Alexis Ohanian published a bylined essay in Time Magazine this week detailing why Seven Seven Six, his $750 million venture fund, continues allocating capital into women's professional sports. The piece arrives eighteen months after his firm led the $75 million Series A for Angel City FC and six months after backing NWSL expansion side Bay FC.
The Time essay frames women's sports as mispriced assets trading below intrinsic value. Ohanian cites attendance growth—NWSL averaged 9,814 fans per match in 2024, up 26% year-over-year—and media rights deals that remain structurally undervalued relative to engagement metrics. He references the WNBA's new $2.2 billion eleven-year broadcast package, signed in July, as evidence the repricing has begun. The essay does not announce new portfolio companies, but the timing matters: NWSL expansion windows open in Q2 2025, and the Professional Women's Hockey League is quietly taking first-round bids for its next franchise cycle.
Seven Seven Six has deployed capital into eight women's sports properties since 2021, including stakes in Togethxr, a media company co-founded by Alex Morgan and Sue Bird, and the 2023 seed round for Nationals Park's new women's sports viewing club. The firm's thesis rests on a structural arbitrage: brands pay $150-$200 per thousand impressions to reach young female audiences on Meta platforms, but NWSL jersey patches trade at $3-$5 million annually for similar demographic reach with longer dwell time. Ohanian's essay emphasizes that gap without naming the numbers, but the math is public in league sponsorship filings.
The essay also functions as recruiting material. Seven Seven Six is hiring a second sports-vertical partner—job posted internally last month—and needs LPs comfortable with fifteen-year hold periods. Women's leagues operate at 15-20% of comparable men's league revenue today, and the bull case requires multiple media-rights cycles to close that gap. Ohanian's Reddit wealth insulates him from LP pressure, but the Time placement signals he is building a syndicate for larger checks.
What matters for operators: Ohanian is the first billionaire to write the women's sports thesis as public doctrine rather than portfolio footnote. That creates permission structure for family offices still sizing the category. His essay dedicates three paragraphs to attendance data and two to his daughter's youth soccer experience, a mix that works for institutional and emotional capital alike. The byline lands the same week as the WNBA's winter transaction window, when six teams are finalizing jersey-patch renewals worth a combined $38 million.
The next checkpoint is March, when Seven Seven Six typically announces Q1 commitments. NWSL expansion fees are rumored at $100-$120 million per franchise, and the league will confirm two cities by May. Ohanian's firm is not expected to lead a bid solo, but partnerships with Marc Lasry or Joe Tsai—both of whom attended the WNBA Finals in October—are plausible. The Time essay establishes the intellectual predicate; the term sheet comes next.
Meanwhile, rival allocators are reading the same data. Sixth Street took a minority stake in the WNBA's New York Liberty in September for an undisclosed sum north of $60 million, and Arctos Sports Partners closed a $3.2 billion fund in November with explicit women's-league mandates. The crowd is forming, which compresses Ohanian's entry-price advantage but validates the category for the next wave of sponsors.
The takeaway
Ohanian's Time essay converts private allocation thesis into public recruiting document as NWSL expansion bids and WNBA sponsor renewals enter final rounds.
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