America Ferrera

A sports franchise is not a startup

Owning part of a football club works differently from owning part of a company. A National Women's Soccer League team does not primarily generate value by turning a profit on ticket sales; its value tracks the league's collective media rights, sponsorship growth and the scarcity of franchises, since the number of teams is controlled and new ones are sold at prices the league sets.

That makes the position closer to owning a share of an expanding league than a bet on one business's operations. It also means the exit works differently: there is no acquisition or listing in the usual sense, and stakes change hands privately, infrequently, at negotiated prices.

A very large ownership group, on purpose

Angel City was built around an unusually broad ownership group of women athletes, executives and entertainers — Ferrera joined alongside Natalie Portman, Serena Williams and Eva Longoria, among many others. Assembling dozens of owners is harder than taking money from a few, so it is worth asking what it buys.

For a new team in a growing league, the answer is attention and credibility. Every owner is a channel to an audience, and a founding group of recognisable women is itself an argument about who women's football is for. The trade-off is arithmetic: the more owners, the smaller each stake. A founding investor in a group that size holds a small percentage, and the influence is collective rather than individual.

If this made the sector interesting rather than the celebrity, start with how to begin investing — and, if private companies are what caught your eye, how angel investing actually works.