National Womens Soccer League

Alexis Ohanian, Aggie Beever-Jones, Serena Williams, Wieke Kaptein and Ashley Lawrence of Chelsea have fun with the FA Cup throughout The Adobe Girls’s FA Cup Closing match between Chelsea and Manchester United at Wembley Stadium on Could 18, 2025 in London, England. – Harriet Lander/Chelsea FC by way of Getty Photographs

When entrepreneur and began to consider investing in , opposition to the concept got here from an unlikely supply: His spouse, tennis legend .

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“After I first instructed Serena I used to be gonna purchase or begin a girls’s soccer group right here within the States, she really tried to speak me out of it, as a result of I feel she had been so uncovered to the infrastructure round girls’s sports activities,” defined to .

“Due to her lived expertise, she really was attempting to speak me out of it as a result of she needed to kick down lots of doorways.”

Ohanian, who this month bought a minority stake in England’s , defined that such shut proximity to the 23-time grand slam singles champion and her sister, Venus, confirmed “proof of the enterprise viability of ladies’s skilled sports activities.”

Ohanian was the founding investor of , a Los Angeles-based group that started taking part in within the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2022 – the highest division of the ladies’s sport within the US. The membership then grew to become probably the most beneficial girls’s skilled sports activities group on the planet after a in 2024.

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Ohanian, whose funding in Chelsea is by British media to be value greater than $26 million for a ten% share of the membership, is only one of many placing money into girls’s sports activities.

His funding announcement is available in the identical month because the defending WNBA champion New York Liberty reportedly raised capital from buyers at $450 million in what’s considered a document valuation for knowledgeable girls’s sports activities franchise, based on , who cited sources accustomed to the deal.

In the meantime, Ohanian’s spouse, Serena, is a minority proprietor of Angel Metropolis and Tiger Woods’ and Rory McIlroy’s revolutionary golf league the , the Miami Dolphins – together with sister Venus – and in March, introduced her possession position within the enlargement Canadian WNBA franchise, the Toronto Tempo.

Ohanian stated that he noticed the reluctance of others to put money into girls’s soccer as a chance.

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“When consultants in an area attempt to speak me out of it, that’s really after I are inclined to lean in additional as a result of it tells me that type of dissent or that pushback is often the place there’s an incredible alternative for innovation and progress,” he stated.

Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian look on from the stands throughout the Girls’s FA Cup Closing between Chelsea and Manchester United at Wembley Stadium on Could 18. – Julian Finney/Getty Photographs

Alternative and ‘work to be performed’

The 42-year-old Ohanian introduced the deal to put money into Chelsea Girls earlier in Could, saying he was “proud” to assist the “iconic membership” – already one of the profitable groups in girls’s soccer – turn out to be the preferred Girls’s Tremendous League (WSL) group within the US.

“I feel lots of well-intentioned individuals traditionally have supported girls’s sports activities in a means that … really held it again as a result of it was seen an excessive amount of as charity, or they led with issues like, ‘Oh, I’m doing this as a result of I’ve a daughter,’” he instructed CNN. “No, I’m doing this as a result of I feel these are large athletes.”

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He added that sports activities and unbelievable athletes are going to thrive in a time of rising use of synthetic intelligence as a result of “the sorts of leisure which might be going to endure are those which might be essentially human.”

In 2024, Ohanian based , a girls’s-only monitor and subject occasion that debuted later that 12 months. The occasion provides $60,000 for race winners and goals to champion feminine athletes internationally.

Athletes compete within the 200m throughout Athlos NYC at Icahn Stadium on September 26, 2024 in New York Metropolis. – Bryan Bedder/Athlos/Getty Photographs

“One of many north stars for me 5 years in the past – after I began on this journey of constructing, investing in and round girls’s skilled sports activities – has been: This funding isn’t simply within the golf equipment, it’s within the surrounding infrastructure that’s gonna circulate by way of each stage of ladies’s sports activities.

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“For 100 years, skilled sports activities has been by males for males. And when there have been girls and girls’s groups, in some ways, they’ve been actually handled as simply small males, which is fairly ridiculous, proper?” he defined to CNN Sports activities.

Ohanian stated that groups like Chelsea, who this month secured a sixth consecutive WSL title, a home treble and remained unbeaten for 22 consecutive video games, supply “an opportunity to point out of us one thing actually, actually particular.”

“I’m glad the discourse has now shifted the place individuals are realizing there’s actual alternative right here, however there’s nonetheless a lot extra work to be performed, and I actually consider that this membership might and needs to be the primary billion greenback franchise, billion greenback membership in girls’s sports activities.”

CNN’s Ben Church contributed reporting.

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