VC Kara Norman bet on women’s sports early on, and now she’s creating the market | TechCrunch

When the season ended early this month, Angel City FC finished 11th out of 13 teams, a disappointing result for the Los Angeles soccer franchise that venture capitalist Kara Nortman co-founded in 2020. But the season’s problems tell only part of a much bigger story that is changing the way investors think about women’s sports.

Despite its lackluster on-field performance, Angel City has become a case study itself (incl literalwithin the Harvard Business School) on how best to build a sports complex for women. The team’s roster of celebrities, including Natalie Portman and Serena Williams, have helped generate almost unprecedented buzz. The franchise is also well versed in sponsorship, breaking records before players kick a ball.

“We went from zero to $30 million in revenue. We sold out games. We built something people didn’t think was possible,” Norman reflected in a job interview last monthnoting Angel City’s commercial success from the very beginning of the team’s formation. “That really led to the formation of Monarch.”

That commercial success, not trophies, became the blueprint for Monarch Collective, the $250 million fund Northman launched in 2023., which has become the first investment vehicle focused exclusively on women’s sports. While its origin story may be rooted in a team that has yet to win a playoff game, Monarch’s portfolio and influence have expanded far beyond Angel City’s training facility in Thousand Oaks, California.

The fund now has stakes in three other National Women’s Soccer League clubs: San Diego Wave, Boston Legacy FC (debuting next year) and its latest investment, announced earlier this monthFC Viktoria Berlin. The deal for 38% of the German club, makes Monarch the first foreign investor to acquire a stake in a German women’s football team.

It’s a diverse collection that reflects Norman’s belief that women’s sports have reached a turning point, regardless of the fate of any team. The numbers also support her optimism.

“The total market for men’s sports worldwide is estimated at approximately half a trillion dollars,” Northman explains. “When we started Monarch in 2023, the women’s sports market was thought to be worth around half a billion dollars. Now it’s closer to $3 billion.”

Tapping into that growth requires a different playbook than men’s sports, Norman says. It’s not a simple rinse and repeat. “For example, how many men’s team owners think about skydiving Sephora boxes from rafters? Or [a New York] Freedom [WNBA game] a Fenty cam to set up [Fenty] lipstick, or Angel City is having a Hello Kitty collab night where people don’t know how to get the merch before it sells out?

Angel City’s innovative approach to marketing and partnerships created so much excitement that power couple Bob Iger and Willow Bay announced last fall acquired majority stake in it for $250 million, making it the most valuable women’s sports franchise in the world.

For Northman, who left Upfront Ventures and more traditional venture capital to focus on women’s sports full-time, Angel City’s commercial performance has continued to validate Monarch’s thesis. While there is currently tension – certainly in the sports press at least – between Angel City’s business success and on-field performance, the team has proven beyond doubt that women’s sports can generate serious revenue when the right pieces are in place.

Now, as with any successful new venture, the question is: can the momentum continue? Norman is well aware that women’s sports have seen promising moments evaporate before. She frequently references a striking historical parallel from 1920, when 60,000 people turned up in Liverpool, England, to watch the Dick, Kerr Ladies play football, a larger crowd than most Premier League matches today. The following year, the English Football Association banned women from playing, and the sport effectively disappeared for decades.

“Everyone wakes up and becomes the discoverer of women’s sports when they do that,” Norman says. “But it takes consistent, hard work to get that consistent.”

That hard work, she argues, requires more than just waves of attention from breakout stars like Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese. It requires systematic investments in infrastructure, governance and operations – the unglamorous work of building sustainable businesses.

This is where Monarch’s approach differs from typical venture capital. Instead of passively betting on dozens of startups, Monarch takes concentrated positions in a handful of teams and leagues, then becomes deeply involved in the operations. The fund describes its strategy as ‘venture-like markets’ with ‘growth equity or private equity-like’ risk management.

“We stand alongside control owners and add a lot of operational value,” Norman explains. The goal is to help teams reach breakeven or profitability for their core businesses, allowing them to benefit as higher-margin media revenues grow.

Monarch’s investment interests extend beyond football. The fund is more broadly focused on what Norman calls sports without “product-market risk,” meaning established formats with proven audiences.

“Is this a sport that people like to watch on their computers or television?” she asks. “There are participatory sports, like pickleball, but are people going to sit at home and make an event out of it?”

Although Monarch currently has interests in four ‘football clubs’, the company is also interested in women’s basketball, golf and tennis – sports with significant media revenue potential, along with existing infrastructure.

The company’s current limited partners include Melinda French Gates, former Netflix executives and other wealthy individuals, and interest in its mission appears to be growing. For starters, Monarch’s debut fund of $250 million is substantially more than the $100 million that Norman and her co-founder – Jasmine Robinson, a former investor at sports, media, gaming and fitness-focused growth company Causeway – initially planned to raise. She says the increased size reflects the rapid maturation of the market during Monarch’s fundraising period.

“When we started raising the fund, nine out of 10 conversations were, ‘Yeah, we don’t think so [women’s] basketball is a real thing,” Norman says, recalling “there was a lot of skepticism surrounding it.” Then came the meteoric rise of Caitlin Clark, the WNBA’s record viewership, and suddenly basketball became the hottest sector in women’s sports.

That growing interest reinforces Norman’s assertion that women’s sports investing isn’t about finding the perfect team, but about supporting an ecosystem where multiple franchises can thrive. Some will win championships. Some will struggle competitively but succeed commercially. The key is having sufficient capital and operational expertise, spread across the market, to withstand individual setbacks.

Angel City already appears to be inspiring other ownership groups. “You started to see other teams – Kansas City, Bay FC, Washington DC Spirit – come in with female-led ownership groups and show that they could build a real P&L,” Norman notes. Whether intentional or not, Angel City became a template.

As women’s sports enters a period of continued boom — the Golden State Valkyries just played their first WNBA next season, the NWSL is expanding, media rights deals are growing — Nortman remains cautiously optimistic about whether this moment will prove different from previous peaks of interest.

The key, she says, lies in the fundamentals: strong league governance, owner involvement, infrastructure investment and building real connections with the community. Media attention creates opportunities; operational excellence makes it sustainable.

“Every peak is an opportunity to create a consistent experience around it,” says Norman. “You have to look at all the underlying criteria to see where it is likely to stick.”