Miguel Avalos Signs Professional Contract with LA Galaxy II

Miguel Avalos is looking forward to officially playing pro soccer…

The Mexican-American soccer player and Mexico Under-17 international has signed a professional contract with LA Galaxy II of the USL Championship, according to ESPN.

Miguel Avalos

After attending a showcase held in 2018 by Alianza de Futbol, Avalos was signed by Liga MX side Pachuca. But Avalos, a native of Santa Rosa, California, was unable to play in games due to FIFA rules prohibiting players under the age of 18 from moving to a different country purely for soccer purposes. Now another door to professional soccer has opened with the Galaxy II.

“It’s very exciting, because I was in Pachuca for about a year and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to play because of the FIFA rule,” Avalos said in an exclusive interview with ESPN. “So, moving out here to LA, it’s amazing being able to play, and I’m excited to play this season.”

Avalos, who projects as a two-way midfielder, has been training with Los Dos [LA Galaxy II] since last July, giving him some time to adapt to the increased physicality that comes with playing against older players. The presence of Galaxy director of methodology Juan Carlos Ortega, who was previously involved with Mexico’s youth national teams, provided an additional boost.

“It hasn’t been easy, but at the same time it’s also really good playing with older players, a lot more experienced players,” Avalos said. “It’s gonna help me develop as a player, not only on the field, off the field as well.”

Avalos’ move to the Galaxy organization was hampered by the fact that Sacramento Republic held the player’s MLS Homegrown rights. But with Sacramento’s expansion bid on indefinite hold following the withdrawal of lead investor Ron Burkle, as well as the fact that LA Galaxy II is technically under the auspices of the USL, allowed the player to move under the Galaxy umbrella.

As a dual national, Avalos has the chance to represent either Mexico or the U.S., but at the moment he’s firmly in the Mexico camp.

“It’s not an easy decision,” he said of his international future. “The U.S., they haven’t reached out to me, not yet. But if it comes down to it, and I had to make a decision, I’d have to talk to my family about that.”

Lopez’s NuvoTV Reportedly Outbids Sean “Puffy” Combs for Fuse TV

Sean “Puffy” Combs has blown a fuse with his ex Jennifer Lopez.

The 44-year-old Puerto Rican singer/actress and American Idol judge has beat out her ex-boyfriend Sean “Puffy” Combs in the quest to acquire cable music channel Fuse TV, according to sources close to the situation.

Jennifer Lopez

NuvoTV, the English-language cable channel where Lopez serves as a minority owner and the network’s chief creative offer, has reached an agreement with Fuse owner, the Madison Square Garden Company.

“Things are in that 99.9 percentile,” says a source familiar with the negotiations, which began when NuvoTV reportedly offered cash and equity valued at more than $200 million.

“It’s getting done,” says another source familiar with the situation.

The first source declined to discuss where NuvoTV and Lopez are getting their financing, or whether they sweetened their deal since Combs, backed by billionaire supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, had reportedly made a similar $200 million offer.

A spokeswoman for Combs referred Billboard to Madison Square Garden Company spokeswoman Kimberly Kerns, who responds: “As we have stated, we are exploring strategic alternatives for Fuse and will have no further comment.”

The assumption in the industry that Lopez and Combs, who owns the fledgling Revolt TV cable channel in partnership with Comcast, were interested in acquiring Fuse to convert the struggling network to their respective programming formats and gain access to Fuse’s 74 million cable households. (NuvoTV and Revolt reportedly reach in the neighborhood of 34 million households.)

But in an interview that took place on Wednesday, before the deal was reached, Lopez’s manager Benny Medina, in a conversation about JLo’s entrepreneurial branding strategy, said that if NuvoTV emerged the victor, there were no immediate plans to change Fuse’s format. “We do look at these channels as two different companies with two different identities, audiences and goals,” Medina said. “And these shall remain intact.”

The plan to maintain Fuse’s format for the time being may have to do with something called a “definition of service” clause that cable operators can include in their contracts with the services they carry.

According to one cable television-industry source, the clause enables operators to drop a network or decrease the fees paid for carriage if the network’s ownership or programming format changes. This could prove to be a synergistic stumbling block given that Fuse’s music-video heavy programming does not bear much resemblance to NuvoTV’s largely non-musical slate of programs, which include reruns of Dexter and the new boxing reality show Knockout.

Asked if Lopez and Combs’ competing bids for Fuse was a coincidence or a residual effect of their two-year affair that began in 1999 — Combs once likened his tumultuous relationship with Lopez to Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s romance — Medina replied, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” but added that it had nothing to do with their past history.

 

“In many ways, Jennifer and Sean are cut from the same cloth,” Medina said. They’re both passionate artists of the same generation who think on a grand and global scale. They were two superstars seeking to build their brand, who happened to be Jennifer and Puffy.” (They’re also both 44 years old.)

He says that Lopez’s transition from the recording studio to the boardroom of NuvoTV “is a conscious move” and part of a larger strategy to build businesses around her that can sustain a lot of what she does as an entertainer and actor.” In addition to her music and acting career, Lopez sells her Jennifer Lopez fashion line through the Kohl’s department store chain and collaborates with Coty on a number of fragrances.

“We’re in an age and time now where artists have to be a lot more involved, invested and creative in marketing and promoting themselves, whether its fashion brands and fragrances that speak to who they are — or a cable TV network. It’s about building a business around the art.”

Despite Lopez’s evolution as an entrepreneur, Medina says her recording career has not taken a backseat. “She is working on her 10th album,” he says. “Her first love is music.”