Uhrman: Building a sports team is easier than building a tech startup
Julie Uhrman · Angel City Football Club founders on building the highest valued women's team | Masters of Scale · May 11, 2024 · at 12:23
Julie Uhrman, co-founder and president of Angel City FC, compares the collaborative, localized nature of sports ownership with the competitive secrecy of the tech startup ecosystem.
0:00 / 0:33exact quote · 33.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The building of a sports team is a lot easier than the building of a technology team, and the people that are willing to help you do it are vastly larger than those that I experienced when I was building something in tech, because when most businesses are built on the internet and everybody can be your competitor, everybody is your competitor. So they're not willing to open up their playbook, explain their cost of acquisition or their churn or their lifetime value or how they retain customers. That is their secret sauce, and what's so unique about sports In the most fundamental way is that it's a local business.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Julie Uhrman
Uhrman: 90% of all sports teams do not make money
“The first thing that I learned, which was actually fascinating, was that 90% of all sports teams don't make money.”
Uhrman: Celebrity investors do not drive direct ticket sales for Angel City
“They don't help us sell tickets. They don't help us sell merch. Like their audience is broad, right? But they help us tell the story. And if we do our job right, we can convert the people that pay attention to our story.”
Uhrman did not know NWSL existed before co-founding Angel City FC
“Had no idea the National Women's Soccer League existed. And it was like six or seven years old. Had no idea it was in its eighth year.”
Uhrman: Angel City founders lacked required net worth for an NWSL team
“You have two people come up to Portland, neither of which have sports experience, right? Neither one of us have the net worth requirements to actually fund a team.”
Uhrman: Angel City secured $60M in sponsorships using a community reinvestment model
“So now we have 35 sponsors.
We have, again, spent over, you know, committed 2.5 million to the community.
We have over sixty million in committed sponsorship revenue that 10% of that is going to go back into the community.”