“The goal is to make every team the champion of their league”

Michele Kang’s journey to building the world’s leading sports organization spans two continents, three forward-thinking clubs and groundbreaking sports science research.

“I am fully aware of the negative connotations of owning multiple clubs in the men’s division,” Kang told an audience of industry leaders and reporters in London.

“But I want to assure you that multi-club ownership in women’s football is a necessity and not a luxury or greed because we need to invest at the level that the players deserve in order to realise the potential of women’s football.”

Kang acquired the London City Lionesses in December 2023, adding the team to his portfolio, which already included Washington Spirit and Olympique Lyonnais Women.

The American is an advocate of multi-club ownership in women’s football to build a network of high-performing teams that can pool their resources and work together to solve the big problems.

“Unfortunately, due to a lack of media dollars, there is not as much money available to invest in women’s football,” Kang continued.

“For example, when I took over the Spirit, I learned that women’s football clubs were adopting their training manuals from men because there was a lack of knowledge about training female athletes.

“Information is gradually becoming available, but there is no comprehensive research or study of the female body, even though 94 percent of all scientific and medical research projects on athletic performance are dedicated to men.”

Kang is committed to answering the big questions in women’s football and pooling resources to professionalize the sport worldwide.

“We decided to do fundamental research on this because we cannot properly train our players without this data,” Kang continued. “Ultimately, we are about producing the best football games for our fans and our athletes need to be in the best shape possible for us to deliver that.”

“It’s not possible for a single team because it costs a lot of money and no women’s football team currently earns a lot of money. You need several teams so that you can pool resources and do research at a central level.”

“It affects everything – from the way we train our players to the design of our training centers. We don’t have to answer these questions alone, we can work together and make the results available to every team in the system. For women’s teams, this is a necessity.”

Kang has one goal in mind for all of her teams: victory.

“We don’t own multiple teams to ensure one is successful,” Kang explained. “I’m often asked who I would cheer for if Lyon, The Spirit and London City played each other. My answer is: ‘Let the best team win.'”

“We will not move players around so that one team is better than the others. They will come into each team to balance the strengths and weaknesses of that team.”

“The goal is to make every team champions in the league they play in.”