Crux Football
When Bex Smith attended one of her first games as owner of Montpellier HSC Féminines, she felt like the only person in the stadium yelling.
A few months later, as the relegation-threatened French side took on St Étienne, the atmosphere had changed. Flags waved, seats were filled, and even the mayor was in attendance as Montpellier were cheered on to a crucial win in their fight to retain their top-flight status. There might have been a little over 600 fans there that night but, for Smith, it was an early example that her instincts were right.
Montpellier are one of two women’s soccer teams now part of Crux Football, the multi-club ownership (MCO) group co-founded by Smith last year after securing investment from the likes of former Netflix vice president Cindy Holland and US national team great Julie Foudy.
Montpellier were the first club to join the Crux Football portfolio in October 2025 (Image Credit: Crux Football)
The Crux of the matter
A former New Zealand captain who won a treble with Wolfsburg, Smith has become a prominent voice on the development of women’s soccer since retiring from the game, most notably through her role as competitions manager of the Women’s World Cup at Fifa.
But whichever lens Smith has viewed the game through, one thing has consistently stood out. Despite having some of the world’s best players, top leagues and most recognisable clubs, the existing ownership structures for women’s soccer teams in Europe simply aren’t working.
“We still can’t get people into the stands, commercial is lagging, and we don’t know who the fanbases are, really,” Smith tells SportsPro. “For me, it’s not the fact that women’s football doesn’t work or it’s not popular enough, because we’ve seen plenty of examples where it is when dedicated resources are put towards it.”
The best example of that in Smith’s eyes is the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), which has seen the average franchise valuation surge 179 per cent to US$184 million since 2023. Several NWSL teams remain affiliated to a men’s team, but a number of its highest revenue-generating sides operate independently. And while some of the growth will be down to the fact that the NWSL is a closed league, removing the threat of relegation for investors, Smith sees it as evidence of what happens when women’s teams are prioritised.
Now, in her role as chief executive of Crux, the aim is to pull women’s clubs out from the men’s structure, provide them with independent leadership, and build out their commercial and marketing teams, ultimately allowing them to operate as standalone businesses with a sole focus.
“They wake up every single day and all they focus on is the women’s football club,” says Smith, speaking on the sidelines of SportsPro London in April. “I think that’s the key to driving the next stage of growth in the European women’s game.”
A different model for different needs
Crux has already added Sweden’s most decorated women’s club, FC Rosengård, to its portfolio and has its sights set on expanding to five teams, prioritising those with solid foundations who have historically been undervalued and under-resourced.
That could be said for many women’s teams, but Crux isn’t making decisions simply based on what’s available. Instead, Smith says the group is being “super intentional” when evaluating investment opportunities, pointing out that she interviewed every player at Montpellier to make sure that the club was the right cultural fit. Crux is also assessing criteria like existing facilities and infrastructure, attractive locations for fans and commercial partners, and whether there is a unique story to build around.
The challenge then is to deliver revenue growth that demonstrates these teams can indeed stand on their own two feet.
While investment, interest and attention have been growing around major tournaments like the Women’s World Cup and Uefa Women’s Euro, it has proved difficult to sustain in the club game, where revenue and attendances are more modest.
The economics of women’s soccer are also different from the men’s game, which has long been propped up by hefty broadcast deals. Even though some leagues have started to secure decent rights fees, Deloitte’s most recent Women’s Football Money League showed that commercial is the biggest driver for women’s clubs, comprising 72 per cent of income for the 15 top revenue-generating teams.
Rights fees are also locked in for multi-year cycles, meaning it can be some time before clubs realise growth.
“There’s a lot of interesting conversations going on [around media rights], but that’s not really for us to drive and to lead,” Smith notes. “So we haven’t really modelled that in as a massive uplift, because we can’t control it.”
In the meantime, Crux is concentrating on areas that it can control. Led by Ted Knutson, the StatsBomb founder renowned for his analysis-based recruitment approach at Brentford, Smith says the company has built a “women’s-specific tech platform” for player trading, with the ambition of identifying and nurturing talent that can later be sold for a profit.
The impact of those efforts is already outperforming projections.
“We really didn’t model that much revenue into the player trading side,” says Smith. “Even though we knew we were building the tech, we didn’t know what the market was going to be doing.
“Now, seeing some of the offers that we’re getting for our players, there’s huge potential for player trading and player development to be a real revenue driver.”
Audience data is expected to underpin growth in other areas. While starting from a lower base, Smith says five times more fans are already coming to Montpellier home games. Crux is also taking a pan-European sponsorship offering to market to allow sponsors to strike deals across its portfolio through a solutions-based partnership approach.
“There aren’t many platforms out there that are women’s football across Europe, unless it’s Uefa,” says Smith. “We know Uefa is expensive, it sometimes has red tape. It’s a great platform, but can you do what you want, is it super innovative? Not necessarily. And that’s where we want to own that space.”
Crux-owned FC Rosengard are Sweden’s most successful women’s club having won the league a record 14 times (Image credit: Crux Football)
The case for multi-club ownership
Crux is among several MCOs that have been established specifically for women’s soccer, including Michele Kang’s Kynisca, Mercury13 and Sixth Street-backed Bay Collective, which recently completed its acquisition of Sunderland.
While the multi-club strategy has consistently drawn scrutiny in the men’s game, Kang has previously described the model as “a necessity” for women’s soccer. The argument is that it enables investors to spread cost and mitigate risk, with clubs able to pool resources, develop talent and offer scale sponsorship opportunities.
Smith agrees: “I hope we see more MCOs. I hope we see more investors coming in and buying at scale. I think it’s the best model right now for the women’s game.”
Smith also wants soccer’s governing bodies to rethink their rules around multi-club ownership. Uefa’s head of women’s soccer, Nadine Kessler, recently reiterated that teams with the same owner will be prohibited from competing in the Women’s Champions League to “preserve sporting integrity”.
Speaking prior to Kessler’s latest comments, Smith points to several examples in soccer and other sports where teams operating under the same ownership structure have competed without issue, including the formative years of Major League Soccer (MLS) and, more recently, in the Saudi Pro League (SPL).
Smith isn’t arguing against the need to retain sporting integrity, but believes that adopting MCO rules written for a more commercially mature men’s game risks discouraging the investment women’s soccer needs.
“We do have to really think about how we are incentivising investment into the game,” Smith says. “If these people (MCOs) are putting the most money where their mouth is and walking the walk, then the Uefas and the Fifas have to incentivise, not try to put a stop to it just because the men’s game has ruined it.
“Our MCO models are totally different from any MCO model on the men’s side.”
The five-club roadmap
In the immediate term, Crux is continuing to raise capital as it actively pursues more acquisition opportunities across Europe. Smith describes England as a “really attractive market” and says there is now a recognition even among Women’s Super League (WSL) teams that they require operators who understand the women’s game.
Whether it’s England or elsewhere, Smith says Crux wants to find clubs where it can “add the most value” and that fit with the vibe and culture of its other teams. That process will now be supported by a recently launched player investor collective, including former USWNT stars Abby Wambach and Leslie Osborne, who will have the opportunity to become owners in Crux’s clubs and advise the company on certain decisions.
Success will ultimately be measured by valuation growth of those clubs over time – Smith says Crux could already sell its clubs for “a lot more” today – but financial returns are only part of the ambition.
“We want to cause a seismic shift in the structures of women’s football in Europe,” says Smith. “And we want to do that with great partners and an incredible community of fans that are inclusive, celebratory and just having a good time.”
Bex Smith will be speaking at SportsPro’s Investment Summit, which takes place at the Minster Building in London on 21st July. To find out more about the event, click here.