The Arena
Kara Nortman photo by Erin Beach; team photos courtesy of FC Viktoria Berlin.The Next Wrexham? American Investors Bet on a Berlin Women’s Soccer Club
Why Monarch Collective, an American investment firm that focuses on women’s sports, sees an opening in soccer-saturated Europe with a new stake in FC Viktoria Berlin.
When Kara Nortman was looking to start a women’s professional soccer team in Los Angeles, she and her co-founders—actress Natalie Portman and entrepreneur Julie Uhrman—took meetings with sports experts in their hometown. The advice they received? It would be unwise to enter a market crowded by the MLB’s Dodgers, the NBA’s Lakers and a half-dozen other franchises.
“We talked to everyone who knew sports,” Nortman told me this week, “and they said, ‘LA needs another professional team like we need a hole in the head.’”