The multi-club owner is the new power player of women’s football: “It should be a business – not a charity”

Swedish national team star Kosovare Asllani has played for some of the biggest clubs in Europe.

This summer she selected several top teams – for the London City Lionesses in England’s second division.

The next line to join was the renowned national team midfielder Julia Roddar, followed by the Swedish national team striker Sofia Jakobsson.

So what exactly is it? that suddenly forces you to leave the largest areas for a development project? The answer according to Asllani? A 65-year-old woman who has created a women’s football empire in a short period of time.

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Korean-American multi-millionaire Michele Kang has made a fortune from a company in IT and health. Three years ago, she knew nothing about football – “I didn’t even know who Leo Messi was”, she told herself at a conference in Stockholm earlier this fall. But then she got into women’s football, and now owns the American Washington Spirit, the French giant Lyon – and the London City Lionesses.

– I’ve been waiting for someone like Michele, sad Asllani when she was given by the club last summer.

– Everyone who knows me knows that I have always fought for more resources and investments.

The last years established European men’s clubs have begun to invest more and more in their women’s teams.

London City Lionesses are standing on their own two feet.

– It’s powerful to show that we don’t need a men’s club to support us, sad Asllani according to TT in July and follows:

– Michele wants to redraw the entire map of women’s football.

Kang went down in person to Milan to convince the 35-year-old to sign. When Sweden play their EC replay at home to Luxembourg on Tuesday, Asllani’s new club have started the English Championship with four wins, a draw and a loss.

Women’s football is nobody’s business charity, Michele Kang said when she spoke the other week at a conference organized by the interest group Elite Soccer Ladies:

– When I first got into the sport, I found out that many saw it as a kind of charity or a social project. But I am a businessman. I saw the gap between where women’s football is and where it could be. As a business, not as a charity.

“Especially because I’m a woman myself, I didn’t want our players to be treated like charity projects, for sponsors to be able to write a $50,000 check just to cancel something.

Women’s football as a a business model is about not settling, says Kang. On offering something more than men’s football, investing in the supporter’s experience.

– We are not only competing against men’s football, but for all users’ time – and money.

– Why should we ask our fans to come 13 weekends a year and spend time and money on us? You can say “we are women, you must support women”. Then people can come once or twice. But they do not come 13 times.

The basic product to invest however, the players themselves.

Example:

– When I started learning about women’s soccer, I learned that all team sports basically borrow training manuals from the men’s teams. But female soccer players have three times more ligament injuries than male players. And many of these injuries occur in connection with menstruation. We are starting to learn more about this, but over 90 percent of all research is focused on men.

When she took over seven players had cruciate ligament injuries. It makes for a bad deal.

– One thing I can say is that top players are selling tickets. So you can’t hurt names that much.

– So I decided that female soccer players should be treated as women. It’s not a sign of weakness, but it’s about clarifying what our product is and making the most of it.

Of course it is it’s no different than in Silicon Valley, says Kang.

– If you believe in a product, you have to invest in it, the product will come back.

She is a pioneer within so-called multi-club networks on the women’s side, but the development has long been a reality in men’s football.

There, the ownership group City Football Group, with Manchester City at the head and 13 clubs on five continents, is the largest.

The clubs can share knowledge and resources, offering greater exposure to sponsors and spreading costs. But club empires are hardly uncontroversial. According to the critics, credit and the transfer market are in danger of being shaken, write, among other things The Express in a longer report on Kang.

– I know that the concept of multiple clubs is not always seen as a positive thing, Kang says to a sports business site Sports Pro.

– But in women’s sports, I would say it is necessary.