Michelle Wie West: Don’t Treat Women’s Sports As Charity

Michelle Wie West appreciates that the money pouring into women’s sports is now being viewed as investment, not altruism. 

Wie West, the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open golf champion, joined Front Office Sports editor-in-chief Dan Roberts on a recent episode of Portfolio Players. 

“I think a lot of times women’s sports was seen as charity,” Wie West said, when asked about the broader momentum about women’s sports having a moment, and everything that comes with it, including the criticism. “That’s why the phrase—I’m guilty of saying it too—’We gotta show up for women’s sports, we gotta support women’s sports’ … and that just to me feels like a charity aspect. You’d never say that ‘I need to support the NFL.’ This sounds ridiculous saying it, right? I think the moment, the movement, is all about shifting that mindset.”

Wie West, an investor in L.A. Golf Club, one of six franchises in Tiger Woods’s and Rory McIlroy’s TGL indoor golf league, continued, “You say it at Front Office Sports. Women’s sports is good [big] business. You don’t say ‘good charity.’ The chatter, the debates, the critics—that’s all part of it. You see male athletes, you see sports teams just get ripped apart in the media. I think that’s good! People shouldn’t feel bad about saying something bad about their favorite sports team, or their least favorite women’s sports team or athlete. I like it when we have this conversation. It’s less of a charity aspect versus a real thing that people want to talk about.”  

Wie West pointed to the rise of women’s sports bars, attendance records (referencing the case of Bay Area FC drawing more than 40,000 fans to Oracle Park), and the fanfare around the Golden State Valkyries. 

Investments have poured into women’s sports in recent years and the team valuations have skyrocketed. New minority stakes in the New York Liberty earlier this year valued the team at $450 million. New franchises in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cleveland are paying $250 million expansion fees, up from $50 million put up by the Valkyries ownership group several years ago.  

Last year, Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, bought the NWSL’s Angel FC for $250 million, shattering the previous league franchise record sale of $120 million. 

Last month, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian told FOS Today that his Chelsea FC women’s soccer club investment could become the first women’s sports team in the world valued at $1 billion. 

In the conversation, Ohanian took a similar tack to Wie West about not viewing women’s sports as charity. “Don’t do this because you’ve got a daughter or granddaughter who likes soccer—do this because you think there’s tremendous value here,” Ohanian said. “Enterprise value that you should be investing in to grow this out.”