One of the NWSL’s most powerful figures will take a seat at San Mamés Stadium in Bilbao, Spain, to watch the UEFA Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Olympique Lyonnais on Saturday.
But she won’t be just a spectator.
Y. Michele Kang is the owner of Les Lyonnaise, the most accomplished women’s soccer team in Europe, as well as the NWSL’s Washington Spirit and the second-tier English club London City Lionesses (LCL). Regardless of the outcome, it’s still a victory for Kang—she has already secured the Spanish side’s coach Jonatan Giraldez Costas to join the Spirit after the last whistle.
Kang became the first woman owner of the first multi-club network in women’s soccer in February of 2023, when she bought a majority stake of Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, which owns the Olympique Lyonnais women’s professional soccer team, the 16-time champions of the French first division women soccer league D1 Arkema.
At a time when America’s NWSL and the top clubs in Europe appear to be on a collision course to see which will be the world’s preeminent destination for women’s soccer, Kang has solid footing in both camps.
A self-proclaimed visionary according to her bio at Cognosante, the healthcare solution startup she founded in 2008 “to disrupt the U.S. healthcare system,” the 65-year-old from South Korea entered women’s soccer in 2020, first as a minority owner of the Spirit. Following a two-year battle to gain control of the club, she acquired the majority stake of the franchise from co-owners Steve Baldwin and Bill Lynch in a deal that valued the club at $35 million, a league-high at the time, when the league was still selling franchises for well under $10 million.
“People thought [the price she paid for the Spirit] was crazy,” said Inner Circle Sport’s vice president Maddie Winslow. When Kang upped Todd Boehly’s offer by $10 million to buy the Spirit, most investors were hesitating to allocate funds to women’s sports assets. The argument against such investments was based on the need for concrete data on the fan base, viewership, and sponsorship dollars, and a general sense that women’s sports couldn’t generate good returns.
“Just a few years later, people are looking back and realizing that was an attractive entry price,” Winslow said.
Kang’s investment in the Spirit reset the bar for NWSL. Two years after Kang took over the Spirit’s control, the San Diego Wave were sold for $113 million, and the league sold the new Bay Area franchise to a Sixth Street-backed investor group for an expansion fee record $53 million.
According to Sportico’s valuations, the Spirit are worth $54 million today. The club’s 2023 revenue was $6 million.
“It takes a certain type of person to be among the first movers in a space,” Winslow said. “Michele is one of those people.”
While repositioning her NWSL club with key hires for the front office, including former Miami Heat executive Kim Stone as CEO and Mark Krikorian as general manager, Kang has been expanding her soccer holdings by purchasing the Lionesses in December. LCL is the only independent women’s soccer club in NewCo, which will eventually oversee England’s first-tier Women’s Soccer League and second-tier Women’s Championship, where LCL plays.
“Michelle’s vision in bringing together some of the world’s best women’s professional sports means that you have synergies and best practices that you can share easily,” Stone said in a phone call. “I can call Vince in Lyon and trade ideas on sales strategies and corporate partnerships. It really benefits us to have a group of like-minded folks that can come together and strategize on how to move the business forward.”
Kang bought into the top level of European women’s soccer with her purchase of Olympique Lyonnais. The French soccer giants have won eight UEFA Champions League titles to date, with a record five successive titles from 2016 to 2020 and 14 consecutive domestic league titles from 2007 to 2020. The team is reportedly valued at $54 million.
However, according to the latest Deloitte Football Money League report, no women’s soccer club in Europe is profitable, and Olympique Lyonnais didn’t even make the top 15 this year. Despite this, Kang is committed to investing in her club. Speaking to the press in Lyon last year, she revealed plans for a 15,000- to 20,000-capacity stadium for the women’s team. Additionally, Kang has made significant investments in the club’s front office, including hiring a head of performance, a full-time nutritionist and a psychologist.
Kang expressed her desire to buy clubs in countries where women’s soccer is not yet as popular as it is in the markets like the U.S., the UK and France. Since she entered into an agreement to sell Cognosante to Accenture Federal Services in April, the businesswoman will have more free time to focus on her expanding investments in professional sports.
“It’s actually less about women’s sports and more about someone seeing an untapped market where with the correct investment, there is significant upside,” Winslow said. “And now she is building upon that. She started with Washington Spirit and is now growing her portfolio. She is simply making calculated and smart investments across the soccer ecosystem.”
