When Willow Bay considered investing in a women's soccer team earlier this year, the decision was easy to make.

From serious to purchase was like a blink of an eye.

The team in question was the Los Angeles Club of the National Women's Soccer League, or NWSL, Angel City FC.

As a long time, L.A. resident, Bay and her family had followed the team since it was

formed in 2020. Bay is dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for

Communication and Journalism and had even taken students from her sports media industry's class

to see Angel City play.

We were such fans and friends of the team and kind of understood them and understood this

moment.

This moment being the groundswell of enthusiasm for women's sports across college and

professional leagues, record attendance at live matches, unprecedented viewership for televised games,

and more capital flowing into media rights, corporate sponsorships, and brand endorsements.

There have been other movements in women's sports, certainly, but I'm not sure we've seen

the audience excitement, the audience demand demand driving this across so many sports,

across so many communities, and across so many cultures.

This is investing in sports, a four-part series from the Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast about the changing dynamics at the intersection of sports and finance.

I'm Nicole Pullen Ross. I lead the private wealth management business for the New York region at Goldman Sachs.

And I also had our sports and entertainment offering for Goldman Sachs private wealth management.

In our final episode, we're covering the business forces driving growth in women's sports

and what all of it means for investors. Later in the show, I'll be speaking with Willow Bay

about becoming the controlling owner of a team with the highest

recorded valuation of any women's sports franchise. But first, my colleague Stacey Sondberg

...