Natalie Portman’s Angel City will open the curtain on the NWSL

Con Natalie Portman as co-founder and great promoter, Angel City FC starts next week its journey in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) with the firm conviction of changing women’s football from the offices to the field of play, where they play their matches with a 4-3-3 scheme.

“Angel City is not another football team. We are building a different kind of organization where mission and capital go hand in hand.”

That is the powerful declaration of intent on its website of this new team from Los Angeles (USA) which, after playing the Challenge Cup in the preseason, will play its first official regular season match against North America on Friday, April 29. Caroline Courage.

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Angel City’s journey here began in July 2020 with Portman leading the founding group.

“Sport is a very happy way to bring people together and it also has the power to make tangible change for athletes both in our community and in the professional sphere,” the actress wrote when the team was announced.

The fight against machismo and the search for equality was at the root of Angel City from the beginning, since there is an overwhelming majority of women in its board of directors and its group of owners.

It also stood out for the well-known profile of the names behind the set.

Thus, the group led by Portman welcomed Hollywood stars as investors (Eva Longoria, Jennifer Garner, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Chastain, Sophia Bush, Becky G, Uzo Aduba o Gabrielle Union) y to great sports figures (Serena Williams, Lindsey Vonn, Mia Hamm, Candace Parker or Abby Wambach).

However, one of the most important challenges for Angel City was to bring its good intentions to its business model.

FROM SPONSORS TO ALLIES

With experience in the NHL (Columbus Blue Jackets), MLB (Oakland Athletics) and MLS (San Jose Earthquakes), Jess Smith, Angel City’s head of revenue, explained in an interview with Efe that all the decisions of her board are based on ” values”.

For this they have defined “the three pillars of Angel City: equity, essentials and education”.

“Those are the three pillars that we are accountable for in all our things. That is the heart of our club,” he said.

From the moment they started looking for “entrance routes” and thinking about how they were “going to go to market, find sponsors and ask fans to buy season tickets,” Smith said they were very clear about one aspect: “The The whole point of Angel City is that we exist to fight for fairness.”

“That doesn’t mean we can fix it right now, but at least we can talk about it with our clients, with brands, with teams, with athletes,” he exemplified by emphasizing the club’s commitment to the LGBTQ community, racial minorities and people with disabilities. .

By “essential”, the team refers for example to providing facilities and equipment so that young women can play football in their communities, while “education” includes all kinds of “honest discussions” with different sectors of the population.

Smith, who designed Angel City’s sponsorship model, pointed out that in their search for “allies” they came up with a formula that serves both the club and its sponsors.

“10 percent of each sponsorship goes to a shared cause within the three pillars,” he said.

For example, DoorDash has committed to Angel City to provide one million meals to Angelenos in need while Sprouts has a school community garden program underway.

“With each brand and person we work with, there is a reason behind it,” said Smith, who admitted that laudable intentions on paper are not enough and that “resources” are needed to tackle these projects.

“But make no mistake: our goal is to be profitable. We don’t see these two things (the three pillars and team benefits) as mutually exclusive,” he said.

COMMUNITY SUCCESS AND FEMALE LEADERSHIP

One of the most impressive aspects of Angel City is the enormous echo it has already had in Los Angeles, so much so that in March the club announced that they had sold almost 15,000 season tickets for their first season in the NWSL (the Banc of California stadium where will play their matches has a capacity for 22,000 people).

Smith said his approach to the community has been “layered” and has included both street and neighborhood outreach events as well as backing from his “incredible investment group.”

“There you have people like Natalie Portman, Sophia Bush, Lindsey Vonn, Billie Jean King, Alexis Ohanian… What’s really nice about Angel City is that even before we had a brand, we had the support of those investors.” he explained.

In this sense, Smith recalled a meeting in which his interlocutor admitted not knowing anything about sports but said that he knew about the Angel City project because he had seen it on Sophia Bush’s Instagram (4 million followers).

“You can’t underestimate the power and influence that (these investors) have in their own ecosystems,” Smith said. Lastly, Smith referred to the uniqueness of Angel City as a women’s team and with a large majority of women in the offices.

“For someone like myself, to be working for and with other women, both at the ownership and board levels, is unfortunately something that has never existed before,” she said.

Smith said they feel “responsibility” to do well as a pioneering experience in American football and stressed the importance of “see it and be it”, that is, that girls can have them as a role model for their own future.

“To see sponsors and fans validating what we are doing, and also making it real and successful, is something incredible,” he concluded.