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For Alexis Ohian last summer, it started with a simple phone call. Reddate’s businessman and co -founder was in London and his friend wanted to come to Paris, “He’s like that, if you don’t see America playing from France, you are stupid.”
Shortly afterwards, Ohian was with 45,000 other fans, he led his country by scoring Megan Ripino twice for the American women’s national team in the Women’s World Cup quarter -finals, which will be the fourth world honor.
“It was acknowledged that I had ever gone to the women’s football match,” he said. CNN Sport, “And the crowd was of electricity. I went away thinking about it, how did I not pay so much attention? How did I not know that there was a Pro League in the states?
A few days later, he and his wife, tennis legend Serena Williams, were watching the tournament final on television. His young daughter was wearing a jersey of Alex Morgan, a star player of the Olympia team.
In a loud voice, Ohian expressed surprise about the possibility of Olympia playing professional games, but Serena cut it down.
“Without defeat, my wife was like that, unless she paid the price until she paid the price. And she was joking, but not really.
At the same moment, Ohian says he felt forced to try and contribute positively in the world of women’s sports, “Okay Baby”, he declared, “Accept the challenge!”
Read: “We all have a responsibility to make the world a better place”.
Twelve months later, ‘Angel City’ has become a reality. Ohian is a central investor in a new Los Angeles project headed by Hollywood actress and activist Natalie Portman.
The National Women’s Soccer League was formed with only five teams in 2013, since then four have been added and League 2021 will join the FC when the Racing Louis Will. Next season, the angel will form 11 teams in the City League.
According to Angel City President Julie Ahrahman, this idea came out for this new team while involved with Portman’s time -up, which was established in 2018 to deal with sexual harassment.
“You can see that she is really behind the reasons that are important to her and she does meaningful work for these reasons,” Ahraman told CNN Sport, “she wanted to raise women’s athletics, solve salaries and make it public and meaningful.”
Promoting the launch of the angel City in July, Portman talked about the challenges that traditionally keep women’s sports back. She was talking to someone on Instagram who has already experienced it over the past 20 years – Williams.
Portman said, “Our team told me that only 4 % of sports coverage have women’s sports,” said Portman, “Portman said,” It’s crazy that we are here in 2020 and it’s so irrelevant. ”
Read: Alexis Ohianin on marrying Serena Williams
The team, which is not yet a government name – Angel City is just a nickname – and they will not play until 2022. But it is already clear that people who are working in different ways behind the club.
One, the founding investors are almost exclusively women, “I think you can count the number of clubs that are primarily owned by women on the one hand and probably with just a couple of fingers,” Ahrman told CNN, “I mean, it’s very unusual.”
There are 31 founding investors listed on the club’s website and only four men. Alexis Ohian is one of these strange people.
He described the preliminary meeting with Ahraman, Portman and Venture Capital Cara Nortman, “The three sat down and said,” We want to build this way, thus we want to build it, “and it was really important for them to have a majority of women owned from a day.
“I think we can talk about a lot of differences in professional sports. And I think that just one of the ways to bring about real change can be proved that it is a wonderful business that will create a lot of money and a lot of attention and a lot of success, but it is also showing how this organization is running can be a bit different and it may not be more successful.
“And not because it feels good, though it feels good, but because it’s funny that it is not very common.”
The club knows they are trying to swim against the maize, and not just because they are hoping to change the impression of professional women’s game. He is also launching a club in the Los Angeles Sports Market that has already been visited.
Read: Natalie Portman and Serena Williams are among the investors behind Angel City
Ehman has shocked the clubs that they will soon rub the shoulders in the city famous for the crowd, “Los Angeles is a market where there are already nine professional sports teams and (Collagate) Power Houses such as the University of Southern California and California, California.
So even the third football club here, the idea of bringing another professional sports team here is a great idea.
But the angel City believes that his novel will end with noise, which will establish a local, community, club of global appeal. “We know that women’s football has been incredibly successful during the Olympics and the World Cup.”
“The question is, every four years after they get such attention? And I think the answer is due to exhibition and awareness.
The key investors behind is a support cast of Hollywood stars, which includes Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria and Jessica Chesten, as well as 14 former players in the American women’s national team. It is a group of women with tens of millions of followers on social media. They are going to use their collective platforms to scream from the roofs.
“This is a common problem that if you can’t see it,” Ahraman says, “You may not be like that. If you can’t see it, you can’t follow it. (If) you can’t be happy for it, you cannot be part of it, and therefore there is a systemic problem that we have to fix and change.”
“We have a group of people who come from a entertainment place, media space, sports and technology space,” says Ahroman. We are thinking more about sports about football, in fact we are thinking about it as a fun.
Ohian says the focus will be on telling the story of social media for the construction of this brand and it seems that it is working, “tens of thousands of people are very excited, (we) have sold trade for a team that is not yet available.”
He compared women’s football with e -sports, which had taken an investment rush five years ago, and concluded that the market has considered female football less.
“These are the clubs of the concert, young people who draw millions of fans all over the world. (But) The average American does not know who is the best league of the Legends Player, while Megan Ripino and Alex Morgan are already cultural icons.
“From a marketing point of view, there is no crime for e -sports, they are far more sales for the brands that want to be associated with consumer costs in this country.”
In his conversation with Williams on Instagram, Portman remarked that already, the angel City has changed the conversation, “People are starting to think about doing so in other sports.”
Women are standing and raising them for other women. Sisters are doing this for themselves. This is the story of an LA in which Hollywood can end and it is a potential game changer for women’s sports everywhere.
