This week on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies podcast, I spoke with Alexis Ohanian and Midge Purse about their latest venture, a women's soccer reality TV show. Midge hopes that shows like The Off Season help diversify what it looks like to be a woman, to be an athlete, and to be a woman who plays sports. Thanks for coming in, Alexis.
Oh, we're so glad. Glad you're here. Happy to have you.
I mean, you are, I believe, an investor in over 40 unicorns.
Yeah, you have an estimate. I've had a good track record so far, but I feel like I'm just getting started. I've got my best years ahead of me, but yeah, so far so good.
Coinbase, HubSpot, Instacart. You're also a major investor in women's sports.
What is it about the sector that is so appealing to you as an investor?
Look, I can't help but share my own experiences. Also as a founder starting Reddit, coming back to it, turning it around. Like Reddit is the ultimate community platform. People bond over stapling bread to trees.
And so what I loved about women's sports was the signal I got on social media from the diehard fans. And when I see that kind of strength in community as well as, frankly, the haters, I get inspired and I lean in more because no one hates irrationally unless there is something they're challenged by or afraid of. Like, that only actually makes me more interested because you don't get haters unless there is a there there. And it all started for me in the March of 2019. Women's World Cup was on deck and I had seen that Megan Rapinoe's team had just sold for a few million dollars. It was a professional team in Seattle. And it stunned me when I saw this headline and I just started ranting because I was like, okay, $3 million. I was like, I don't follow women's soccer, but I know who Megan Rapinoe is.
And I know that there's a big World Cup coming and I know the American women are great. The American men, not so much. American women, undeniably excellent. And Megan's worth at least that much in brand dollars every year. So how could a team sell for so little? And so I ranted and I basically said, this is the biggest investment opportunity I've ever seen. And in terms of the obviousness, and I'm gonna buy a team, and I'm gonna buy an NWSL team or start one. And sure enough, so many women soccer fans piled in. This post goes viral. And so many of them say, don't talk about it, be about it.
Do it. And then there were plenty of haters and I screenshotted all the tweets of the haters.
And I saved those. Once we started, you know, selling out stadiums and all that, I started posting them back and tagging the original haters for the inspiration.
It was awesome. And Alex Morgan, to her credit, saw this thread and said, Hey, I can help you with that. I met up with her probably a month later. She was playing in Orlando at the time. I just took notes and I just asked her a bunch of dumb questions and I decided, okay, I'm definitely doing this. Started talking to some owners that eventually led me to the three women who were looking for someone to fund this idea. Kara, Julie, Natalie, Natalie Portman by the end of the year. And that led to Angel City. And so that was a, I like to say it was an emotionless capitalist decision.
You know? Yes. Obviously I'm married to the GOAT, Serena Williams, who is the living embodiment of the fact that you can make it with investment, with equal pay, thanks Billie Jean King, with investment. You know, the notion of women's tennis is as big, or I'd argue bigger in the United States than men's.
Because it had all those things. And then it had excellence and living proof. And yes, I have now two daughters, but all of this investment in women's sports, whether it's been Angel City, whether it's been The Off Season, whether it's been now most recently Alos, this is unemotional business. Yes, I feel good about it, but don't get it twisted. You know what I learned meeting those first set of owners back in 2019 and the NWSL was what has held the sports world back, the women's sports world back, has been this feeling, this notion of charity, has been this feeling of, well, golly, we should do something for them.
And that has, ironically, even well-intentioned people, I think, held back so much of its development. So I only lean in to the soulless capitalist decision of why women's sports is a great investment.
Yeah. Tell me about The Off Season. It's a new show that you've produced with Midge Purse that follows NWSL players during their off season living in a house.
What went into that production and what have been some of the challenges?
Gosh, this has been the foundation of what I think will be a very, very special sports media and production company that Midge has started. The idea was simple: bring together, like you said, these 11 professional athletes top of their game. They're already training together in an off season. They rent a really big house, they hire some chefs, some physios, and then they bust their asses all day training. And then they're back at the house together. Some nights they go out, plenty nights they're staying in. But like, this is real in a way that the traditional sports docuseries like Drive to Survive has never been able to capture. Because you know, the guys can just take off their mic and end the interview, but it's also so intimate. And that's why we brought in the 32 Flavors folks who created Vanderpump Rules. You know, these cameras are rolling 24/7 and we're not making up drama. This is their actual lives and sports is tumultuous and hectic. There's big personalities, very competitive people, and the end result is gripping. And so six episodes debuting on X and I think it's gonna create a new format for sports and for docuseries.
Hi Midge, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
So excited about this. Talk to me about your relationship with Alexis Ohanian, how you guys connected and how he became involved with The Off Season.
Yeah. We connected through business. He was beta testing, or I guess I was beta testing some kind of app. But in conversations about the women's game and football in the United States, I think this is kind of how he approaches most of his businesses that are in spaces he's not an expert in. He asks a lot of questions. And in those conversations, obviously The Off Season has come up or came up. And we talked about the difficulties and the disadvantages of being a female athlete or an athlete in general, because off season is a hard time for any athlete, men and women, to be quite honest. There's not really a set system or facility or environment for a really, really high level athlete training to be at their best in any sport for men or women. And he recognized that this is a gap. This is a whole. At the same time he recognized that in the United States, you have to be on the US Women's National Team to be a star. It's something that I was really, really vocal about in my conversation with him. And it's part of the reason that we were talking about marketing and media and then the idea to do a reality or unscripted show based on NWSL stars. You know, I have a tweet from like years ago. Years ago, and it was...
Not usually a good start of a sentence.
