Disney chief executive Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay have agreed to buy a controlling stake in the US National Women’s Soccer League club Angel City FC at a valuation of $250mn, in a record deal for the league that would make it the most valuable women’s sports team in the world.
The agreement, which is subject to approval by the league, underscores the rapid appreciation of sports clubs and women’s sports in particular. It is also the Iger family’s first foray into the realm of sports ownership.
Los Angeles-based Angel City FC was founded in 2020 by actor Natalie Portman, tennis star Serena Williams and her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and a consortium of investors from the worlds of Hollywood, venture capital and sports. Portman and Ohanian would continue to serve on the board of directors of the team, the club said.
The growth of women’s football, and the NWSL especially, has accelerated through the pandemic. Angel City was the league’s ninth franchise when founded in 2020 — since then the NWSL has grown to 14 clubs.
Last year, investment firm Sixth Street became the first institutional investor to become a majority owner of a US sports team when it committed $125mn to buy a new franchise, Bay FC. That figure included a $53mn expansion fee, paid by owners of new clubs to the rest of the league so as not to dilute the value of existing teams, a 10-fold increase in expansion fees from 2020.
Bay, the dean of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, will serve and control Angel City’s board of directors and represent the club at the NWSL board of governors. She and Iger will also invest an additional $50mn “to support the club’s future growth”, according to a team statement.
Bay said that she and Iger “are committed to advancing the club’s mission of driving equity on and off the field”.
Iger rejoined Disney as chief executive in 2022, having previously served in the role from 2005 to 2020. Disney owns the sport-focused cable network ESPN and free-to-air ABC, and was the largest provider of linear sports content in the US last year, according to MoffettNathanson. NWSL has media rights agreements with ESPN, Paramount’s CBS, Amazon Prime Video, and Scripps Sports.