Alexia Putellas, London City Lionesses and a £10.6m Loss
London City Lionesses lost £10.6 million, then signed Alexia Putellas, Mary Earps and Mapi León. Michele Kang is not just buying goals. She is buying attention.
London City Lionesses’ latest accounts showed a £10.6 million operating loss. Michele Kang then signed Alexia Putellas, Mary Earps and Mapi León.
Most owners would see that and reach for the brakes.
That is either wildly irresponsible or one of the clearest examples in sport of an owner understanding that attention is an asset before revenue catches up.
I think it is the second one — with one very large caveat.
This is not a normal transfer spree
London City are not Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United or Manchester City with a century of men’s football history, corporate machinery and a ready-made supporter base to lean on.
They are the only Women’s Super League club without an affiliated men’s side. They play at Hayes Lane in Bromley, share the ground with League Two club Bromley, and were on the brink of liquidation before Kang bought them in December 2023.
That matters because people keep analysing London City’s spending as if it is simply a rich owner buying a football team a better midfield.
No. Kang is trying to build a standalone women’s sports business from scratch — and she is doing it in public, at speed, while competing against clubs whose brands were built over generations.
Putellas is the centrepiece. She is a two-time Ballon d’Or winner, a World Cup winner with Spain and one of the few players in women’s football who can move audiences across borders on name alone. She joined London City after leaving Barcelona, alongside another Barcelona star in Mapi León. England goalkeeper Mary Earps arrived from Paris Saint-Germain. Germany forward Nicole Anyomi and Denmark midfielder Janni Thomsen are also part of the rebuild.
That is not a recruitment list. It is a market-entry strategy.
The immediate sporting objective is Champions League qualification. The larger commercial objective is to make London City impossible to ignore.
Michele Kang is buying time — and refusing to buy it cheaply
Sport is full of owners who say they are “in it for the long term” right before they sack everyone, cut the wage bill and sell the naming rights to a crypto firm with a logo designed by a 14-year-old.
Kang has at least backed her words with actual capital.
Her Kynisca Sports International platform includes London City, the Washington Spirit in the NWSL and OL Lyonnes in France. She has also committed $50 million to research and investment aimed at improving female athlete health and performance, plus a $30 million pledge to US Soccer over five years.
You do not have to agree with every move to recognise the seriousness of the commitment. This is not a celebrity vanity project. It is a portfolio thesis: women’s sport remains structurally underbuilt, commercially underpriced and full of assets that can be improved with proper management.
That is the investor case. But the football case is more brutal.
London City’s route to relevance cannot be gradual. A newly promoted club that patiently builds for five years risks becoming background noise while the established WSL brands hoover up fans, sponsors and elite talent. Kang is spending aggressively because the price of being forgettable is higher than the price of being criticised.
There is a sensible business lesson there. When the market is moving quickly, cautious can be another word for invisible.
The 80% rule is where this gets interesting
The WSL has financial controls intended to stop clubs from lighting money on fire just because an owner can afford matches.
London City can spend up to 80% of relevant revenue on their squad costs, plus another £4 million funded by the owner. That framework is precisely why the club’s transfer business has attracted so much scrutiny. Putellas, Earps and León are not cheap names, and neither are the players required around them to make a credible team.
Kang’s answer is refreshingly direct: generate more revenue. Ticket sales, commercial partnerships, sponsorship, merchandise, media and global fan engagement all have to grow in parallel with the football operation.
Correct answer. But it is also the hard answer.
A cap linked to revenue gives established clubs an enormous built-in advantage. Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City start with deep commercial ecosystems and vast existing audiences. Their women’s teams can leverage a sponsor book, fan database and global brand that took decades to assemble.
London City have to manufacture that flywheel.
The contrarian point: the WSL rules may be financially sensible in theory while still making competitive disruption nearly impossible in practice. If every ambitious challenger must first have the revenue of an incumbent before it can spend like one, the incumbents have already won.
Kang has argued that newly promoted clubs need more room to compete in a promotion-and-relegation system. She is right to raise it. A league cannot sell itself as a meritocracy while quietly making sure the same four clubs own the podium forever.
Sky Sports noted that no club outside Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United has finished in the top three for 12 years. Since the WSL began, only four clubs have won the title.
That is not competitive balance. That is an oligopoly with shin pads.
Putellas is more than a player. She is a distribution channel.
This is the bit most football coverage misses.
A great player improves your team. A truly famous player changes your customer-acquisition cost.
Putellas brings Spanish-speaking audiences, Barcelona followers, national-team fans, sponsors wanting access to women’s football and a personal brand that travels far beyond southeast London. That is why her arrival is more commercially significant than a standard high-profile free transfer.
She has already taken a step that points to the opportunity. Putellas launched a YouTube channel, Eleven TV by Alexia, which secured rights to show one WSL match per round in Spain in Spanish. Its first broadcast was set around London City’s match against Manchester United.
Think about what that means.
A London club with no men’s team is using its star player not only to attract supporters but also to create a direct media bridge into Spain. That is clever. Not because every player should start a media company — most absolutely should not — but because it turns celebrity into owned distribution.
The old model says: sign the player, hope the broadcaster notices, hope the sponsor follows, hope the fans buy a shirt.
The sharper model says: sign the player, give her a platform, turn that platform into a content engine, sell sponsors a specific audience, convert viewers into email subscribers, ticket buyers, members and merchandise customers.
That is the machine Kang needs to build.
And it is why I would not judge this project solely on London City’s league position this season. A top-three finish would be a huge sporting win. But a club that finishes fifth while doubling attendance, landing serious sponsors, building international audience data and turning Putellas into a commercial engine may have created more lasting value.
The overlooked risk is not the wage bill
Everyone sees the wage bill. It is visible, easy to argue about and makes for good social media outrage.
The greater risk is organisational overload.
Signing elite talent is easy compared with building the systems that make elite talent worth the money. You need a first-rate performance environment, medical and recovery capability, recruitment, player care, coaching, content, commercial sales, ticketing, fan service and leadership that can handle stars without turning the place into a circus.
Kang appears to understand this. London City’s investment includes its training ground, youth setup and commercial operation, not merely the first-team dressing room.
Good. Because throwing famous names into a mediocre operating system is how owners turn expensive ambition into a very glossy mess.
There is also a multi-club ownership question. Kang’s ownership of London City, Washington Spirit and OL Lyonnes creates obvious advantages: shared expertise, global scouting, commercial leverage and specialised infrastructure. It also creates the need for clear governance, especially if clubs with common ownership end up competing for players or European places.
The answer is not to pretend multi-club ownership is evil. It is to demand clean boundaries, transparent decision-making and genuine competitive integrity. Investors hate uncertainty. Fans hate being treated like a footnote in somebody else’s holding company.
What this means for you
Whether you run a startup, a property business, a fund or a local plumbing company, there are three useful lessons here.
First: spend on assets that create demand, not merely capacity. Putellas can improve results on the pitch, but her bigger value is that she creates demand around the club. Ask yourself whether your next major hire, partnership or product feature will create more customers — or simply make you feel busier.
Second: build distribution before you desperately need it. London City cannot rely on a men’s club audience, so it has to own relationships directly. Build your email list. Build your community. Build content that reaches the buyer before a platform changes its algorithm or your paid ads get expensive.
Third: understand the difference between a loss and a mistake. A £10.6 million operating loss is not automatically smart. Losses are not a personality trait. But if a controlled loss buys brand recognition, infrastructure, audience data and a better long-term revenue engine, it can be an investment. If it merely buys headlines and excuses, it is just burning cash with better catering.
Kang’s bet will not be proved by one transfer window or one WSL table. It will be proved when London City can generate meaningful revenue without needing her cheque book to do all the talking.
For now, though, she has done the hardest thing in business: she has made a crowded market look up. And Alexia Putellas is not just the star signing. She is the megaphone.