The costliest takeover within the historical past of girls’s skilled sports activities has been accomplished after the NWSL formally ratified the $250m buy of a controlling stake in Angel Metropolis FC to Bob Iger and Willow Bay.
Iger, the chief govt of Walt Disney, and tv journalist Bay are additionally injecting a further $50m into the membership, which was solely based in 2020 by a gaggle together with the Hollywood actor Natalie Portman and enterprise capitalists Kara Nortman and Alexis Ohanian.
The Los Angeles-based membership’s document valuation is a landmark second for girls’s soccer and greater than doubles the earlier document worth for the sale of a NWSL group, when San Diego Wave was bought in March for round $113m.
The Angel Metropolis takeover was unanimously permitted by the NWSL’s board of governors. On the pitch, enjoying in solely their third season, the group sits ninth out of 14 groups, after a fifth-placed end in 2023.
“We’re extremely excited to hitch ACFC as house owners at this historic juncture for the group and for girls’s sports activities domestically and globally,” Bay stated. “As followers for the reason that membership’s founding season, we’ve lengthy admired ACFC’s influence as a sports activities franchise and a drive for social good, notably right here in our Los Angeles neighborhood.”
Bay is a former anchor on ABC Information, CNN and NBC and co-hosted basketball protection on the latter. Iger has been Walt Disney’s CEO since 2022, having beforehand served as chairman.
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Portman, Ohanian and the entrepreneur Julie Uhrman can be amongst these to stay on the board from the unique traders. Numerous celeb names have additionally invested within the membership together with the previous tennis stars Billie Jean King and Serena Williams, in addition to the previous United States striker Abby Wambach and Winter Olympics legend Lindsey Vonn.
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