as the Los Angeles Clippers, the National Basketball Association, Major League Soccer, and the Rose Bowl. In 2010, Premier received the Sports Business Journal's "Agency of the Year" award.

His involvement with sports includes serving as Chairman of the Board of the breakthrough 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup, Chairman and CEO of the 1994 FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee, which staged the historic and incredibly successful 1994 World Cup, and President of the United States Soccer Federation (1990-1998). He also is the founder of Major League Soccer, which began in 1996.

Among many honors accorded Rothenberg, the MLS Championship Trophy was named the Alan I. Rothenberg Cup and he has been a recipient of FIFA's Order of Merit and the United States Olympic Committee Foundation's George Steinbrenner Award for Lifetime Distinguished Service to the Olympic Movement and is a member of the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame.

A retired partner of Latham & Watkins, Rothenberg was a well-known lawyer in Southern California. Previously, he had been a name Partner and Managing Partner at Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Phillips for more than 20 years.

Prominent in civic realms, he serves on the board of directors of the United States Soccer Foundation; Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau; Los Angeles Business Council; and, beginning January 1, 2013, Chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

In 1963, Mr. Rothenberg received a J.D. with distinction from the University of Michigan, where he served as assistant editor of the Michigan Law Review.

Rothenberg and his wife Georgina have three sons and six grandchildren and reside in the Los Angeles area.

President: David Simon

From the halls of government to the fields of America's greatest stadia, David Simon has managed the agendas of high-profile government officials, Olympic organizers and the Los Angeles Sports Council.  

Simon helped to create the Sports Council in 1987 and 1988 and has served as its President ever since. Under his leadership, the Sports Council has brought events to Southern California with an economic impact of more than $1 billion, launched the annual LA Sports Awards show and created the first-ever Southern California Fan Code of Conduct. In addition, the Sports Council Foundation for many years has provided thousands of underprivileged Southern California youngsters with opportunities to attend college and professional football games, offering entertainment and a glimpse of the attractions of collegiate life.  

Simon's career in sports started auspiciously, as one of the earliest hires of Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee President Peter Ueberroth in 1979. During the course of five years in the organization of the most revolutionary Games of the modern era, Simon rose to the rank of Vice President/Government Relations, coordinating the organizing effort with the needs of dozens of government entities on the local, state, federal and international level.  

Following the Games, Simon joined the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce as Senior Vice President. Noting that Southern California sites were being consistently overlooked as a site for other major events, he developed a concept for a volunteer sports and business committee that would act as a single point of contact for bringing special events to the area. After winning the bid to bring the 1991 U.S. Olympic Festival to Los Angeles, the fledgling group helped to bring together three Southern California venues that were bidding against each other, as well as against other cities, to host the NFL's 1993 Super Bowl. By offering a single, unified proposal from the area, offering a choice of venues, the Sports Council helped to impress the NFL and the Rose Bowl was ultimately selected to host the 1993 game. The group prospered under the leadership of Simon as President and the late John C. Argue, the man principally responsible for bringing the 1984 Olympic Games to Los Angeles, as Founding Chairman.   

His civic involvement includes serving on the boards of the 2015 Special Olympics World Games, USA Badminton and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. He also is President of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, a past Chair of the International Relations Committee for the United States Olympic Committee and has been a featured speaker at SportAccord, the U.S. Olympic Assembly, the IMG World Congress of Sports and other industry conferences.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA and the UCLA School of Law, Simon and his wife Cheryl live in Los Angeles and have a daughter who attends graduate school on the east coast.