LOS ANGELES - There was an obvious question wandering around when the club owner and Magnate Michele Kang sat in Los Angeles' "Futbol W" studio - a no obvious answer.
Earlier that day, Kang announced her latest investment in the American Football Federation (US) at an event a few blocks away. It seems that everyone in the match between the U.S. Women’s National Team and Brazil are asking the same question: Why? Why is Kang, who owns three professional women’s football teams willing to hand over her $25 million business to us because she has promised to donate $30 million to the federal government over the next five years?
This question aroused some awe, but it was accompanied by a mess around the splash that surrounds the first one. Kang has been building what appears to be the women's football version of the city football team, who has greatly expanded her empire in a short time. So why donate to other places?
"At the end of the day, our vision and goal is to get all women's teams to adopt these new standards and the way we train women athletes," Kang told ESPN. "I think football organizations like us, rather than private ones, will do it better."
Kang tried to change the women's game by bringing more young players in and raising the bar - not only in the United States, but around the world - and a task Big needs to buy from others. As Kang said, “We need to do this on a large scale because we are talking about half of the crowd.”
Kang found an unlikely ally in USWNT head coach Emma Hayes. Hayes is from Kang easily admits a long football background she doesn’t have, but both women are equally talking about constant comparisons with men’s, and both emphasize the need to watch everything through a “female lens” as Hayes recently detailed the long-term plans for U.S. football in her long-term plans.
"(All parties) need to be united to make that product, women's football, women's football, the best sports entertainment products," Kang told ESPN. "It's not that simple, unlike most businesses where you just go into the factory and build something, you're out. But here, multiple stakeholders, private and governing agencies, they all need to work together."
Kang is a homemade billionaire who didn’t consider owning a sports franchise until about five years ago. Since then, she has become one of the most outstanding solo players in women’s football. Now she is the majority owner of the NWSL Washington Spirit, the French giant Olympic-style Lyonnais and the London City Lioness in England. She also told ESPN that she was about to add a fourth team to the New World.
From the outset, her plan was to bring together resources to rapidly expand the global club network – an unprecedented move specifically targeting women's football.
Kang is used to being questioned - it's a professional harm because Kang has been engaged in the career harm of women's football since she bought the Washington Spirit in 2022. When she assumed the majority of votes of the NWSL team two years ago two years ago, her $35 million valuation was her $35 million valuation. At that time, she reminded everyone that people still question why she had to spend so much money.
After that, the proof of concept came. Last year, the record-breaking valuation of NWSL team sales was broken twice, reaching $250 million for Angel City. Expansion expenses have increased from about $2 million five years ago to $110 million, and a new Denver group will bring 16 teams to the NWSL next year.
She said she was similarly criticized for separating ownership of women's team from men's team, but she heard about other clubs that planned to do the same.
"I can tell you that when I first got out of the Olympic team from the men's team, there was a lot of criticism," Kang said. "Like, 'That can't happen' and all that. Now, in fact, the top teams in France and England are doing that."
Kang said she wasn't going to build some kind of player development network that feeds players to a team, one of the criticisms of the men's multi-club model, for example, the City Football Team ended up serving Manchester City. As she said, “I’m not going to rob the best players from one team and hand them over to another.” Instead, she wanted to create “the first team in every country.”
Her ambition on the New World originated from the idea she saw: “I don’t want young girls to grow up, thinking that women’s specific training methods, specialized stadiums, and state-of-the-art training centers are all American, English, and French phenomena.
Despite comparing Kang’s models with ownership groups in the men’s game (the Hawks Football Group, which owns multiple men’s teams, holds a minority stake), Kang insists she’s working on something new.
Kang said: “The worst thing we have with women’s football is copying and pasting. This means determining a competitive format suitable for women’s games, or establishing a business model that is different from the City Football Group or Red Bull Football Network, does not rely on a transfer market that develops on women’s side to make money.
“We think our products are fundamentally different – I think the men’s team owners would say the same thing,” she said.
Two years after her multi-club model, Kang looks right. Washington Spirit ranked second in the NWSL and finished second in the 2024 playoffs, barely falling into a historic Orlando Pride team at a time, and the Orlando Pride Team was unbeaten and unable to open the season. Washington hired Jonatan Giráldez to leave Barcelona's global power to become the team's head coach.
Lyon has just won his 18th French League title in the past 19 seasons, despite the eight-time European champion being frustrated by Arsenal in the semifinals of the UEFA Women's Champions League. On the weekend, London City won Kang's promotion to Kang's first full season's top flight, which made them the only independently owned club to compete in the Women's Premier League for the next season.
None of these are coincidences. Kang has invested in employees (such as Giráldez), infrastructure (such as improved training facilities) and players (such as Trinity Rodman, who Kang said she will "do our best" to avoid leaving the club when the club expires later this year.
Kang's vision extends to all female sports. Last year, she donated $4 million to the U.S. Women’s Football Sevens to provide resources ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
However, it's still a business, as she quickly reminds everyone. The men's sports team owners have historically lost money until they were sold. The women's movement is still fighting people's long-term bad views of business, Kang said that requires a more direct return on investment.
"One of the very important aspects of what I'm doing is that I want to prove that women's sports, women's football is a good thing," Kang said. "No business can always survive by losing money forever, right? At least even breaking."
She said her fingers crossed in front of her, and she said that even in the near future, the spirit would be "hopeful" to break. Washington ranked fourth in the NWSL last year with nearly 14,000 fans per game - attending this year.
Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery in Kang's method. Multi-club models are popular, with more and more women’s football club owners expanding their portfolios in Kang’s footsteps.
Bay FC owner, Sixth Street, announced plans to build a global network earlier this year. Kansas City’s current majority owner Angie and Chris Long funded the NWSL’s first dedicated stadium as hosts of $1 billion waterfront development, previously confirmed to ESPN that ESPN will soon add more clubs to its portfolio. Last year, a group called Mercury/13 launched a multi-club model, starting with buying Italian FC Como women.
The recently launched Monarch Collective is dedicated to investing in women’s sports teams and has already held stakes in Angel City FC, Boston Legacy FC and San Diego Wave FC, the highest (three) allowed by NWSL private equity rules. The Avenue Sports Group, led by former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry, focuses on NWSL and WNBA investments and has had serious discussions with at least four NWSL teams before.
Kang welcomed others to her: “I’ve actually seen the intention or have gone in this direction for several groups,” she said. "I heard that so-and-so and so are buying this team, and so on. So, that's happening."
Kang raised questions about what she was doing - the multi-club model, and her Kynisca Innovation Center, which is “committed to revolutionizing the way female athletes train”, privately from more people.
"Women's football is a bit of an explosion," she told ESPN. She quickly added that the bad news was the lack of infrastructure and surrounding resources, including staffing and player development.
"We all need to move all of these things together to really advance the game so that we don't miss any rhythm, because the last thing we need is: Somehow, now, things are really great, but what is the power of sustainability?" Kang said.
Kang's rhetorical question is the short answer to people asking "Why?"
Her plan is to increase investment in areas that historically lack it, just like any other business opportunity. how? Infrastructure, better player development and more training to build a larger, more qualified employee network. All the money she donated to us football to use for these initiatives.
With this foundation, the product of women's football can surpass the scale of several clubs to prosper, at least that's the plan.