Bob Iger, chief government officer of The Walt Disney Co., and his spouse attend Willow Bay the Allen & Firm Solar Valley Convention on July 11, 2024 in Solar Valley, Idaho.
Kevork Djansezian | Getty Photographs
Willow Bay and Bob Iger will take a controlling stake in Angel Metropolis Soccer Membership, the world’s most beneficial girls’s skilled sports activities group.
On Wednesday, Angel Metropolis of the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League introduced the couple had agreed to an funding of an undisclosed quantity that values the group at $250 million. The membership stated Bay and Iger will make investments a further $50 million within the membership’s future development.
In line with NWSL bylaws, controlling homeowners should personal a minimum of 35% of the group, which places the pair’s buy settlement at a minimal of $87.5 million. Bay will serve on and have full management of the Angel Metropolis FC board, the group stated.
The sale comes as girls’s sports activities and the NWSL have seen explosive development in viewership and attendance and drawn rising funding.
Final 12 months, Angel Metropolis FC generated the best income of any girls’s group on this planet. It was additionally No. 1 in NWSL attendance and sponsorship income.
“We all know they’re the fitting companions to guide us into this new period – they’re dedicated to additional strengthening ACFC’s place as a preeminent group and model in girls’s sports activities and to championing the group’s broader mission, together with the development of fairness for athletes and women-founded companies,” the ACFC Board of Administrators stated in an announcement.
Claire Emslie #10 of Angel Metropolis FC passes in opposition to the Bay FC within the first half at PayPal Park on June 22, 2024 in San Jose, California. (Photograph by Eakin Howard/Getty Photographs)
Eakin Howard | Getty Photographs
Angel Metropolis FC was based in 2020 by actress Natalie Portman, enterprise capitalist Kara Nortman and entrepreneur Julie Uhrman.
The possession group additionally features a lengthy checklist of sports activities icons together with Billie Jean King, Abby Wambach, Lindsey Vonn and 13 former gamers from the U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Staff. The group has prioritized feminine possession and equal pay for girls.
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian had been the membership’s controlling proprietor.
The distinctive possession construction had introduced tensions over funds and operations, reportedly one of many motivations for a sale.
All the present homeowners will keep on with this new group construction, the membership stated Wednesday.
Bay, a lifelong sports activities fan, who additionally serves as dean of the USC Annenberg Faculty for Communication and Journalism, stated she’s dedicated to advancing the membership’s mission of driving fairness on and off the sphere.
“With this funding of assets and capital, we hope to speed up the expansion of the Membership and the NWSL,” she stated in an announcement.
Correction: This story has been up to date to appropriate the spelling of Julie Uhrman’s title.