Speaking of talking to good people, the last time I saw you, we were talking about women's sports in Abu Dhabi, and the last time we were talking, I saw you. We were talking about women's sports in Cincinnati. And you guys, like it's just been a couple of months, are doing lots and lots of stuff. Now I want to talk about your last few weeks. You were on Broadway. You were in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. We'll talk about your show. But first I want to know those two. Those are two experiences I will predict I will never have, which is to open up Chicago or open up the pages of SI swimsuit. We definitely will not see that. Tell us about that. Tell about those specific. Then we'll get into.
Thank you. Well, we also have to keep the main thing the main thing. My team also won the Concacaf Champions Cup.
I take your sports excellence as a gift. It's what you layer on top is why you're here.
Yeah, we did win a championship. No, it's been a really fun few weeks. I attribute some of it to the fact that I'm in New York, and that's just such a fun market to be able to explore different parts of the sports industry. But I attribute the other half of it to the fact that I think the rest of the world is catching up to how much fun they can have with female athletes across industry, and how we can be used in different markets.
And what will tell us about the Broadway moment? Were you nervous? Listen, you're playing, you know, global television audiences and people are cheering and booing. And then you had to go out in front of 2000 people. How did that moment feel? Were you nervous or you got this?
I was nervous, but for me, I was auditioning for Law and Order SVU. That is my true dream universe.
We have a bunch of producers out there.
So no, it was an incredible experience, and the Actors and Actresses Guild is just absolutely phenomenal. I couldn't believe I was on stage with such amazing performers, so it was really a privilege.
That's cool. And Alexis, I'm excited to tell you. And then we're going to just talk more broadly, but maybe catch up on your Chelsea investment where, you know, of course, Alexis had one of the great women's sports investments in recent history with Angel City. And now you've gone to the other side of the pond. What's going on?
Yeah. Look, 2019, I started with a tweet storm about how undervalued women's professional sports was and at the time had a radical idea that a professional women's soccer team could one day be worth $1 billion. And that led me to obviously be the founding control owner of Angel City. But I started looking across the pond, especially after the English women won the Euro and brought it home. And it seemed like it galvanized a lot of interest there in the home of soccer, football for the women's game. And I was actually looking at other clubs, perhaps ones where I could get a controlling stake. And Midge has been an amazing resource on the sport and really talked me into Chelsea, even though it wasn't going to be a controlling stake. We ended up investing and buying about 8 or 9% of it. I'll be joining the board and our goal for this club. I mean, they have a very full trophy case, and they really represent some of the very best in football, and we want to make them America's team. If you're going to have, you could cheer for Gotham. Hopefully maybe you'll cheer for Angel City too. But we'd love for you to also catch some Chelsea women's matches as well. And I'm excited. I think global football has never been a bigger opportunity, and folks are realizing, like Midge said, the women's game is just as captivating, just as compelling, and brands far more marketable to a lot of new audiences that normally don't get to see sports.
If you look at the US women's national team, I mean, it's clear the it's gender neutral. In some ways, the women's national team's probably more popular, has been more popular at various points. Why do you think? And then I want to talk about Offseason. Why do you think you would think in the UK, which is a mature market, a football, soccer slash football crazy market? Why has women's soccer not further ahead?
I think it's the gift and the curse of being such a football crazy, especially men's football crazy market because you have to talk to consumers and get them to reimagine football and excellence with women where they're so used to decades and decades and decades of indoctrination of men's football, being it. The opportunity in America is that, as we all know, even if you're not a fan of American soccer yet, you will be after this. The women are excellent. They have a legacy of greatness. Our men, not so much. And Americans love celebrating that excellence. And that's why the NWSL was so much more obvious even five years ago. And it's taken more time in England, despite there being more popularity for the sport.
Is cool being a star in New York. But you know what's also cool? Being a soccer star in London. So, you know, I have nothing. No tampering allowed. No tampering. But you guys are partners. Let's talk about Offseason. When we talked in Cincinnati in the fall, you were like, oh, we're going to do this cool show Offseason. And I was like, that sounds good. Sounds great. A quarter billion viewers later, here we are. And Alexis, you helped bankroll it. Tell us catch everybody up on this sneaky hit you guys have.
Well if you haven't seen it already on... Who has seen it. Raise your hand. Who has not seen it? Raise your hand. You know what? That's upside potential. I like it to go on. It's on Amazon. You need to live online just a little bit more. It was on X and it is a six episode series there really quick 30 minute episodes. But it basically took female soccer players who all played in my league, the NWSL, who played for different teams, and we lived in a house during the off season, and we brought cameras so you could see how we train and you could see kind of our interpersonal relationships and our personal stories and personalities as well. This is the first of its kind. So no other league or sport or network or industry really has ever looked at this part of a season for any sport. And the concept of taking, you know, a bunch of players and really zooming in on what life is like when the cameras are gone, what that training period looks like, what it looks like to be traded in the off season, what your diet looks like. No one's done that before. So it was really successful. And like you said, we had around 275 million views in less than a year. So really proud of that.
And it doesn't stop there, does it?
All right. I'm not going to tell them.
Not surprisingly, based on that success though, there will be more Offseasons to cover here under this franchise.
What about in different sports?
That's a great idea. Great idea. What? I'm going to reverse a question a lot of and we even touched on it a little bit in the morning, which is okay, there's a big opportunity. Women's sports. There's a huge delta between how many people watch and how it's monetized. But I want to be a little more provocative. Why hasn't the economic, the finances of women's sports scaled faster? What's holding it back? Because again, if you look at audience, you look at momentum. It just seems like it should. We should be even going faster. It's growing like crazy, but it probably should be growing even faster. What's holding it back? Is it TV rights? Is it sponsorships? What's the key here, either of you or both of you? Actually.
I mean, my hot take is I think when we look back on the legacy of underinvestment in women's professional sports, we will find a dangerous cocktail of sexism, racism and business incompetence. And you can tweet that. It's okay. I mean, because here's the simplest, and that's part of the reason you're seeing that whipsaw now, right? It would not be growing this fast if it hadn't been suppressed for so long. And the answer was in front of us this whole time. I assume some of you have been to the US Open before. I think a few of you are fans of tennis in the United States of America. Professional tennis is a first class sport. The athletes get paid, they get supported, they get taken care of. Shout out Billie Jean King! And the result is more Americans tune in to the US Open women's final than the men. Google it. It happens every year. You don't even need American women in the final. More Americans watch the US Open women's final than the men. Tennis is as important as a women's sport.
The rally, the rallies are better.
I personally do think it's a better sport because each point counts more because there's fewer sets. That's just math. But at the end of the day, there was always a proof point here in the United States for a few decades. And the reality is now that the investment is there. These amazing athletes have always been there, and I'm just grateful to ride that wave. I mean, it was literally you can find that tweet storm. Megan Rapinoe's team had sold for $3.5 million, and that number shocked me because I didn't follow the sport. But I knew who she was, and I knew she was worth at least that much in marketing revenue for herself every year. And you could either buy that or McDonald's franchise that was. And the most exciting thing is, as people are realizing this, it is not charity, right? This is about business and the brands that you can bring in are spending real money in beauty and fashion in CPG that have never been able to advertise or partner with men's sports. And yet even the brands that have been partnering in men's sports, let's be honest, they're trying to reach the women in the household anyway because they're actually controlling consumer spending. And so I cannot speak more highly about it. And you'll never hear me reference it as charity, because I think even the most well-intentioned people treated it that way and put it in the position that it was in.
I have a little bit of a different answer, though. I concur.
