Michele Kang is arguably “the first tycoon of women’s football” – with three teams already under her belt, and plans to buy more in South Africa, Latin America and Asia.
She’s also a great advertisement for happenstance, says the Financial Times. Having made her fortune in healthcare IT, her life changed in 2019 when she was invited to a reception on Capitol Hill to celebrate the US women’s national football team winning the World Cup. “That’s where I first learned about the professional women’s league, as well as a team called Washington Spirit.”
After living for decades oblivious to football (“I didn’t even know who [Lionel] Messi was”), Kang’s interest was piqued. In 2022, she took over the club, “expecting to act chiefly as a role model for players, hosting team dinners and offering inspiring comments”. Then the enterprise mushroomed. In late 2023, she bought the London City Lionesses – one of the few women’s sides fully independent from a men’s team – and followed that up this year with the purchase of the French trophy team, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin.
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Michele Kang's global sporting empire
The acquisition of Lyon, which has won eight European championships, was “a clear sign” that Kang, 64, was serious about creating “a worldwide footprint”, says Forbes. But soccer is just the start of her drive to advance women’s sport. She marked the start of the Olympic Games by launching a non-profit venture called Kynisca Innovation – named after the first female winner of Olympic chariot races – contributing half of an initial seed fund of $100 million. The aim is to “unlock female athletic potential” through training and education. What galvanised her, says Bloomberg, was the fact that just “6% of sports science data is focused exclusively on women”. She’s focused on the potential that might be unleashed if they stopped being viewed as simply “small men”.
“I want the next generation to compete on an equal playing field,” says Kang of her ventures. But she says categorically that she’s in the game as a businesswoman. “This is an opportunity-rich environment,” she told the FT. She follows what she calls the “Silicon Valley model”: “[You] are convinced you have the solution, and you invest… It takes, to some extent, blind faith. That’s how I started my healthcare business. Everyone thought I was crazy when I invested right on the heels of the 2008 crash”.
Kang describes herself as someone “who has never been good at being told she cannot do something”, says The New York Times. Growing up in South Korea, there were few opportunities for women in business. “Even if you graduate with the highest score, you would probably be an assistant to the chairman. Then, when you get married, you will be voluntarily or involuntarily asked to leave.” Fortunately, she had a father who pushed her to realise her potential.
She moved to the US to study economics at the University of Chicago, later taking a master's at the Yale School of Management and joining Ernst & Young, specialising in IT. After an eight-year stint at Northrop Grumman, latterly in the health and science solutions unit, she quit to found Cognosante “to disrupt and challenge the status quo in the US healthcare system”.
Kang succeeded in doing that so well – Cognosante won more than $300 million in federal contracts over the last two years – that she’s just sold it to Accenture Federal Services for an undisclosed sum to fund her new empire. She plans to spend big on new stadiums and talent. That’s quite a risk “given the cycles of boom-and-bust that litter the history of women’s football”, says The New York Times. But Kang is convinced she’s starting at a sweet spot in the game’s evolution to mainstream entertainment. “I’m not worried at all,” she says. “The train has left the station. I don’t think there’s any turning back.”
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