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Sixth Street, a global investment firm with about $65 billion in assets, will commit more capital to NWSL expansion club Bay FC “than probably any women’s professional sports team in the world,” said the firm’s CEO Alan Waxman.
“We’re building this team to set the standard of what a women’s sports franchise should be,” Waxman told Meg Linehan of The Athletic. “We will commit more resources and capital to the sporting side of things and the business side of things than probably any women’s professional sports team in the world. That’s how we’re looking at it.”
Waxman’s Sixth Street Partners committed $125 million to buy Bay FC earlier this year, including $53 million spent on an expansion fee. The club will begin play in 2024, growing the NWSL to 14 teams alongside fellow new expansion club Utah Royals.
Sixth Street’s deal in April to buy Bay FC made it the first institutional investor to become the majority owner of a professional U.S. sports franchise. Four former USWNT players—Brandi Chastain, Leslie Osborne, Danielle Slaton, and Aly Wagner—partnered with Sixth Street to become founding board members of Bay FC.
Sixth Street has also made investments worth hundreds of millions in the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs as well as Spanish soccer giants FC Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Other NWSL club owners have recently emphasized their commitment to growing the league, including Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang, who envisions a global network of women’s soccer following her May acquisition of French club Olympique Lyonnais Féminin.
“The legacy of the underinvestment in women’s sports is not just the sexism—which is there—it is gross business incompetence. And that is the part this new generation of owners has exposed,” said Alexis Ohanian, the venture capitalist, and owner of NWSL club Angel City FC.
