Female empowerment and wage equity: the football of Natalie Portman and Serena Willims

There has been a lot of talk about David Beckham's Inter Miami F.C., new entry for next MLS season. While you're much less interested in Angel City F.C., a Los Angeles women's soccer club that will start playing in an official tournament in 2022. The American club, however, is not like all the others: its governance consists almost entirely of women, including actresses Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Uzo Aduba and Jessica Chastain, but also Serena William and the unying male figure, Reddit CEO Alexis Ohanian (for the rest, there are also YouTubers, former players of the US national team and various entrepreneurs). The club announced its first sponsor, DoorDash, while recently, it also officially announced the women's sneaker brand Birdies as sleeve sponsors in its first jerseys. 

The Angel City F.C. project was finally born on July 21, 2020, announced by the National Women Soccer League, the Women's Soccer Federation in the United States. The sports project was born from an idea of the current president Julie Uhrman and has developed its own organization chart with many members and the possibility for everyone to acquire company shares. The club has worked on sports programming believing itself ready for 2022, but in the meantime, it has started to grow brand awareness through its merchandising. In fact, on its website you can buy caps, sweatshirts, t-shirts and accessories of off-the-pitch lines and there is still nothing to show sporting goods. A way also to increase the hype towards the Angel City, of course also due to the presence of Hollywood in the company's offices. 

In these months of programming, the Angel City has proved active even beyond commercial operations. In fact, they organized conferences on women's empowerment (one of the main themes of the club), on Black History Month, on the social impact of football. The latter is a fundamental issue, because among the club's projects there is also that of building a reference point in the city with dedicated sports facilities and programs, so as to involve children and people in difficulty and develop a link with the city that goes beyond football. It is no coincidence that, on the site, we are talking about essential contributions, equity and education.

Concepts that also link to a different idea of fan experience and new attempts at business management. As the Los Angeles Times explained, work will be done on a better condition in women's sport, so much so that "the new team promises to use that position to improve the sporting environment for female athletes pushing for higher wages, better working conditions".