When its season ended earlier this month, Angel City FC finished 11th out of 13 teams, a disappointing result for the Los Angeles soccer franchise co-founded by venture capitalist Cara Nortman in 2020. But the season’s struggles tell only part of a much bigger story that investors think about women’s sports.

Despite its on-field performance, Angel City itself has become a case study (including Verbatimwithin Harvard Business School) on how to improve women’s sports properties. The team’s celebrity ownership group, including Natalie Portman and Serena Williams, has helped generate an almost unprecedented buzz. The franchise has also been savvy about sponsorships, with players breaking records before kicking a ball.

Nortman reflected in one, “We went from zero to $30 million in revenue. We sold games. Interview last monthpointing to Angel City’s commercial success since the team’s inception. “That really led to the formation of a king.”

That commercial success, not trophies, became the blueprint for the Monarch Collective, a $250 million fund Nortman launched in 2023.for , for , for , . which has become the first investment vehicle focused exclusively on women’s sports. While his origin story may be rooted in a team that has yet to win a playoff game, King’s portfolio and influence extend far beyond Angel City’s training facility in Thousand Oaks, California.

The fund now has stakes in three other National Women’s Soccer League clubs: the San Diego Wave, Boston Legacy FC (debuting next year), and its latest investment, It was announced earlier this monthFC Victoria Berlin. Agreement for 38% of the German clubfor , for , for , . Makes the king the first foreign investor to acquire a stake in Germany’s women’s soccer team.

It’s a diverse collection that reflects Nortman’s belief that women’s sports have reached an inflection point, regardless of the fortunes of either team. The numbers also support his optimism.

“The global men’s sports market is estimated to be around half a trillion dollars,” Nortman explained. “The women’s sports market, when we launched Badshah in 2023, was thought to be about half a billion dollars. Now it’s closer to $3 billion.”

Nortman says tapping into that growth requires a different playbook than men’s sports. This is not a simple rinse and repeat. “Like how many men’s team owners are thinking about parachuting Sephora boxes from the rafters? [a New York] freedom [WNBA game] A Fenty Cam to put on you [Fenty] Lipstick, or a Hello Kitty collab night in the Angel City where people can’t figure out how to get their hands on chili before it sells out?

Angel City’s innovative approach to marketing and partnerships helped it generate so much excitement that last fall, power couple Bob Iger and Willow Bay Acquired majority stake 250 million of this, making it the most valuable women’s sports franchise in the world.

For Nortman, who gave up concrete plans and more traditional venture capital to focus full-time on women’s sports, Angel City’s commercial success continues to validate King’s thesis. While there is current tension—certainly in the sports press, at least—between the Angel City’s business success and its on-field performance, the team has proven immensely that women’s sports can generate serious revenue with the right pieces.

Now, as with any successful new endeavor, the question is, can the momentum be sustained? Nortmann is keenly aware that women’s sports have seen moments like this evaporate before. She often cites a striking historical parallel from the 1920s, when 60,000 people turned up in Liverpool, England, to watch Dick, Kerry Ladies play football, a bigger crowd than most Premier League games draw today. The following year, the English Football Association banned women from the game, and the game essentially disappeared for decades.

“Everyone gets to get up and discover women’s sports when they do,” Nortman says. “But it takes consistent, hard work to make it consistent.”

That hard work, he argues, requires more than riding waves of attention from breakout stars like Caitlin Clarke or Angelica Reese. This calls for systematic investment in infrastructure, governance, and operations.

This is where the king’s approach deviates from the general project capital. Instead of making passive bets on dozens of startups, Badshah is taking a concentrated position in a handful of teams and leagues, then getting deeply involved in the operations. The fund describes its strategy as “growth markets-like” with “growth equity or private equity-like” risk management.

“We show control alongside show owners and add a lot of operational value,” Nortman explained.

The king’s investment interests extend beyond football. The fund focuses more broadly on what Nortman calls sports with “no product market risk,” meaning established formats with proven audiences.

“Is this the sport people like to watch on their computer or television?” she asks. “There are partner games like pickleball, but are people going to make an event out of sitting at home watching it?”

Indeed, while Badshah still has stakes in four “soccer” clubs, he also has interests in women’s basketball, golf and tennis – sports with existing infrastructure as well as substantial media revenue potential.

The firm’s current limited partners include Melinda Gates, former Netflix executives, and other wealthy individuals, and interest in its mission is growing. For one thing, Monarch’s $250 million debut fund is significantly more than the $100 million that Nortman and co-founder Jasmine Robinson, a former investor with sports, media, gaming- and fitness-focused growth-stage firm Causeway, initially planned to raise. She says the increased size reflects the rapid maturation of the market during King’s fundraising period.

“When we started raising the fund, nine out of 10 conversations were, ‘Yeah, we don’t think so [women’s] “Basketball is really a thing,” Nortman says, “remembering a lot of the skepticism surrounding it.” Then came the meteoric rise of Caitlin Clark, the WNBA’s record-breaking viewership, and basketball suddenly became the hottest division in women’s sports.

This growing interest validates Nortman’s thesis that investing in women’s sports is not about finding the perfect single team, but about supporting an ecosystem where multiple franchises can thrive. Some will win championships. Some will struggle competitively but be commercially successful. The key is allocating considerable capital and operational expertise to individual shocks in the market.

Already, Angel City influences other ownership groups. “You start to see other teams—Kansas City, BFC, the Washington D.C. Spirits—with women-led ownership groups and show that they can make a real P&L,” Nortman noted. Whether intentional or not, Angel City became a template.

As women’s sports enters what feels like a period of steady boom — the Golden State Valkyries play their first WNBA next season, the NWSL is expanding, media rights deals are on the rise — Nortman is cautiously optimistic about whether this moment will prove different from past surges in interest.

He argues that the key lies in the fundamentals: strong league governance, owner commitment, infrastructure investment, and building genuine community connections. Media attention creates opportunity. Operational excellence makes it sustainable.

“Every spike is an opportunity to build consistent experience around it,” Nortman says. “You have to look at all the underlying metrics to see where it’s likely to stick around.”