July 5 – Angel City, a Los Angeles women’s club in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), is set to welcome a new majority shareholder that will value the club at approximately $300 million.
Buzz about the City of Angels began in 2020 when the NWSL announced that Los Angeles would be awarded an expansion franchise for the 2022 season and would become the first club to be run by a majority-female owned group led by actress Natalie Portman, venture capitalist Karla Nortman, entrepreneur Julie Urman and venture capitalist Alexis Ohanian.
Currently, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Willow Bay, dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, are reportedly in the final stages of buying Reddit co-founder Ohanian’s shares in the company for $50 million.
The $300 million valuation is exciting compared to the $31 million in revenue LAFC reported last year, but it also reflects the huge sums being paid to buy positions as investors flock to ownership of U.S. women’s professional clubs.
The San Diego Wave were sold in March for a league-record $113 million after selling the Portland Thorns for $63 million in January. Bay FC, which launched this year, paid the same $53 million franchise fee paid to the new Boston franchise.
The Chicago Red Stars were sold for £35.5m in 2023, while the Seattle Reign completed their sale in June for $58m.
Club valuations appear to be soaring, but do the club’s revenues, or more importantly the potential for revenue growth, support this?
Angels FC leads the NWSL in terms of commercial revenue, nearly double that of their nearest rival, the San Diego Wave. The Angels FC are expected to earn $55 million in revenue by 2025, but stadium revenues are limited due to their contract with the MLS side for use of BMO Stadium in the Exposition Park district of Los Angeles.
A new stadium of their own could be a revenue generator, but infrastructure development has so far been limited to talk of building their own training facility.
But the NWSL’s new centralized broadcast deal could be a game-changer for the platform for other revenue streams.
The NWSL signed four-year, $240 million domestic broadcast deals through the 2027 season with ESPN, CBS, Amazon and Scripps Sports, 40 times the size of their previous broadcast deals.
The NWSL has become a league where eye-popping financial multiples are the norm.
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