Angel City Football Club: A New Business Model for Women’s Sports

Angel City Football Club (ACFC) was founded in 2020 by venture capitalist Kara Nortman, entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, and actor and activist Natalie Portman. As outsiders to professional sports, the all-female founding team had rewritten the playbook for how to build a sports franchise by applying lessons from the tech and entertainment industries. Unlike typical sports franchises that built their teams and track records over many years before extending their brand beyond a local base, ACFC had inverted the model, generating both global and local interest in the club during its first three years.

The club’s early success was reflected in its market valuation of $250 million as of its sale in July 2024 — the highest in the National Women’s Soccer League. Equally important, ACFC had started to bend the curve toward greater pay equity in women’s sports — the club’s ultimate goal.

But the founders knew there was much more to do to capitalize on the club’s momentum. As they developed ACFC’s first three-year strategic plan in 2024, they weighed the most effective ways to build value for the franchise. Was it better to allocate the incremental budget to investments in digital brand building or to investments in the on-field product?

Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Rayport is joined by case co-author Nicole Keller and club co-founder Kara Nortman to discuss the case, “Angel City Football Club: Scoring a New Model.”