By Asli Pelit The Athletic
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Some investors in women’s soccer are not betting on just one team. They are trying to build empires.

The multiple-club ownership model that dominates men’s soccer is not so quietly being replicated in women’s soccer. But those backing women’s soccer teams are different: They are experienced operators with deep pockets who have sports acumen and conviction that the women’s game is not charity but good business — something that is still relatively rare in sports ownership circles.

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Michele Kang, 66, one of the National Women’s Soccer League’s most powerful figures, has led the way in going global. She owns OL Lyonnes, widely considered the most accomplished women’s soccer team in Europe, as well as the Washington Spirit in the United States, and the London City Lionesses, who were recently promoted to the English Women’s Super League.

In 2024, Kang folded all three teams into her Kynisca Sports International organization.

“We will provide opportunities for girls and women worldwide to access high-level sport, reach their potential under the best conditions and play football in the clubs of the global elite,” she said in a statement at the time.

Of her three clubs, only the Spirit have shown a profit, but Kang said she is looking into buying more clubs to add to her portfolio.

“Women’s soccer around the world needs investment,” Kang told ESPN right before closing the OL deal in 2023. “It’s not just the U.S. For us to take women’s soccer to the next level — Europe, Asia, South America, Latin America — they all need to come up. I wanted to accelerate that trend.”

She is also not the only NWSL operator who is betting big on global multiple-club ownership, or MCO.

In May, Kansas City Current owners Angie and Chris Long announced they were expanding their footprint in women’s soccer by acquiring Denmark’s HB Koge Women.

“I think the way to view this investment is evolutionary,” Chris Long said when asked if owning multiple clubs was something they thought of from the beginning. “It’s just like in any investment business, you’re always looking for great investments.”

Elsewhere, Monarch Collective, led by Kara Nortman, holds minority stakes across several women’s teams, including Angel City FC, San Diego Wave FC and Boston Legacy FC. (Legacy will begin play in the NWSL in 2026.) Nortman, however, does not consider her model to be MCO.

Her fund takes a more nuanced approach when it comes to investing in multiple teams. Rather than acquiring full control, Monarch holds minority stakes. Her strategy emphasizes influence and alignment over consolidation, allowing for strategic support while preserving each club’s identity.

“We do not consider ourselves in multiclub ownership in the multiclub model,” Nortman said in a video call. “We invest in multiple clubs, which is different. Multiclub philosophy is shared services, shared identity, shared sponsorships, etc., whereas what we look at is: How do we add hands-on value or invest in a way that adds value to each individual club in a unique way.”

According to Nortman, best practices in club operations often overlap between men’s and women’s sports. Roughly 80% of what drives success is universal: foundational strategies that define high performance. The key is knowing what excellence looks like, holding the bar there and being prepared to adjust when challenges arise.

“But the remaining 20% is where the real magic happens — the part that’s deeply specific to the club, the sport and the local market,” Nortman said. “That’s why each club must be treated as its own distinct entity, with its own identity and tailored approach, rather than forced into a one-size-fits-all model.”

Although the strategy is emerging as a smart play on the women’s side, it remains a controversial and often-criticized approach on the men’s side, where concerns about competitive integrity, talent hoarding and diluted club identity continue to stir debate.

Multiclub ownership isn’t new. Groups such as City Football Group, which is based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and which owns sports clubs on four continents, including the Premier League’s Manchester City, and Red Bull, which owns teams in Germany, Austria, the United States, France and Brazil, have turned the model into a finely tuned machine in the men’s game. They’ve created economies of scale, streamlining player development across continents.

Kang has been open about the negative connotations of multiclub on the men’s side, but she said she believes on the women’s side, MCO is a “necessity, not a luxury or greed.” She also said clubs would benefit from sharing resources, but she was not going to sacrifice one team to make another team successful.

“Absolutely not. Our goal is to make every team the champion in each of their leagues,” she told Forbes last year.

Spirit coach Jonatan Giráldez was recently named the next head coach of OL after just one year in Washington, casting doubt on Kang’s earlier statements as she shuffled her best coach off one team and on to the next. Sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their positions, told The Athletic last week that this was not planned but something that came about after Joe Montemurro made clear his intentions to lead Australia.

When Kang paid $35 million for the Spirit in 2022, there were those who thought she was overpaying.

Kang, a South Korean, entered women’s soccer in 2020, first as a minority owner of the Spirit. After a two-year battle to gain control of the club, she acquired the majority stake of the franchise from the owners Steve Baldwin and Bill Lynch. NWSL was still selling franchises for well under $10 million, and many investors were hesitant to allocate funds to women’s sports assets. Without concrete data on the fan base, viewership and sponsorship dollars, Kang, as an experienced investor, was not oblivious to these facts. But she still bought her first club. Just two years after she bought the Spirit, the Wave was sold for $113 million, more than three times what Kang paid for the Spirit.

The Longs carved out their Danish women’s club from the men’s operation, similar to what Kang did with OL Lyonnais Féminin (now branded OL Lyonnes) in 2023.

With a passionate fan base, a strong soccer foundation and major growth potential on the business side, the Longs said HB Koge Women had the same core ingredients as the Current. With key revenue streams such as ticketing, merchandise and sponsorship remaining largely untapped because of limited prior investment, they believe they can bring their experience in operating the most financially successful club in NWSL to Europe.

And like Kang, they are not going to stop looking for their next club, either.

“It’s important to us that we do it with excellence,” Angie Long said. “And to think this offers an opportunity to learn how to first become a multiclub model, and then really build on it.”

One thing is clear: The goal is to run the clubs with a focus on off-field revenue and on-field wins.

Another group, Mercury13, began operations in 2023. It set out with the goal of building a global multiclub women’s soccer platform, but has so far acquired just one team, securing a controlling stake in Italy’s FC Como Women in 2024.

Before landing in Como, Mercury13 explored other opportunities, including a potential deal for the third-tier English team Lewes FC, but those talks fell through.

In 2024, the group secured backing from Avenue Sports Fund — the sports investment arm of former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry’s Avenue Capital — for an undisclosed amount. Mercury13 has publicly committed to adding four more clubs to its portfolio by the end of 2026.

Why the rush? Because the women’s game is going through a growth moment. Global viewership records are being shattered after each big tournament. Sponsors are flocking to meet those eyeballs. Valuations are going up. But unlike the men’s side, where investing is almost limited to sovereign wealth funds, on the women’s side, there is still room to buy low and build, not just infrastructure but global brands.

But it is not a philanthropic hustle either. Investors such as Kang, the Longs, Monarch Collective and Mercury13 are betting that women’s soccer is the asset class of the future.

“It remains to be seen if it will be successful,” said Assia Grazioli-Venier, a founding partner at Muse Capital and an early investor in the Spirit. “But my hunch is they’ll do well because they know how to execute on a grand plan and have the operational experience of connecting the right dots to take advantage of that portfolio.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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