The race for the rights to show live sports has lifted the values of teams and leagues, drawing the attention of the world’s biggest investment firms. And those funds are flowing beyond the handful of men’s sports that have traditionally attracted the most money and media attention and into women’s sports around the world, including soccer, basketball, tennis and cricket.
On Tuesday, the National Women’s Soccer League said it had sold the rights for a new team at a record price. Investment firm Sixth Street led an ownership group that plans to spend US$125-million on the Bay Area franchise, with roughly US$53-million covering the expansion fee, a huge jump from the US$5-million fee paid in 2021 for a team in Kansas City.
Another US$30-million to US$50-million will go toward building a new training facility, said Alan Waxman, the chief executive of Sixth Street and a co-chair of the new club. The rest will help operations and build the team’s brand.
Jessica Berman, the commissioner of the NWSL, who joined the league in 2022, said that the competition “has not historically been built like a business.” But now, “it’s really been able to scale and level up the professionalism, operational rigour and business strategy and tactics for growth,” she said.
The Bay Area team will be run by a board that includes former U.S. national team players Brandi Chastain, Leslie Osborne, Danielle Slaton and Aly Wagner, who will be a co-chair. It is set to begin play in 2024, the league’s 12th season.
“All of a sudden, reality catches up with the data,” Waxman said of the investment rationale.
More than 1.1 billion people globally tuned in to the Women’s World Cup in 2019. In the United States, 915,000 watched the NWSL final last year, compared with about 2 million for the men’s championship match in Major League Soccer.
In other leagues, the Women’s Tennis Association raised US$150-million this month from the private equity firm CVC Capital to fund a new subsidiary to manage sponsorships and broadcasting rights. The Women’s National Basketball Association last year raised US$75-million from investors to put toward marketing and recruitment. And in India, investors in January spent a combined US$570-million in an auction for five teams in a new women’s cricket league.
Still, the all-important media rights for women’s sports lag far behind those for men’s leagues. Apple recently signed a 10-year, US$2.5-billion deal to broadcast most MLS games. The NWSL’s current deal with CBS, which was signed in 2020, was worth US$4.5-million over three years.
Investors in women’s soccer, like Sixth Street, are betting on a big jump in price for those rights when they soon come up for renewal, alongside increased spending on sponsorship and stadium purchases.
The deal comes as the NWSL is reeling from a sexual-abuse scandal that led to the firing of at least four coaches.
Against the backdrop of that scandal, and motivated by the successful expansion of the NWSL into Los Angeles, Chastain, Osborne, Slaton and Wagner set out to drum up investment for a new team. Wagner connected with Waxman through his wife; Sixth Street has also invested in Spanish soccer giants Real Madrid and Barcelona, as well as the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs.
Other investors in the new Bay Area soccer team include Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta, who will join the new team’s board and “partner with the club to create leadership programs that empower women and girls,” she said in a statement.