Women’s sports just keeps growing — and getting money.
On Thursday, League One Volleyball (LOVB), the American pro league set to debut Jan. 8, announced $100 million in new funding from Atwater Capital, Ares Management and Left Lane Capital, a staggering amount for a new pro league looking to capitalize on the unprecedented rise in interest in women’s sports across the globe.
The new chunk of change brings League One Volleyball’s total funding to more than $160 million, with investments from Olympic skiing champion Lindsey Vonn, seven-time WNBA All-Star Candace Parker, actress Amy Schumer and 14-time NBA All-Star Kevin Durant, among others (Durant is an investor in numerous women’s leagues, including LOVB, the NWSL and Athletes Unlimited).
LOVB’s news comes on the heels of an announcement that businesswoman Michele Kang, owner of the Washington Spirit and a staunch women’s sports advocate, donated $30 million over the next five years to U.S. Soccer.
“It’s so exciting,” LOVB co-founder and CEO Katlyn Gao told USA TODAY Sports about the uptick in women’s sports investment. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”
Gao’s thoughts echoed those of Kang, who said in statement Tuesday that “women’s sports have been undervalued and overlooked for far too long. I am committed to raising the standard of excellence in women’s soccer — both on and off the pitch — by delivering the resources female athletes need to reach their full potential and surround them with the professional support they deserve. I hope this investment serves as ‘seed capital’ and spurs other donors to follow suit.”
The spike in women’s sports growth and popularity doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
A new study released Wednesday from The Collective, the women-focused, global impact and advisory chapter of Wasserman, found that WNBA and NWSL team valuations are expected to increase by a whopping $1.6 billion over the next three years.
LOVB wants to be part of that, too.
LOVB’s structure is unique in that the organization will build from the grassroots up, similar to the European soccer model. LOVB already boasts 66 volleyball club locations across 26 states, with roughly 14,000 athletes in the pipeline. In January, the six-team professional league will launch.
Gao said that when LOVB started five years ago, executives could have never predicted the way the market would embrace women’s sports.
“We talk about this a lot, that five years ago we didn’t know this was going to happen,” Gao said. “LOVB was not an idea hatched as a reaction to what’s happening around us. Volleyball is an incredibly popular sport across the country, with more than 400,000 girls participating, and it was underserved. At the collegiate level it’s so popular, 92,000 people showed up for a regular season game (at Nebraska). And yet, there was no sustainable major league for women’s indoor despite 20 years of medaling at the Olympics.”
LOVB aims to change that. Another unconventional piece of its creation is that, because there is no major men’s indoor league in the U.S., LOVB doesn’t have to copy anything that already exists; they’ve been able to figure out what works for them and lean completely into that.
“We are launching a movement that can sustain a pro league,” Gao said. “Being connected to grassroots has always been our strategy, and this (funding) is just another signal that we’re doing something right.”