Johnny Beig may have played in a semi professional cricket league in Australia, but this summer he’s a big fan of soccer in the United States.
It’s not just because he’s rooting for the World Cup team, though.
Last year, Beig’s Beverly Hills-based company, Dioz Group, won a $2.5 million contract with On Location, FIFA’s hospitality partner, to design, manufacture and distribute uniforms for all employees working at FIFA World Cup venues this summer.
These include the people welcoming attendees into stadiums, VIP lounge chefs, waiters and the flagbearers during the opening ceremony.
After a multi-step application process, including presentations of its planning and strategy, Dioz says it produced more than 50,000 clothing garments including suits, jackets, shirts and hats and delivered them to the 16 World Cup venues around the U.S., Canada and Mexico in June.
Thanks in part to the World Cup contract, the company’s revenue has reached $15 million so far this year, compared with $20 million last year, Beig said. He declined to disclose the company’s net income but said the business was profitable.
“We are working with larger names that we would have never imagined we would,” he said. “The FIFA World Cup is the pinnacle. Working with the largest sporting event in the world is what we’re very proud of. I don’t think it gets any bigger than that.”
Dioz is among the many small businesses across Los Angeles that are getting a boost from the global sporting event, said Kevin Klowden, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute.
The influx of hundreds of thousands of fans into the city has been a boon to hotels, transportation services and restaurants, in addition to those in the special events and logistics economy, Klowden said, calling the event the “equivalent of multiple Super Bowls.”
“The number of contracts that are there, it’s a big deal,” he said. “Given the fact that L.A.’s filming is only slowly recovering, having something like the World Cup is definitely a boost.”
Dioz was co-founded by Johnny, 44, and his brother Tony in 2006. The brothers were born in India and raised in Australia, where Johnny enjoyed a brief career as a semi professional cricket player.
He realized his future wasn’t as a professional athlete, but he wanted to stay connected to the sports world, so he began making uniforms for his cricket team in 2006.
He then got a referral to make uniforms for multiple teams in the area before starting an apparel company.
“I wanted to stick with something I was passionate about, which is sports,” he said.
In 2012, Beig moved to Los Angeles and established Dioz‘s Los Angeles headquarters to tap into the U.S. market. During the pandemic, the company started supplying medical apparel to hospitals and schools, and the business took off, with revenue doubling in 2020, Beig said.
Dioz now has over 150 employees, including 15 in L.A., and manufactures its apparel at factories in China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey and the Philippines. Tony runs an office in Dubai.
Before the World Cup, Dioz provided employee uniforms for events including Super Bowl LIX and Copa America, which may have given it a leg up on the FIFA contact.
Now, with a World Cup contract on their resume, Beig said he’s setting his sights on even bigger events.
“This gives us an edge over the next FIFA events worldwide as well, where we can showcase our skills and we can handle it,” Beig said. “So it gives us a good opportunity to work with sporting events like the UEFA Championship and Premier League.”
As companies get new business from the World Cup, Klowden said it’s important that they leverage their new position to continue that growth.
Companies that benefited from the World Cup might be in a position to bid on even bigger contracts, especially with the Olympics coming up in 2028, Klowden said.
“The really important part in any of these deals is that if a company ran something like this, then they are able to build off of that success,” Klowden said. “Let’s say you’re a company that did a big uniform order or a big food order, and the World Cup goes, and you invested in new manufacturing capacity, or you invested in new clothing machines, or whatever you do; suddenly you don’t have that market anymore, then you’ve just wasted all that money ramping up.”
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