Michele Kang: Multiple clubs are good for women’s football

Michele Kang, majority owner of Washington Spirit, has said after taking over English Championship team London City Lionesses that she believes owning multiple clubs is the best way to develop women’s football.

Kang’s influence in women’s soccer has grown in recent years. She acquired ownership of the Washington Spirit in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2022 and purchased a majority stake in French giants Lyon in February 2023.

In December, it acquired London City Lionesses, the only independent women’s football club in the top two divisions of English women’s football.

On Thursday, it announced four major developments, including the signing of former Paris Saint-Germain coach Jocelyn Prêcheur and Swedish international Kosovare Asllani as the first of seven new signings with the aim of promotion to the top division, the Women’s Super League (WSL).

Kang reiterated her previous statements that multi-club ownership is essential for the development of women’s football.

“I am well aware of the negative connotations of the term ‘multiple clubs’, particularly for the men, because among the women no one has owned multiple clubs before,” she said at a press conference in London on Thursday.

“But I want to assure you that in women’s football, the creation of several clubs is not a necessity, but a luxury or a matter of greed, because we need to invest to professionalise women’s football to the level it deserves. And we need to invest in the potential of women’s football.”

“Unfortunately, there isn’t much money available to invest in women’s football at the moment due to a lack of media dollars.”

Kang admitted that when she took over as Spirit coach two years ago, she learned that the team had adopted its training manual from the men’s training manuals.

She discussed how the lack of tailored training methods and research can contribute to injuries and that there is a lack of understanding of the necessary adaptations in women’s football.

However, financing this research is difficult because there are no economically lucrative structures in women’s football.

She said her multi-club model will change that.

“The scientific and medical care of our players is our top priority. That’s not possible for a single team, for example, is it?” she said.

“Because it costs a lot of money and currently no women’s football team makes money, let alone loses a lot of money. So if you want to invest so much in such matters, if you have several teams, you can pull the resources together and do it once at a central level.”

“It’s almost a necessity for women’s teams. It doesn’t mean, my God, we have a multi-team and everyone else exists to make a team successful. I get asked who you would cheer for if Lyon, Spirit and London City played against each other. My answer is: let the best team win.

“We will not sacrifice one team to help another team succeed. Absolutely not.”

“Our aim is to make every team champions in every league. So London City will do everything they can to become champions of the WSL. Lyon, of course, Spirit and all future teams. So it’s not about making one team successful, as is the case with some of the common models on the men’s side. It’s about making every team successful. So we’re not going to poach or move players around to make one team better than the others.”

Asked about the importance of multi-club structures, she said: “We need to build women’s sport on a large scale and this is the only way we can build that scale because we don’t have a billion dollar media deals or a hundred million dollar sponsorships and so on.”

To give the London City Lionesses the best chance of promotion to the WSL and becoming English champions, the club will enter into a partnership with Bromley FC.

The 5,000-seat stadium will host all of Pride’s home games in south London, and will see the team leave their current home, Princes Park in Dartford – just outside the English capital – which has previously been criticised for its poor facilities.

Kang said their rationale was to bring the club closer to London without straying too far from the local fanbase.

They have also acquired the training ground, which the club uses on a rental basis. Kang revealed that she plans to have an architect remodel the 23-hectare training ground to resemble Lyon and Spirit’s industry-leading facilities.

She said her aim was not only to create the best facilities for women’s football, but also to set a new standard for football and match the quality of facilities for men.

While outlining her plans for the club’s future, Kang revealed that Asllani will be one of six new faces joining London City Lionesses in the 2024–25 season.

Reflecting on her previous comments promoting multi-club ownership, she added that data from Kang’s other clubs had aided the recruitment process.

“One advantage (of owning multiple clubs) is that there is now a network among colleagues from three teams, so they can always talk to each other,” she said.

“In fact, during recruitment and throughout the process, we compare notes on analytics models and so on. So you have peers, you can always reach out to each other and learn best practices from each other.”