Muse Capital: The rise and rise of women-led multi-team ownership groups
With more and more women-led investment groups in sport, City PM sat down with Muse Capital to discuss SailGP and changing tides.
A recent phenomenon among the plethora of sports deals recently has been the involvement of celebrity capital.
Whether that be Tom Brady at Birmingham City, Serena Williams with Toronto Tempo or the late Eddie Jordan at London Irish, the involvement of celebrities can generate interest and add more than just hard cash to a project.
That doesn’t mean, however, that some investors don’t come as a shock, which is what happened when The Devil Wears Prada actor Anne Hathaway was confirmed as part of an investor group that purchased the Italian SailGP team, reportedly for $45m, last month.
Hathaway’s consortium partner Assia Grazioli-Venier says the collective, who have teamed up with sailing stalwart Jimmy Spithill, are the first female ownership group in the league.
Muse Capital, Hathaway and SailGP
Grazioli-Venier, co-founding partner of Muse Capital – whose Muse Sport arm has invested in SailGP and had an early stake in Michele Kang’s Washington Spirit football club, adds that we shouldn’t be surprised to see more multi-team ownership groups led by women.
“There are certainly a lot of very interesting groups led by women who are trying to tackle this multi-team ownership strategy,” she tells City PM. “I was talking to someone the other day about why I think that these multi-team strategies could work, and that is because most of the women backing these projects are not just investors or operators, they’re builders.
“They don’t just invest, but they know how to connect the dots and to maximise marketing teams and performance teams, and I think we’re living in a truly global world.”
Grazioli-Venier is chairing the new Women’s Pro Baseball League, adding that it is “a brand new league that should have existed for centuries”.
“It makes sense to connect European clubs with American clubs with Asian clubs,” she adds. “So if you are savvy in knowing how to operate and build and actually make those connections work for you, then the multi approach is great. If you don’t have that operational background, it’s a hard thing to do.”
And the valuations of women’s clubs have steadily been increasing, besides a couple of outliers far above their rivals.
Women’s football valuations
One of those is Women’s Super League champions Chelsea, who were valued at £200m after Reddit co-founder and husband of tennis star Williams, Alexis Ohanian, invested £20m into the Blues for a 10 per cent stake in the Kingsmeadow club.
“It can’t go on forever with football but I think that’s only going to continue to grow,” Grazioli-Venier concludes. “I mean, Angel City’s valuation of $250m is quite high in theory, in terms of where it is today, but it is marking itself on what is an inevitable future, same thing for Chelsea.
“So I truly believe that the revenues are only going to continue to go up. Women’s soccer, women’s football is only going to continue to go up.”
A female-led ownership group involving Muse Capital in SailGP was followed weeks later by the emergence of Wrexham owner Ryan Reynolds, who purchased the Australian franchise alongside The Greatest Showman’s Hugh Jackman.
Celebrity in sport is becoming ubiquitous but, as Muse Sport argues, those choosing to enter that world need to be builders. Hathaway’s construction era is upon us, then.