As Chelsea FC Women celebrated their historic treble with a commanding 3-0 win over Manchester United within the FA Cup Ultimate, one other triumph was quietly unfolding behind the scenes – one which concerned tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian and tennis icon Serena Williams.
Whereas Chelsea‘s dominance capped a season that additionally included League Cup and Ladies’s Tremendous League titles, it additionally validated Ohanian‘s current $26 million funding within the membership. What many did not know, nonetheless, is that this daring monetary transfer got here regardless of resistance from somebody very near him – his spouse.
“After I first advised Serena I used to be gonna purchase or begin a girls’s soccer workforce right here within the States, she truly tried to speak me out of it,” Ohanian shared in a Might 22 interview with CNN. Reflecting on her hesitation, he added,
“I feel she had been so uncovered to the infrastructure round girls’s sports activities… Due to her lived expertise, she truly was attempting to speak me out of it as a result of she needed to kick down quite a lot of doorways.”
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Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion, has lengthy been vocal concerning the inequality and lack of help girls athletes face, even on the prime of their recreation. Her reluctance, it appears, was grounded in realism – formed by years of pushing via limitations in a system that supplied little preliminary backing for ladies’s sports activities.
Ohanian’s gamble aligns with Chelsea’s historic rise
Regardless of her considerations, Ohanian pushed ahead. In Might 2024, he turned a minority stakeholder in Chelsea FC Ladies, buying roughly 10 % of the membership. His timing could not have been higher.
Simply two days earlier than the FA Cup remaining, Ohanian posted on Instagram, declaring, “The membership simply turned essentially the most worthwhile girls’s workforce within the world-and that does not occur by chance. It occurs if you’ve bought elite athletes, individuals keen to wager huge on them, and daring management that is able to construct.”
This is not Ohanian‘s first foray into girls’s sports activities. He is been a part of the possession group at Angel Metropolis FC within the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League since 2022 and has persistently advocated for constructing platforms that elevate girls athletes. Nonetheless, Williams‘ apprehension is rooted in expertise.
On the New York Occasions DealBook summit in 2024, she spoke about how girls’s sports activities have been persistently missed: “I at all times say that ladies’s sports activities is just not having a second – it is at all times been there. Ladies athletes have at all times been round, we have at all times been wonderful and we have at all times been nice. You guys are simply noticing.”
But in a compelling twist, Williams has now joined the investor ranks herself. In March 2025, it was revealed that she is part-owner of the Toronto Tempo, a brand new WNBA franchise set to launch in 2026 – the primary WNBA workforce primarily based outdoors america.
Sharing the information on-line, Williams posted, “New courtroom, new recreation. I’m extremely excited to affix the @torontotempo because the workforce’s latest proprietor.” She added, “This second isn’t just about basketball; it’s about showcasing the true worth and potential of feminine athletes – I’ve at all times stated that ladies’s sports activities are an unimaginable funding alternative.”
What started as a second of warning has developed into mutual perception. Ohanian and Williams could have approached girls’s sports activities from completely different angles, however each now stand as high-profile buyers shaping its future – proving that backing feminine athletes isn’t just the fitting transfer, however a sensible one.
