The billionaire chairman of Becle—maker of tequila brands Jose Cuervo, 1800 and Maestro Dobel—has joined LAFC’s ownership group, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Juan Domingo Beckmann Legorreta, who also serves as Becle’s CEO, bought a stake in the MLS franchise as part of a transaction that was agreed upon in 2025 and closed earlier this year, in which 6% of the club’s equity changed hands at a $1.25 billion valuation.

Beckmann was one of two previously unnamed investors who arrived on LAFC’s cap table alongside club legend Carlos Vela; Korean American investor James Cha was the other. Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai and Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan departed the group in that deal.

Representatives for Becle and for Cha’s investment firm, Spring Oak Partners, did not reply to a request for comment. LAFC declined to comment.

Beckmann, who is based in Mexico, doesn’t seem to have much involvement in the soccer world himself, at least publicly, though Becle has been active in sports partnerships. Jose Cuervo sponsors NASCAR and UFC, Maestro Dobel is the official tequila of the PGA Tour and 1800 has partnered with LAFC since 2021.

When it comes to tequila, however, Beckmann has been around the business his entire life. Becle was founded in 1758 and has been led by Beckmann’s family for 11 generations. After earning a degree in business administration from Universidad Anáhuac near Mexico City, he followed his lineage and joined the company as the manager of Tequila Centenario. He quickly rose through the ranks, notably launching Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia brand, and became CEO in 2002.

Fifteen years later, Beckmann took the company public on the Mexican Stock Exchange. Becle—which also produces whiskey, vodka, rum, gin, mezcal and non-alcoholic beverages—currently trades at $0.91 per share and has a market cap north of $3.2 billion. With a 51% stake in the company, Forbes estimates Beckmann and his immediate family are worth $1.8 billion. His sister, Karen Virginia Beckmann Legorreta, holds nearly 36%, while public investors control the other 13%.

Meanwhile, Cha, based in the Los Angeles area, is the managing partner of Spring Oak Partners, which bills itself as an investment firm for technology, healthcare, real estate and sports. According to his biography on the website for Stanford Medicine’s Center for Asian Health Research and Education, he started his career as a management consultant at Accenture, working with Google and Meta. Cha was later part of the founding team at Metaverse HQ and one of the initial employees of AI health technology company Akido Labs.

The same post said that Cha’s family built and operated a healthcare network serving Asian American communities for over 30 years, though it did not give specifics. A graduate of the University of Southern California, he also serves on the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors.

It’s an opportune time for LAFC to add an investor with Korean heritage. Last year, the club brought global star Son Heung-min to Los Angeles, home to one of the largest Korean populations outside their home country. LAFC has since added a slew of commercial partnerships that touch Korean culture in various ways, including spirits brand Hello Soju, bakery-café chain Paris Baguette, fintech company WireBarley, destination marketer Seoul Tourism, travel app Myrealtrip, muscle recovery product ArniPatch and intellectual property IPX, the owners of the Line Friends character series.

LAFC is the second-most valuable franchise in MLS, valued at $1.4 billion, according to Sportico data. Since it began play in 2018, the club has maintained a lengthy list of owners that’s risen to nearly 30 people with the additions of Beckmann and Cha. It includes celebrity investors Will Ferrell, Mia Hamm, Nomar Garciaparra and Magic Johnson. LAFC has shuffled the group quite a bit over the past decade, and at least one other transaction is coming in the near term.

On Monday, Sportico reported that LAFC co-owner Larry Berg was tapped to succeed Don Garber as commissioner of MLS. A former senior partner at Apollo Global Management, Berg had previously spent four years as the club’s control person, a position he relinquished to Ares Management co-founder and fellow LAFC co-owner Bennett Rosenthal in January 2023 as part of a planned four-year rotation. (Riot Games co-founder Brandon Beck is expected to take over during the next term.)

Berg will assume the commissioner job in 2027 as Garber transitions into a chairman role, according to a statement released by MLS. He’ll need to unload his equity in LAFC as part of the transition. But there’s no formal timeline for that deal. Those shares could be bought by an outside party or an existing shareholder.