When Assia Grazioli-Venier invested in the NWSL’s Washington Spirit in 2020, the club was valued at about $5 million. Today, four years after a contentious saga that led to Michele Kang becoming majority owner, the team’s estimated value is $215 million, an increase of about 4,200%.
Kang acquired majority control of the club in a $35 million deal in 2022, a transition that was anything but smooth. The seller, Steve Baldwin, agreed to sell the team amid controversy, including allegations of harassment by the Spirit’s then-coach, Richie Burke, who was removed and banned from working in the NWSL following an investigation.
Just a few months before the Spirit situation exploded, then-commissioner Lisa Baird resigned over a similar scandal that engulfed a different team, the North Carolina Courage.
“A change needed to happen. And it’s not personal to Steve,” Grazioli-Venier, cofounder of Muse Capital and Muse Sport, told Front Office Sports on a recent episode of Portfolio Players. “There were a lot of bad things happening at the NWSL then. Luckily, what was happening on our side was not even remotely close to any of the sexual harassment stuff, thank god. But when I heard that things weren’t being run properly, I remember thinking, ‘Not on my watch.’”
She now describes helping Kang take over the team as one of her “proudest career moments.” But she had to advocate for Kang and push back against voices that were wary of Kang’s lack of experience in pro sports.
“I was like, if you use that narrative, then there’s no woman that’s ever going to own a sports team,” Grazioli-Venier said. “And here you’ve got an incredibly powerful woman with plenty of capital, and passion, and interest, who suddenly went from not knowing anything about sports to knowing everything, who wants to do it and is crazy enough to go all in. And so, no, she doesn’t need a male counterpart to get this shit done.”
Grazioli-Venier also said there had been some discussion of having Kang team up with Todd Boehly—who co-owns Chelsea, the Dodgers, and the Lakers—but in the end, backing Kang’s solo play proved to be the right call.
After Kang successfully wrested control of the team, Grazioli-Venier remembers seeing a stray comment on Twitter that Kang “Succession’d the shit out of this deal,” referring to the HBO series “Succession.” She told FOS the comparison was accurate: “It had the same kind of ups and downs.”
Kang has a lot of fans in the sports world, but also some vocal critics.
Baldwin, the former Spirit owner, offered a similar assessment to Grazioli-Venier of Kang’s early experience, but with a far less charitable spin.
“She didn’t know a hockey puck from a soccer ball,” Baldwin told FOS in March.
Separately, multiclub owner John Textor—whose Eagle Football Holdings owns stakes in clubs like Olympique Lyonnais in France and Botafogo in Brazil— has publicly accused Kang of consolidating power behind the scenes.
Last summer, Textor stepped down from leading Lyon and handed operational control of the team to Kang. Eagle Football Holdings was recently placed under the control of a U.K. restructuring administrator after lender Ares Management cited “events of default,” which Textor disputes. He claims the issues stemmed from Ares, and has alleged that Kang “secretly took control” of Lyon through what he described as a “shadow board,” telling FOS her maneuver was “one hell of a power play.”
Controversy aside, surging NWSL team valuations show no sign of slowing. In January of 2025, the Denver Summit expansion team fetched a then-record $110 million fee. Late last year, Falcons owner Arthur Blank paid $165 million to bring a team to Atlanta. And last month, Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam paid $205 million to launch a team in Columbus.
Less than five years after Angel City paid a $2 million expansion fee in 2020, NWSL alum Leslie Osborne and her co-investors launched Bay FC ahead of the 2024 season for $53 million.
“We were prepared going into that expansion bid for around $10 million, and we paid $53 [million],” she told FOS in a February episode of Portfolio Players. “And then guess what, Boston got in too for $53. So they took both of us. And Boston had two more years of runway, we had nine months. So when I think about Denver $115 [million], I think about Atlanta $165 [million], I’m like, well, we see where this is trending.”
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