Washington, D.C. (05/25/2023) Sports activities Enterprise Journal (SBJ) introduced that Michele Kang has received “Deal of the Yr” as part of its sixteenth Annual Sports activities Enterprise Awards for her 2022 acquisition of the Washington Spirit. 

Kang, who was chosen by SBJ as a 2022 Energy Participant in Girls’s Sports activities, was one in every of 5 nominees that included the Walton-Penner group’s acquisition of the Denver Broncos, Main League Soccer and Apple’s ten-year media rights settlement, the Massive Ten Convention’s seven-year media rights settlement with FOX, CBS and NBC amongst others. She was the one girl represented.  

“As a feminine entrepreneur who has some sources, I felt this was my duty. However extra importantly, I see this as a enterprise with unbelievable industrial viability,” mentioned Kang in her acceptance speech. “We’re not charity.” 

Upon buying the Washington Spirit for a record-setting $35 million on March 30, 2022, Kang grew to become the primary particular person of shade to carry a majority stake in an NWSL membership. Per SBJ, “The $35 million acquisition, the costliest in league historical past on the time, reset the marketplace for NWSL franchises, instantly resulting in the league extracting a report $58 million enlargement charge from the house owners of the lately introduced enlargement workforce within the Bay Space.” 

Her SBJ “Deal of the Yr” victory additionally got here on the heels of her acquisition of eight-time Champions League-winning French membership Olympique Lyonnais (OL). OL competes in Division 1 Féminine, the very best degree of ladies’s skilled soccer in France. 

This transfer will deliver collectively the Spirit and Lyon in a world community of ladies’s soccer golf equipment. It can change into the primary woman-owned and -led group of its form, cementing Kang’s new mission of rewriting the narrative of what’s attainable in girls’s skilled soccer. 

Her dedication to establishing the Washington Spirit as a perennial powerhouse and world-caliber skilled sporting group has been evident ever since she acquired the membership.  

Paramount to Kang’s mission had been each hiring a fleet of extraordinarily certified professionals in a number of roles throughout the group and establishing an unique, state-of-the-art stadium situated in Washington, D.C.  

Not even a 12 months into her tenure as proprietor, Kang efficiently executed each of those targets because the membership struck a multi-year deal to name Audi Discipline its new residence and employed a few of the brightest minds in sport and enterprise – President of Soccer Operations and Common Supervisor Mark Krikorian, President of Enterprise Operations Emma Might, Head Coach Mark Parsons and Vice President of Efficiency, Medical and Innovation Daybreak Scott. 

Among the many Spirit’s newly established management, one theme is constant: Kang’s dedication to establishing the Spirit as a world-class group. 

A part of Kang’s deal to amass the Spirit got here with the mandate of offering a world-class expertise {and professional} product to followers. There at the moment are extra choices at each value level than the membership has ever provided, together with inexpensive season plans, pitch-side premium seating and an prolonged roof at Audi Discipline for extra protection from the weather.  

To buy tickets for a Washington Spirit recreation, please click on right here.  

About The Washington Spirit   

The Washington Spirit is the skilled girls’s soccer workforce based mostly at Audi Discipline in Washington, D.C. Launched in 2012, the Spirit performs within the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League, the premier girls’s soccer competitors in North America. For extra details about the Spirit, go to WashingtonSpirit.com and observe the membership on Twitter, Instagram, and Fb.