Alexis Ohanian Calls Women's Sports 'Best Investment of My Lifetime' as Capital Allocators Circle NWSL Franchises

Alexis Ohanian told CNBC this week that women's sports represents "the best investment opportunity of my lifetime," while wearing a 776 Foundation hoodie and seated beside Angel City FC financials. He meant it literally. His Seven Seven Six fund holds equity in Angel City FC, the NWSL franchise now valued north of $250 million on secondary market whispers, triple its $85 million 2020 launch capitalization. Ohanian's remarks arrived 72 hours after JuJu Watkins, USC's sophomore guard averaging 23.4 points per game, disclosed a minority stake in Boston Common—the NWSL expansion franchise awarded to Boston for a $108 million fee. The timing is not coincidental.

The NWSL confirmed expansion awards for Boston Common and a Cincinnati-based group within a 48-hour window last month, bringing league membership to 16 franchises by 2026. Boston's ownership group includes private equity veterans and two family offices that previously passed on MLS opportunities in 2019. Cincinnati's lead investor runs a mid-market industrial roll-up and attended exactly one Thorns match before writing the check. Both groups paid $108 million, a figure the league set deliberately above the $103 million that Bay FC paid in 2023, establishing a clear upward pricing ladder. The league office declined to specify revenue-sharing terms but confirmed each expansion team receives full media-rights participation starting day one, a reversal from MLS's tiered structure.

Watkins' Boston stake matters less for the dollar amount—undisclosed but structurally below 5% based on league equity rules for athlete investors—than for the signaling mechanism. She is 19 years old. Her NIL portfolio already includes Klutch Sports, Beats by Dre, and a Gatorade contract that pays her more annually than 60% of current NWSL players earn in salary. She chose to deploy capital into a league that will not see her play professionally for at least two years, possibly four. That is a bet on enterprise value, not playing time. Her agent, who also reps three NBA All-Stars, structured the investment as a standard equity stake with no appearance clauses or marketing tie-ins, per two people familiar with the term sheet. Translation: she is an owner, not a spokesperson.

Ohanian's comments were delivered during a CNBC segment on venture returns, not sports sentiment. He cited 18-month revenue growth at Angel City, which now generates $35 million annually from sponsorships, up from $11 million at launch. The club's kit deal with Wildfang, a Portland-based apparel brand, pays $4.2 million per year, a figure that would rank in the top half of MLS kit agreements. Ohanian also noted that Seven Seven Six's internal rate of return on the Angel City stake is tracking 34% annualized, a number that survives scrutiny only if exit multiples hold or expand. He is betting they will. His fund is now reviewing a second NWSL opportunity, according to someone who has seen the deck. The target is an existing franchise in a top-15 media market, not an expansion bid.

The capital is moving faster than the coverage. Boston's ownership group closed its $108 million commitment in 11 weeks, including league diligence, a timeline that rivals private equity's fastest consumer-brand acquisitions. Cincinnati's group moved even quicker: nine weeks from first call to signed term sheet. Both deals involved institutional allocators who previously avoided women's sports. One family office in the Boston group last deployed capital into a Serie A club in 2021; they exited at a loss after 19 months. They are treating Boston Common as a 10-year hold with embedded option value on media rights, per two people briefed on the investment committee presentation. The comp they used internally was not another NWSL team. It was the Charlotte Hornets' 2010 purchase price of $300 million, later flipped for $275 million in 2020 after years of negative EBITDA. The bet is not on profitability tomorrow. It is on scarcity and multiple expansion.

Watkins will attend Boston Common's first match in 2026, per her agent. Ohanian will likely be there too, seated in the same section where family offices now ask their analysts to track attendance curves, jersey sales per capita, and local broadcast CPMs. The next 18 months will clarify whether this is a durable shift or a consensus trade that unwinds when growth slows. Two more expansion awards are expected before the end of 2025, with Nashville and Denver the leading candidates. Franchise fees for those slots are expected to clear $115 million.