Clifford Chance

Breakaway: How Multi-Club Ownership May Reshape Women’s Soccer

12 March 2025

As the lights shine bright on women’s sports, the case for investing in women’s soccer is stronger than ever. Recordbreaking attendance, unprecedented media coverage and celebrity investment and endorsement have propelled the sport into a highly sought after asset-class. The entry of sophisticated investors into the sport has led to the deployment of creative investment strategies – chief among them a strategy previously limited to men’s sports, the multi-club ownership (“MCO”) model.

The MCO model typically consists of a holding company which owns multiple soccer teams across different leagues and countries. MCO structures allow investors to control a portfolio of clubs while leveraging the benefits of centralized management, coordinated strategic planning and resource sharing across the different teams within the portfolio.

In this article we explore the rapid development of MCOs and consider why these structures are increasingly attractive to investors in women’s soccer. After assessing the strategic benefits of MCOs, we examine the growing body of regulations which seek to mitigate the potential for MCOs to undermine the integrity of the competitions in which their constituent clubs participate. In the final portion of this article, we turn our attention to deal structuring and consider the transaction mechanics that MCOs are likely to employ as they build their portfolio of women’s soccer clubs.

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