How Angel City FC Created a Women’s Soccer Moneymaker

Angel City planned for an average attendance of 8,000 to 10,000 at the 22,000-seat Banc of California Stadium. It’s on track for about 19,000, including four sellouts.

Angel City shot for $3.25 million in corporate partnerships, which it believed was the highest in the NWSL in 2019. It sold $11 million this season.

“We found investors that understood the power of using their platform, not only to move forward a social purpose or a movement but also understand the value of making money so that the whole engine works,” said Julie Uhrman, Angel City co-founder and president.

Angel City had an advantage from the start: an ensemble cast of leaders with an enviable social-media reach. Founders include actress Natalie Portman and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, and investors read like a post-awards show mixer: actresses Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, Jessica Chastain and Gabrielle Union, and athletes Mia Hamm, Candace Parker and Lindsey Vonn, among others.

Angel City’s quarterly investor calls, Uhrman says, are “the most amazing Brady Bunch of Zoom pictures you’ve ever seen.”

The on-the-field results are less clear. Angel City lost star forward Christen Press to a season-ending knee injury in June, and entering the regular season’s final week it sits just shy of a playoff spot.

It wasn’t a given that Angel City would find a place in the crowded LA sports and entertainment market. The Los Angeles Sol of the defunct Women’s Professional Soccer league folded after a single 2009 season.

The club has quickly built a vibrant match-day atmosphere, though.

The crowd performs a pregame “three-clap,” popularized by Angel City investor and former US women’s team star Julie Foudy. Pink smoke releases at kickoff and when Angel City scores.

Sarah Wang bangs on a drum for the 90 minutes of each game a member of AC Pandemonium, one of six supporters’ groups to organize around Angel City. The 26-year-old digital-media ad sales executive said she and other group members were fans of the US women’s team, or of distant NWSL clubs, before LA landed a team.

“Once we all came together for Angel City, it was a full-on, passionate, go-to-every-single-event type of thing,” Wang said.

Angel City’s origin story sounds like the development of a prestige TV series. Team co-founder Kara Nortman, a venture capitalist and US women’s national team fan, connected with Portman through women’s empowerment and equity work. Portman helped launch the group Time’s Up, which aims to end workplace sexual harassment and discrimination, and Nortman is a founding member of All Raise, a VC-led group dedicated to increasing diversity in funders and founders.

Portman had seen former US women’s team star Abby Wambach speak at a time when Wambach realized how much the low pay during her career would affect her retirement. Portman and Northman bonded over the idea of ​​helping boost women’s soccer.

Nortman returned from the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, gushing about her experience there to fellow players in an ongoing pick-up basketball game for female investors and entrepreneurs—including Uhrman. Soon after that, Nortman, Portman and Uhrman went to the “El Tráfico” game between the LA Galaxy and LAFC of Major League Soccer.

“I was blown away by the experience that LAFC has created, the culture of the supporters,” Uhrman said. “And in the middle of the supporters’ section, there was a woman waving a sign that said, ‘Bring the NWSL to LA’ Natalie and Kara and I felt that was a sign. And that was it.”

They connected with Ohanian, who had seen the commercial power of female athletes first hand through his wife, Serena Williams, and who had attended the sold-out 2019 Women’s World Cup quarterfinal match between the US and France in Paris. Ohanian became the lead founding investor for Angel City and an evangelist for the business of women’s soccer. Dozens of other well-known and deep-pocketed investors followed.

“I’m moved and elated that all our suspicions were true: There’s a huge, passionate fan base for women’s soccer,” Portman said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “It’s been the most beautiful season seeing our team come together, build a culture, and deserve the massive attention and devotion they deserve.”

Angel City prices its sponsorships similarly to some men’s teams. It requires cash to be included in all sponsorship deals, and does not exchange a sponsor’s goods or services for in-stadium signage, as some fledgling teams or leagues do.

“What that does is, it trains brands that you’re not worth money, which isn’t true,” said Jess Smith, Angel City’s head of revenue.

Angel City publicly earmarks 10% of sponsorship revenue toward various community and charity programs. Some other pro sports teams figure community-building or charitable elements into their sponsorship deals,

Angel City’s $11 million in sponsorship revenue would have put it ahead of what seven Major League Soccer teams generated in 2021 and close to what a few NHL and MLB teams generate, according to Peter Laatz, global managing director of IEG, which produces estimates for its Sponsorship Intelligence Database.

Whether Angel City and the 10-year-old NWSL can reach their full financial potential depends on securing the kind of multimillion-dollar cushion that other pro teams rest on when they win or attendance dips. The NWSL is in the second year of a three-year deal worth a total of about $5 million, tiny by the standards of TV broadcast deals.

But Angel City isn’t waiting to keep investing. It plans to follow other NWSL teams, San Diego Wave FC and Kansas City Current, by constructing a purpose-built facility for its team. Discussions are advancing, Uhrman said, for a $25 million-$30 million training and practice hub to open in 2024.

The club’s initial success may help demonstrate that women’s pro sports are more than the social mission that some perceive them to be.

Said Steve Malik, owner of the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage: “Turns out a social mission is a good business.”

Write to Rachel Bachman at [email protected]