INTRODUCING MONARCH COLLECTIVE: GOING ALL-IN ON WOMEN’S SPORTS

By Kara Nortman

Today we announce Monarch Collective, an investment fund exclusively focused on investing in women’s sports.

Monarch Collective was founded by Jasmine Robinson and myself through a shared conviction that sports can change hearts, minds and culture. In order to do it, we believe that equity in investment and representation is critical for success.

I launched Angel City Football Club with my co-founders in 2019 after years of dreaming about a big, splashy women’s soccer team rooted in my hometown. I could say I never imagined that after just one season, we’d generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue and sign teen phenom Alyssa Thompson, one of the best players in the world. But that would be a lie.

I knew it was possible. And that’s because I have never seen a greater opportunity than the one I have experienced in women’s sports.

I grew up in Los Angeles and can still remember the cracked soccer pitch at Balboa Park in the San Fernando Valley. This pitch was the first place I learned how to lose; it was the first place that taught me I didn’t need to be perfect. It’s where I first started to feel I belonged and a community sprouted up around me. I felt joyful.

I was a child then. And it took over 30 years for me to realize that this same feeling could be replicated in business.

After attending Princeton University and Stanford Business School, I spent the last 25 years as an investor and operator in both early stage and established large companies at a moment in time when women’s sports has characteristics that will benefit from a diverse set of skills.

In Hollywood screenplays, they say there’s always an inciting incident. The 2015 Women’s World Cup Finals was mine. I watched in person as the US scored five electric goals, breaking the record for most goals in a final. The win made the US the only country to bring home three Women’s World Cups. Nearly 27 million people watched the game on T.V. in the U.S alone, making it the most-watched soccer game in history at the time — for men or women.

But as I left the Vancouver stadium, practically levitating with energy, I couldn’t find jerseys to buy for my daughters. And when I returned home to L.A., I couldn’t find the powerhouse players I had just lost my voice screaming for anywhere on TV.

The investor in me thought: I’m a fan and am looking to deepen my experience after just watching the most exhilarating game in recent history. Why won’t anyone take my money?

It wasn’t hard to find the data once I went looking for it. Every year, billions of dollars are being invested in the global sports ecosystem, but less than 1% is allocated to women’s sports.

And yet: women’s sports has a large, young, and engaged fan base and its revenue is growing faster than other major sports leagues.

The timing also felt right: it’s a dynamic ecosystem where teams are being added as we speak, and new communities of fans are emerging to better represent their communities. While these ideas brewed in the back of my mind, I was excited to talk to friends I respected in the sports world, thinking maybe going all-in on a women’s team was a decent idea.

But the overwhelming consensus was that people only wanted to watch women play soccer once every four years. That I was, in fact, one of the only people who wanted a more frequent experience. I called BS.

Then TIME’S UP happened.

So many people showed up and did a lot of work catalyzed by an issue that felt irrefutably wrong. They became my people. Most of us got to where we were in our careers because we did not like to fail. We earned our degrees, did all the “right” things, and worked hard to fit in… so that perhaps some day we could stand out.

But I felt something different with this group. We were focused on building a strong female community and it was the first time I felt bound by a common purpose. I realized that you can make a lot of money fitting in, but it’s pretty hard to change systems that way. And we wanted to see things change.

Here’s how it worked for me in the years leading up to Angel City: I did my full-time job at Upfront Ventures all week and then worked my second, unpaid job until 2 AM on weekends. I planned my vacations around US Women’s National Team friendlies and important matches in other countries. I showed up to meet players and union leaders. I asked a lot of questions and I was eager to learn.

In hindsight, I’ll admit that you don’t just wake up one day at 44-years-old realizing you want to start a professional sports team. It’s probably always been there.

After years of grinding to build the team and the business from the ground up with people like Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, and Abby Wambach, Angel City played its debut match at BMO Stadium in March 2022 to a sold out crowd. This month, we kicked off our second season to another sold out crowd and a 95% season ticket renewal rate.

There would be no Monarch Collective to announce today without the success of Angel City.

One of our dreams for Monarch is to show the world that fans will pay as much to watch women as they will men. While both men and women watch sports in nearly equal numbers, women control more discretionary spend than people realize, making them a highly coveted demographic for brands and media companies.

Angel City is just one team, in one city, playing one sport. What we saw with our L.A. team is now happening in the US and all over the world. People are packing women’s soccer stadiums not only in Kansas and North Carolina, but in Newcastle, England and Barcelona, Spain.

And it’s not just soccer. Similar fervor is spreading out like an inkblot — as women’s sports engagement is up all over the world. Rugby in New Zealand, cricket in India, cycling in France, and NCAA basketball and volleyball in the US.

The growing numbers show women’s sports fans want to be part of something new. They have been underserved and, at times, even ignored by too many hundred-year-old sports communities.

We hope Monarch can be part of writing a new story.

As an athlete and VC investor, I am hardwired for teamwork. I knew from the start that if I wanted to build something meaningful, I needed to find a true co-founder and partner. That’s where Jasmine Robinson, Monarch’s co-founder, enters the story.

Jasmine grew up the daughter of an NFL player at a time when salaries were low and media revenue was nascent. She’s had a unique backstage pass to the player’s side of the business during the incredible growth of the NFL. It’s a point of view most people in our industry will never experience.

Her lifelong passion for sports led her to the San Francisco 49ers but it was her love of taking on hard, meaningful challenges and her unparalleled intellectual curiosity (she studied linguistics, neurobiology, and computer science at Harvard) that stopped me in my tracks.

Jasmine joined the 49ers from Bain at an important moment in time. They were in the process of building the largest privately financed stadium and had an opportunity to change the revenue profile of the team — which they did — moving from the bottom of the league to the top.

Jasmine worked on nearly every aspect of the 49ers’ business and learned from some of the best in the business — she was involved in negotiating key licensing deals, optimizing the margin profile of core revenue streams, and designing elements of the fan experience. She then joined Causeway where she invested in everything from emerging sports leagues to innovative sports media companies.

Building Monarch with Jasmine felt like a no-brainer. She is equal parts brilliant and practical; she knows when to take risks and when to stay the course.

Together, Jasmine and I are dedicated to meeting each opportunity with “what’s best for this situation” and not “what is our fund’s strategy.”

Both how and who will be investing in women’s sports is important. Women’s sports syndicates should represent their community and be built with an eye toward what each investor brings to the table.

Monarch aspires to be an influential, “change agent” type of equity product for teams and leagues at critical moments in their evolution. We hope to come with a collaborative mindset that welcomes other co-investors and a commitment to providing hands-on support to scale the businesses we partner with.

At a time of cultural division and decaying trust in institutions, sports is the universal language that unites us. It’s where fashion, art, music and politics all collide in a version of socially acceptable tribalism. It’s a universal language that gets everyone’s attention.

On game day, these stadiums become our houses of prayer — the place where people have come together for generations to share the most primal feelings of despair and joy (depending on the scoreboard).

It’s this concept of joy that’s kept us buzzing at night as we built Monarch. That same feeling of joy I felt exiting the World Cup stadium eight years ago. Investing models driven by joy can generate change more powerfully than investing models driven by greed.

At Monarch, we plan to show up with capital, a collaborative mindset, and joy to be a part of growing our women’s sports community.