Today is an incredibly sad day for our community and our City Beautiful, as we pick up the pieces following the tragic events that occurred this weekend.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of Sunday's senseless killings in an Orlando night club. At this time, we must all come together to support the victims’ families and their friends. We must also thank the police, the first responders and our partners at Orlando Health, who did so much to save lives.
Sports should be a unifier and a place where people can come together to celebrate all that is good in life.
With this in our minds, we will prepare for a home game on Saturday. We believe that we can use that game as a means of uniting our community and bringing our friends together to help heal Orlando. We will announce our plans tomorrow for Saturday’s game, but rest assured that we are working with all the community’s sports teams to ensure that we show the world just how strong and resilient our community is.
During the week, we will not celebrate or promote our four upcoming games as we normally would—including the U.S. Open Cup game in Jacksonville on Wednesday, the Lions’ return to Major League Soccer and Orlando Pride’s away match in Washington both on Saturday as well as Orlando City B’s home game on Sunday. We don’t think it’s appropriate right now. In a small effort to show our respect for the victims and their families leading up to the game weekend, you will see us using only black and white images across our social media channels.
We know our fans will want to create their own tributes to the fallen and we encourage that, as we always have. We will work with our fans, our players, our partners and our community to ensure the horrific events of 6/12 will not be forgotten.
We will do everything within our power to show the world that #OrlandoUnited cannot be defeated.
