Business Blog: Shots on goal

Alexis Ohanian and soccer star Midge Purce on docuseries The Offseason—and the venture case for women's sports

November 27, 2024

I frequently wonder about the lives of Olympians when they're not being, well, Olympians.

And there's no group I find more mysterious than the American women's soccer team—they're some of the most celebrated athletes on the planet…once every four years. For me, women's soccer has always presented a clear conundrum: What would it take to make us care all the time?

It's a problem that docuseries The Offseason is looking to solve. The docuseries—made by National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) forward Midge Purce and Alexis Ohanian's VC firm Seven Seven Six—follows a Miami house full of NWSL players in (you guessed it) their offseason. The NWSL doesn't have an official training camp for players preparing for a new season, so Purce created one—and filmed it, making a TV show. But almost no one believed in it at the start.

“I remember coaches who I don’t even play for, they were trying to poke holes in the idea,” said Purce. “I'd have to break it down. ‘So, let me get this straight: Instead of having your player come to a training camp where they have access to all these things, you'd rather have them do it alone? With access to only whatever they have at home?’ They were so ready to undermine the concept.”

Ohanian's Seven Seven Six backed The Offseason, the final episode of which just dropped last week. (The NWSL final was also last week.) And the numbers are in: The show's first season, which ran for six episodes and streamed on X, garnered more than 180 million views, Seven Seven Six and The Offseason team say. Some episodes fared better than others, but the overall reach is pretty staggering. It breaks down like this: Episode 6 drew 26.1 million views, Episode 5 attracted 7.5 million views, Episode 4 took in 66.1 million views, Episode 3 elicited 32.2 million views, Episode 2 got 6.6 million views, and Episode 1 saw 50.1 million views.

(The team declined to disclose more granular details, but added that these are preliminary numbers, as they wait for X to offer up official totals.)

“The world of sports media has been by and for men, for 100 years anyway,” said Ohanian. “This was a chance to put on display stars from this league, and tell a story that's never been told before.”

Ohanian, the founding principal owner of NWSL expansion team Angel City FC and still an investor in the club, believes women's sports can kick back venture-scale returns, in part because of just how under-invested in the space is. There's a chance to build new infrastructure, he says.

“We’re building at first principles right now, from the start,” Ohanian told Fortune. “We're able to build using technology in a way that makes this way more venture-viable than men's sports.”

In recent years, Ohanian has been one of the most visible investors in women's sports, at a time when a number of female-fronted sports leagues are gaining traction. (He said his wife, tennis legend Serena Williams, even originally tried to talk him out of it, but she's since come around.)

“My argument is a simple one,” said Ohanian. “Look at the economic value of these teams that really only effectively tap into half the population at the end of the day. I don't want to generalize, but most brands that are currently interested in aligning with sports are backing men’s teams. But we know who controls household spending. We know who drives culture…At a minimum, if you can reach an audience that’s as big as the current [audience for men's sports], I think you clearly have a billion-dollar business.”

The point that both Purce and Ohanian made to me is this: that what women’s sports is missing isn't excellence; it's missing the narrative that creates an audience.

The goal of The Offseason was to build more narrative around the NWSL, and Purce deserves a lot of credit on this one: There's nothing more interesting than watching someone tell the unvarnished truth. And The Offseason deals directly with the financial challenges of female athletes and the frankly twisted business of women's soccer. One key athlete—in both the show and the NWSL—Lo’eau LaBonta openly talks about how distressingly little her athletic success has garnered her.

“I got an engineering degree at Stanford,” LaBonta tells another athlete. “But for what? I'm playing soccer for four figures a year.”

She says it with a sad laugh. María Sánchez, then a forward for the Houston Dash, had signed a record-setting deal shortly before The Offseason was filmed. That record? A three-year $1.5 million deal. That's far short of the NBA veterans' minimum this season. Money is part of The Offseason, and that's by design, said Purce.

“This is pretty personal to me,” she told Fortune. “For a long time, I've been taught to regurgitate that the reason I play is because I just love it so much, that it's not about money at all. It's become such a learned talking point for women in sports. ‘You're here to inspire the next generation. You’re here to be a model for other little girls.’ It's frowned upon to say: 'No, I’m here to make money and I'm here because I want to be the best in the world at something.'”

For Ohanian and Purce to be right, women's sports doesn't just need heroes. We need to know who they are. And The Offseason may turn out to be a valuable bridge for new NWSL fans. Just look at me, a longtime sports fan who's spent precious little time watching the NWSL. But now I'm ready to watch the games.

A quick programming note…Happy Thanksgiving! We're off tomorrow for the holiday, but we'll be back on Black Friday.

See you Friday,

Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS

- Eon, a New York City-based cloud backup platform, raised $70 million in Series C funding. BOND led the round and was joined by existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

- /dev/agents, a San Francisco-based AI agents operating system developer, raised $56 million in seed funding. Index Ventures and CapitalG led the round and were joined by angel investors.

- Cardless, a San Francisco-based co-branded credit card solutions provider, raised $30 million in funding. Activant Capital led the round and was joined by Mischief, Industry Ventures, Thayer Ventures, and others.

- AMPECO, a Sofia, Bulgaria-based EV charging management platform provider, raised $26 million in Series B funding. Revaia led the round and was joined by existing investors Cavalry Ventures, BMW i Ventures, and LAUNCHub Ventures.

- Roon, a New York City-based digital health resource provider, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Rick Heitzmann and Eurie Kim ked the round and were joined by existing investors Soraya Darabi and Jess Lee.

- Molyon, a Cambridge, England-based lithium-sulfur batteries developer, raised $4.6 million from Plural and IQ Capital.

- Argil, a Paris-based video engine for content creators, raised €3.9 million ($4.1 million) in seed funding. EQT Ventures led the round and was joined by Kwebblekop and Charles Gorintin.

- HyperHeat, a Offenburg, Germany-based zero-carbon industrial heat producer, raised €3.5 million ($3.7 million) in funding. Amadeus APEX Technology Fund led the round and was joined by Finindus, Possible Ventures, E44 Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Fellows, and angel investors.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- GTCR agreed to invest $1.3 billion in Tricentis, an Austin-based continuous testing company.

- BlackRock Capital Investment Advisors invested $50 million in Pyramid Analytics, an Amsterdam-based business analytics platform provider.

- Marlin Equity Partners acquired Aer Compliance, a New York City-based cryptocurrency compliance software provider, and will merge Aer with StarCompliance, a portfolio company of Marlin. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Paine Schwartz Partners acquired Promix, a Gainesville, Fla.-based nutrition and supplements company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

OTHER

- Schneider National agreed to acquire Cowan Systems, a Baltimore-based transportation company, for approximately $390 million in cash.

- Citi, State Street, Morgan Stanley, and UBS invested $20 million in Capitolis, a New York City-based capital markets fintech company; each invested $5 million.

PEOPLE

- True Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, added Helen Min as a venture partner. Previously, she was at AngelList.