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23 February 2022 - 1:26 PM

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Miami-based firm investing millions globally in women’s football: “How can you argue that women’s sports doesn’t generate fans? It’s never promoted or covered. It’s never even accessible”

  • Ata Football has signed numerous deals with top women’s leagues, including Barclays FA WSL, Serie A TimVision and Frauen Bundesliga to significantly increase visibility of the sport.
  • Financially backed by 777 Partners, owners of Serie A-side Genoa and co-owners of Sevilla, their ambitions are much bigger than building a platform showing live-content. New player development channel will soon be launched.
  • Why it matters: A lack of access to women's football has stunted growth.
  • The perspective: By approaching this as a collective effort, women’s football can break through the barriers to become a global force—which includes driving revenue and investment.

Music pulsates. Video snippets cut to the power of women on the pitch. Shirts in white, blue, red, green and more flash across the screen representing teams from around the world. In 42 seconds flat Ata Football’s new social campaign sends up a clear message: “Welcome to the golden era of women’s football.”

Ata Football is on a quest to normalize women’s football. And it is harnessing content to do just that.

In December 2021, the women’s football company signed a two-year partnership with Italy’s Serie A TimVision to provide league coverage and increase its visibility. Matches will be available to viewers in the U.S., Canada and Germany through Ata Football’s streaming service.

The deal follows a spate of others for live and on-demand matches, including Frauen Bundesliga (US only), Barclays FA Women’s Super League (US, Germany and Italy only), D1 Arkema and Primera Iberdrola, Serie A Femminile (UK and Ireland only) and UEFA Women’s Champions League (US only).

Ata Football’s broadcast partners thus far are NBC Sports in the US, Europe’s DAZN and Fanatiz, a streaming platform that broadcasts sporting events and channels online, live and on-demand.

“Our goal is to ensure that these female leagues and clubs and players are featured on premium broadcasts and get that broad distribution” says Esmeralda Negron, cofounder and general manager.

That’s one piece of it. In parallel to that, Miami-based Ata Football is building upon its 25,000-plus member community. The company rallied members largely through word-of-mouth, PR and organic growth through Ata Football's partners and staff members. Memberships are on free, monthly and annual plans.

By the end of Q1 Ata Football will officially launch a Player Development channel. This will offer a practice to pitch series that coaches and clubs can use, virtual events with players and coaches and other types of useful content, like tactical videos. Elsewhere, nutrition and mental health will also have space on the site.

“It’s a great community joining together the different pieces of the women's soccer ecosystem, from the grassroots to the pros, the collegiate and everybody in between in organizations that are trying to equally do their part in raising visibility and supporting female sport—especially soccer,” she says.

Vision to become the global hub for women’s football

The company, just a little over a year old, has already shed its original name, Atalanta Media—Ata Football was its media rights arm and the consumer-facing brand.

But, its two cofounders, Negron and Hannah Brown, decided to move it under the auspices of Ata Football so as not to solely be perceived as a media rights company.

Ata Football stands as a consumer brand and global community which distributes its licensed matches in one central location as well as more valuable tools and resources for player development. It is more reflective of their vision for becoming the global hub for women's football and the next generation of girls.

Photo:

PR | Esmeralda Negron, cofounder and general manager Ata football

Ata Football currently has a staff of 10 including full-time and contract employees. It receives operational support from the investor team at alternative investment firm 777 Partners in Miami, as well as live match production services from London-based Gravity Media, a provider of production, programming and content services.

The majority of Ata Football’s global subscribers—85 percent—are from the US. The largest percentage sits in the 18-34 year-old range with a near equal male/female split. Ata Football doesn’t disclose information regarding revenue, profit and loss.

Negron and Brown are each co-investors and 777 Partners is its sole investment backer at present. 777 Partners are owners of Italian Serie A-side Genoa, co-owners of Sevilla in Spain and are on the verge of buying the big Brazilian club Vasco Da Gama.

777 Partners provided seed capital, but Juan Arciniegas, managing director of the firm who leads the sports and entertainment portfolio, says they continue to put money into it.

“It’s in the millions now and we continue to invest at various stages,” says Arciniegas.

Of 777 Partners’ investment, Arciniegas said when it was looking at the company, the firm identified a niche that is underserved, but had a lot of growth potential.

777 Partners sees a huge amount of change in the sport, including the professionalism, athleticism, and improved quality of the game. Landmark events, like certain World Cups, have driven the awareness and appetite for consuming the sport.

But, 777 Partners also believes that the sport is still too young to be successful on an individual league basis.

“Meaning that it will be hard for them to reach blockbuster media rights on their own,” explains Arciniegas.

“And what we found is that by potentially centralizing ways to have all of those different top quality leagues in one vessel, that would create enough momentum to potentially reach landmark distribution deals.

“And by doing that—by acquiring the British, the French, the German, the Italian and the Spanish leagues, we were able to get the attention of the likes of NBC, for example in the US, which allowed us to put some of these women's games on US national TV for the first time ever—and even on the main NBC channel.”

What 777 Partners saw was an opportunity to not only package those rights together, but also to have an owned-and-operated platform dedicated exclusively to that content, which defines Ata football.

Photo:

PR | Juan Arciniegas, Managing Director at 777 Partners

With Ata Football, Arciniegas says 777 Partners has the advantage of being structured as a holding company as well as a permanent capital vehicle.

“What that allows us to do is to have a very long term view on investments and be able to have long hold periods,” he says.

“So while women’s football is a very nascent part of the industry, it has a lot of potential.”

Empower founders

To create value, says Arciniegas , you have to be patient and invest. A lot of people like talking about the potential of women’s football, he adds, but not a lot of people have been willing to put money behind the lip service.

In 777 Partners’ case, directing the investment to grow the industry is key—and will increase Ata Football’s value over time.

Part of this direction comes in the form of the shared services model 777 Partners offers to Ata Football and all of the companies in its portfolio, which allows it to incubate new businesses and grow them over time.

777 Partners’ team of professionals in its Miami headquarters provide services around legal, human resources, operations, finance, accounting, treasury and technology.

"What we’re trying to empower our founders to do is to focus on growing the business so they don't have to worry about all the minutiae that ends up taking the majority of the founders’ time," says Arciniegas.

Adds Negron: “They understood our vision and supported us in a really meaningful way.”

Total lack of access inspired a business

Much of that vision is based on the “total lack of access’ to women’s football. Negron reaches back to her days as a professional player for the New Jersey Lady Stallions and New Jersey Wildcats in the United Soccer League (she also played internationally for the US and Puerto Rico).

Negron acknowledges that she was pretty much in that bubble, unaware of how the business side of the sports world actually worked.

When she left the pitch, Negron began to see that sponsorship, media rights values and ticket sales were all important to drive revenue. But, even more so, came the realization that building fans is the nucleus—and everything else revolves around it.

We think we are a big ingredient in actually growing the industry for everyone, not just for ourselves

Negron began to question “how can you generate fans or how can you argue that women’s sports doesn’t generate fans? It’s never promoted or covered. It’s never even accessible.”

This critical examination led her to piece those elements together against the backdrop of her own varied experiences within football. She began having nightly conversations with her co-founder Hannah Brown and the big question they kept asking was: “how is this not out there?”

Negron points out that women’s soccer has some of the most phenomenal players and clubs invested in it, like Olympique Lyonnais. And yet, finding a place to watch them was nonexistent.

Finding the time to have those conversations with Brown was easy. As Negron says, they overlapped at Relevent Sports.

Negron was initially a consultant while Brown was a full-time staff member, and about three months after Brown’s hire, Negron accepted a full-time position with the soccer events and media company.They had worked together for over a year, though the friendship was instantaneous. Later they became roommates on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

The two found they had complementary skills. Negron is a former pro player who later turned to coaching collegiate women’s soccer, which she did at Princeton University and Seton Hall University for eight years before deciding to cross over to the business side. Brown was a longtime media rights executive who spent a decade at Sky Sports.

Both were cultivating relationships within the industry. Negron had been hired full-time at Relevent Sports to launch their newly-minted Women’s International Champions Cup.

She developed relationships with players, administration and coaches. Negron often commented that she wanted to watch some of the players she was meeting at a Champions League match, or, better still, see an epic crowd gather.

“So I had that in my head and I would talk to Hannah about it,” she says.

“We want to aggregate rights"

Recognizing the potential for women’s soccer, the idea for Ata Football began to evolve. Between the two of them, they could take their idea to places like Sky, Comcast and NBC—and The Football Association.

“We both approached them and said we have this idea,” says Negron. “We want to aggregate rights, we want to support you, but we also want to ensure that the games appear on premium broadcasts. That’s how it started.”

Things progressed quickly. The idea began to formalize in December 2019. Brown met with NBC in January 2020 and then with Arciniegas at 777 Partners later that March. By September 1 they were operational.

The women’s game needs fans, needs people to tune in and attend matches, to buy merchandise

From a sustainability standpoint, Negron sees this as a 10-year plan. “You have to build momentum, you have to normalize women's sport, you need to generate fandom in a really authentic way,” she says. “That doesn't happen overnight.”

Their model is to continue to partner with its premium broadcast partners. “We sit in this amazing neutral position where one league can’t do this on their own, so I think there’s certainly a place for us,” says Negron.

Goals for year two

This year, Ata Football will seek to add sponsors, with plans to integrate them into the live broadcasts and the broadcasts of atafootball.com. As the platform builds out its content offering, like the Player Development channel, it will also add sponsors to support it.

Arciniegas acknowledges that sponsorship is not easy in this industry. While brands want to participate, there is still hesitance because of its nascency.

“We also need to develop audiences to make it a viable business for them,” he says.

“It's challenging. To do that we need to broaden the distribution and that's why we don't have the content exclusively on our owned-and-operated platform.”

The deals transacted with NBC and DAZN where they also carry some of Ata Football’s rights will only grow the game by increasing distribution and awareness and bring the content to additional eyeballs to make it worth it for brands to invest, says Arciniegas.

With DAZN, Ata Football has also established a commercial relationship.

“We think we are a big ingredient in actually growing the industry for everyone, not just for ourselves,” he also says.

Arciniegas does believe the value in Ata Football is going to come from two specific areas—one of which is commercial revenue. The platform will provide avenues for brands to target and engage with younger females and males.

The other is providing the actual service—which can also be a revenue generator. That ‘service’ delivers content that subscribers want to consume.

But Arciniegas says it also provides a sense of belonging—a sense that women’s football is important and has a home—and they are a part of that home.

"There’s a lot of people that are looking for this content,” he says.

“I think this market is quite large, it’s just very unpenetrated at the moment. I think penetrating that market is really where the scale is going to come from.”

Ata Football will continue to be strategic with its grassroots partners, player ambassadors and its own marketing efforts to elevate brand awareness and engagement like the "This is ata" social campaign that launched in early February. Building the community aspect of the platform globally is a main focal point for 2022.

Getting around the game

Negron emphasizes that Ata Football is building this community to support the game to get around it—to watch it.

“The women’s game needs fans, needs people to tune in and attend matches, to buy merchandise,” she says.

“They serve as ways to get around the game and to help it grow, to generate momentum and drive revenue and investment back in. We always say we want to drive this virtuous cycle of reinvestment in the game.”

Negron says a pain point is the industry was stuck for a long time.

“I think everybody is starting to realize that approaching this as a collective to spread the word is critical,” she says.

“And I think being open to partnership is really important. Part of what we are doing is to position ourselves as marketing support—offering a global community that will unite, engage and inspire fans.”