An entrepreneur at heart, Julie Uhrman embarked on a significant venture in 2019: establishing a professional women’s soccer team.
The idea was presented to Uhrman by technology venture capitalist Kara Nortman, sharing that actress Natalie Portman was onboard. The trio, energized by the U.S. Women’s Soccer League World Cup championship win in the summer of 2019, co-founded Angel City FC.
Since its inception in 2022, with Uhrman serving as chief executive, the team has soared to a $250 million valuation – thanks in large part to a controlling investment made by power couple Willow Bay and Bob Iger last year – making it one of the most valuable women’s sports teams globally.
You have an extensive background in business development and founding organizations. How did you come to choose this as a career path?
It started with what I was interested in. I started off as an investment banker. I love the idea of helping companies build and grow, which in many cases, requires investment or fundraising. … I think the reason I gravitated towards that is because deep down, I felt like I was an entrepreneur. My stepfather was an entrepreneur. When I went to college, I bought a business and started a business, and with my partners (at the time), we entered a business plan writing competition and we won that. I think I always had the itch of building and growing (businesses), but I wanted to learn sort of in the safety of an investment bank. And then in 1999, at the start of the dot-com revolution … I got the edge to be an entrepreneur and to start things. And from that moment on, my career was very much entrepreneurial, building new businesses (in entertainment, gaming and other sectors), where I could learn and grow my network. And when I became passionate about something and/or saw something in the market that didn’t exist that I felt needed to build it myself.
How did you move into the sports world and essentially co-founding Angel City FC?
Honestly, it’s two things. One is (being in the) right place and right time, and the second is decades of networking. As it relates to the decades of networking, Kara Nortman was a good friend for over 10 years. We both grew up in Los Angeles. We both worked in tech and venture capital and developed a relationship together. … We developed a really great appreciation for each other and our skill sets and (developed) an interest to want to work together at some point in time, when it made sense.
In the summer of 2019, Kara went to the World Cup and saw the U.S. women’s national team play, and (she) spent a lot of time prior to that with the U.S. women’s national team (and the overall organization). We have a mutual friend Robin Ward who realized that most of the women in venture in tech in Los Angeles grew up playing basketball and also realized that women aren’t as good as networking as men are. We don’t have our weekend golf outing. So, Robin created a summer basketball league, where we all would come together and play basketball. And in August of 2019, Kara and I were at the game, and she was telling us about her incredible experience in Paris. Obviously, the U.S. women’s national team won the World Cup second time in a row, which has never happened for a women’s national team before. And at that game, she pulled me aside and told me that she and Natalie Portman were thinking about bringing a women’s professional soccer team to Los Angeles. Given my background in entrepreneurship, the fact that I’m born and raised in L.A., that fact that I love sports and (had a) general understanding of what my capabilities are, she asked me if I wanted to help. As we started building this, see if there was good chemistry between the three of us … Angel City (came) to life.
What do you enjoy most about leading Angel City FC?
It’s been this unbelievable experience of having a role where you have incredible impact in the community as much as you do on the business that you’re in, which is women’s sports. When we built Angel City, it wasn’t just about the rings, it was really about using entertainment and sport to drive toward equity. How can we use our platform and our voice and our team and our community and our city to drive toward pay equity, gender equity and visibility equity for women, leveraging women’s sports? We recognize that we had the best talent in the world (among) our players to build something phenomenal around, and the best backdrop as the sports capital of the world, in Los Angeles, to build something great. (We were) coming at it from a perspective of impact, setting higher expectations on and off the pitch, (which) meant that we had to partner with our community and build something, not only for our community, but with our community, something that would actually make a difference. And we had the luxury of nearly a two-year runway to bring Angel City to life…. During that (span), we spent most of our time with our community – at distribution drives, food drives, gatherings, going to local clubs to educate them about Angel City and women’s sports, and really getting to use this platform, not only to give back, but to drive awareness to women’s sports, and obviously our messages around equity. With Angel City, our goal was always to build a club that was representative of the community and created an environment that we wanted to be a part of. Our game day experience is like no other.
So when I look back over these last five years, we’re building an incredible team on the pitch…We have the highest valuation of any women’s football club, at over $250 million, with our new control owners Willow Bay and Bob Iger coming on board because they believe in our mission and our values and the impact that we want to have on and off the pitch. And then I look at what we’ve done in the community through our unique sponsorship model, where we give 10% back. We put over $3.9 million to work in our community.
I’m just most proud of the impact that we have on and off the pitch in our community and for women’s sports more broadly.
What is the culture of Angel City, and then what are the factors that your team consider when connecting with fans?
I would say the essence of Angel City is about inclusivity and building a club that’s representative of our community, where we can leverage our voice and our platform to drive to equity on a global basis. And we show this very literally in our game day experience.
We challenge ourselves each game with the mantra that every game is somebody’s first game. So, how do we improve and enhance our experience every time, so that you want to bring your friends and family to our next home match?
What do you deem to be some of your biggest successes thus far?
I think we set out to build a global brand where we can drive attention and awareness to Angel City that ultimately would drive revenue and impact. And when you grade us on that, we’re a global brand. We’ve sold merchandise in over 56 countries and in (all) 50 states. The whole world knows who Angel City is and what we stand for and how we’re built differently. We have the highest revenue of any team in the NWSL, and have since inception. In addition to selling more seats and having higher game day revenue than anyone, we’ve given over $3.9 million back into the community. I mean, the only thing we are short on is winning a championship. And we have elevated our team in the last couple years, brought in a new sporting director in Mark Parsons and a head coach in Alex Straus, and I feel very confident that is in our near future.
What has surprised you most about as a leader in sports and of Angel City?
You know, it’s funny. I think it’s how your impact is always limited, because you allow people to limit what you think is possible and what you can do. And with Angel City, because it was built from people outside sports, and because it was built with a lens to drive towards equity and to build an experience that was equal to, or better, than any sporting experience in Los Angeles, we never allowed others’ limitations to drive our decision making. We always looked at it from a lens of what is best for our community, what is best for our players, what is best for our sport and what ultimately will achieve our goal of driving towards equity. And that allowed us to build Angel City on this global platform, bringing in over 100 investors – the majority women – who want also to use their voice and platform to promote Angel City, not only our values and our mission, but also our players and our team.
The number of women in front offices of sports teams and/or in ownership positions is growing. What does that say or mean to you?
It’s fantastic. It means that investment is finally coming into women’s sports, dedicated, independent investment into women’s sports. (It’s) not someone leveraging their time between men’s and women’s, or giving 10% or selling a sponsorship to a men’s team and putting it on a women’s team … It means that there’s finally dedicated attention, investment and commitment in women’s sports.
What do you hope to see in the future for women pursuing a career in sports, on or off the field or court?
I want to see more women in women’s sports. I think we have the ability to look at the sport from a perspective of community building, as much as it is from winning, how to bring our community along with us and build authentic, emotional connections, which drives the brand, revenue and fan engagement. When I was growing up, when you look at my CV, like sports wasn’t part of it, because it never occurred to me that I could have a job in sports. The whole concept of seeing it, being it (is real). If you can see it, you can be it. So having women CEOs, GMs and coaches, leveraging their platform to tell the world they exist, I think is really important.
