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- Kang argues multi-club networks can scale women’s soccer and accelerate its commercial development globally
- Mercury13 co-founder says women’s soccer requires investors with different skillsets from men’s game
- English clubs also warned that funding could go elsewhere if prospective owners can’t invest in teams tied to men’s sides
The multi-club ownership model is “a necessity” for women’s soccer to develop both on the pitch and commercially, according to US-based businesswoman Michele Kang, who now owns three women’s teams across North America and Europe.
The likes of Red Bull and City Football Group (CFG) have normalised the multi-club model in the men’s game, where investors have built up portfolios of teams spanning multiple continents. This allows them to spread costs and minimise risk, offer sponsors more global opportunities, and scout and develop players before selling them to a sister club at a discounted price or moving them on for a profit.
However, critics have argued that the model creates conflicts of interest, damages competition, and raises questions over integrity.
Kang created the first multi-club network in the women’s game in May last year when she agreed a deal to buy a majority stake in French giants Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, adding to her ownership of National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) side the Washington Spirit. That agreement was finalised in February and she also acquired Women’s Championship side London City Lionesses in December.
Speaking at the Financial Times (FT) Business of Football Summit, Kang argued that the multi-club model will help scale women’s soccer and accelerate its commercial development in emerging markets.
“I know that in some [cases] the multi-club concept is viewed not so positively,” said Kang, who founded technology company Cognosante. “But for women’s sports, I would submit to you that it’s actually a necessity rather than a luxury or a choice, because there’s so much investment needed.
“One of the first things I’m doing is actually training women players as women. Right now, a lot of team sports basically borrow their training manuals and performance manuals from men’s teams, in part because there is no data about women. 94 per cent of all sports and performance-related research and science data is dedicated to men, so there’s not enough data for women.
“So I’ve decided that’s the first area I’m going to invest [in], and I have right now over 20 people dedicated to that, and the number is going to grow. It’s going to be impossible to do that for one team, but if you do this across multiple teams, you can do it once and make it available to all other teams. So there is a scale that women’s football teams need.”
Kang also expressed a desire to buy clubs in countries where women’s soccer is not yet as popular as it is in markets like the US, UK and France so that the benefit of the investments she is currently making in analytics and performance data can be felt globally.
“This is all related,” Kang continued. “But at the end of day it’s about trying to build scale and acceleration so women’s sports can take off and have commercial viability.”
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In buying the London City Lionesses, Kang acquired one of only two teams in England’s top two tiers of women’s soccer that operate independently from a men’s club, which makes it difficult for prospective owners exclusively focused on the women’s game to invest in Women’s Super League (WSL) and Women’s Championship sides.
One company that has been established to create a multi-club ownership group in women’s soccer is Mercury13, which previously tried to buy Lewes FC, who walked away from the deal because the funding would not have been split with their men’s team.
Speaking on a separate panel at the FT event, Victoire Cogevina, the co-founder and co-chief executive of Mercury13, which on Monday confirmed Italian side FC Como Women as its first acquisition, called for more independence in the women’s game.
“A lot of these [women’s] clubs have been run in the shadows of the men’s team for many years,” she said. “Today, there’s this incredible moment in time where women’s football is growing, but it needs a certain skillset and a certain investment of resources that the men’s game is not able to provide today.
“When we look at the men’s game, we think about an IPO, a very mature business that has been around in some cases for over 100 years. It’s been run in a very specific way, the revenue streams are already set in stone.
“When you look at the women’s game, it’s very much a startup. There’s no product market fit. A lot of people are trying to understand how to bring women’s football to a new audience, which is women and families in particular, and that requires a different skillset.
“Creating that independence by providing those types of resources early on in their journeys will be fundamental for their success, and ultimately also building a more sustainable business model.”
During the same panel session, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman referred to the league’s independence as its “superpower”, pointing out that the organisation’s staff are focused solely on the NWSL’s commercial growth and making it an “investable proposition”.
Berman also highlighted that the NWSL’s commercial success started to materialise when it broke away from US Soccer in 2022.
England’s WSL will hope to see a similar impact when it splits from the Football Association (FA) at the end of this season, after which the competition will be run by an independent entity, currently known as NewCo.
However, speaking during another panel, Ian Lynam, founding partner of sports law firm Northridge, which acted for Kang on her acquisition of the London City Lionesses, warned that interested parties will look elsewhere if they are unable to invest in English women’s teams because they are tied to men’s clubs.
“With the move to NewCo, there are going to be opportunities in women’s football, and there are going to be people who want to invest specifically in women’s football in England,” he said.
“I think that is something that requires some thought. Because unless we in England create the opportunities for capital to flow into women’s football – and it does appear demand is there – then that capital will flow into women’s football in other countries.
“And those leagues, whether it’s the NWSL, or France, or Spain, will become the dominant women’s leagues in five years’ time.”
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