Natalie Portman Has Co-Founded a Soccer Team

Amiliano FragosoMar 21st, 2022, 4:08 pm
 

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Sports fans have a lot of different choices right now and Oscar winner Natalie Portman is offering one more. Spring brings the return of baseball, the start of March Madness, and even the NFL free agency window for fans like myself who care about that sort of thing.

The one sport America doesn’t talk about enough is the biggest sport in the world: soccer. The National Women’s Soccer League (NSWL) is an afterthought, at best, for most American sports fans. But, the year is 2022 and change is on the horizon, including the addition of a whole new type of club in Angel City FC.

The club, co-founded and co-owned by Portman, boasts a female-led ownership group that includes the likes of Becky G, Eva Longoria, Mia Hamm, and Serena Williams. The club sold over 16,000 season tickets and boasts six support groups even before playing a single competitive match, numbers you don’t see from many debut clubs, but like I previously stated, this isn’t your ordinary club.

The franchise was founded on the principles of advancing and advocating for women’s causes worldwide, specifically the wage gap between female and male soccer players, which drew Portman to get involved in the first place.

“Watching my son idolize players like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan the same way he did Lionel Messi or Karim Benzema, I realized that amplifying female athletes could rapidly shift culture,” Portman told the Guardian via email, while explaining how watching the U.S. women’s team during the World Cup inspired her to get involved.

“It got to the point where we didn’t have to seek investors,” Portman’s Angel City FC co-founded Julie Uhrmann told the Guardian. “They came to us because they wanted to be a part of Angel City, and understood the role they would have to play as an investor. That makes the best type of owner, because they care both about the purpose side and the profit side.”

Angel City FC played their first game against San Diego’s Wave FC in the Challenge Cup Saturday, ending 1-1 after 90 minutes. Savannah McCaskill scored the franchise’s debut goal and took to Twitter the next day to reflect on the moment.

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