American investment in English football clubs is on the rise – from Arsenal to Chelsea, Wrexham to Birmingham – the game attracting billionaire investors and high-profile celebrities. Next in line are Watford Women. But this investment is different.
Watford’s new partner is the Hollywood-based not-for-profit organisation Sound of Gol and the motivation is simple. “Educate and empower the Latina woman, so they can educate and empower the Latina girl,” says its co-founder, director and producer George Valencia.
How on earth does investment in Watford Women empower the Latina woman? Sound of Gol, which Valencia founded with his wife, the actor Judy Reyes – best known for her roles in Scrubs and Devious Maids – aims to challenge the pay-to-play model of youth football in the US and tackle the underrepresentation of Latina women, providing them with all the benefits the sport brings to young people.
Where Watford come in is simple: the first cohort of six Latina coaches from the US will arrive in January to take part in a new coaching course. It will be the partnership’s first big initiative and the new investing group will document their journey.
The idea for a proactive organisation was born from an animated series Valencia and Reyes had created, about a little Colombian footballer who goes around the world playing with her team of international orphans and raising social issues that affect kids. Valencia’s niece has received her first call-up to represent Colombia, having been playing at a high level in the US, and he knows how hard the journey can be and what the barriers are.
“The system is built so that college recruitment only comes from certain leagues,” he says. “So, if colleges are only going to a league because they have the best young female footballers in the entire country, everything elsewhere doesn’t matter … and to get into that league, you have to pay.
“You have to be able to fly yourself to San Diego from New York, or to Seattle from New York, or to the Dallas Cup from New York, with the cost of hotels added on and stuff like that. One kid, one trip, is $5,000 for four or five days. For Latino people that are working class it is impossible to afford to do it for one kid, let alone when you have three of them.
“This sport is completely taken away from the people that need it the most; a sport that gives you self-esteem, communication, all the things that we love about it. Does the NWSL get it, does US Soccer get it? Absolutely not, and they’re the reason that we are exactly where we are [representation-wise]. They found a way to monetise [the pathway]. You try to take someone’s pay cheque off the table to use it for social good, and they’re like: ‘There’s no budget.’”
Thanks to connections with Watford via former players such as Jay DeMerit, who is a supporter of Sound of Gol, Valencia arranged for two Latina women to spend a week with Watford this year, taking part in training and coaching sessions. “This partnership with Watford Women now, becomes an extension of our social activism,” Valencia says.
For Reyes, who was not particularly interested in football before getting to know Valencia, it was the power of the sport to do good that attracted her. “Inclusion is important to me, diversity is important to me,” she says.
There are barriers for Latina coaches as well as players. “Latinas are embarrassingly underrepresented as coaches,” says Reyes, who states that “less than 1% of coaching soccer jobs in the States are held by Latina women”.
Helen Ward, Watford’s first head of women’s football, is excited by the partnership. “What I don’t want is people looking at it and thinking: ‘Oh, Watford are getting a load of money,’” she says.
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“It’s not about that for us. Don’t get me wrong, finances help any organisation, of course they do, but they have to be brought in in the right way and with the right intentions and I think that’s what this partnership does … it’s about those lasting impacts, not just here, but across the pond as well.”
The investment comes as the women’s team has moved from being run by the club’s trust back to the club and is a step on the road to being financially sustainable. Relegation from the Championship made for a “tough” summer, Ward says.
“There’s no parachute payments for a start. You lose your broadcast money. You lose everything in terms of finances, and you lose a lot of the clout as well, rightly or wrongly.”
Now, though, the future feels exciting. Alongside Ward, there will be a new board of the women’s team, with the women’s football communications experts Alex Stone and Kieran Theivam, both formerly of Fifa and the Football Association, and Anna Chanduvi, the chief customer and commercial officer for the Jockey Club, included.
“What sets this investment apart from other foreign investment in the UK is that the purpose is social good and to truly make a difference,” Chanduvi says. “It kickstarts a flywheel by giving women opportunities, creating content, creating stories that are inspiring, that are shareable, that transcend the sport itself, and that inevitably will attract commercial investment.
“Increasingly, brands want to attach themselves to causes that have social currency that actually make a difference. They don’t just want to plaster their logos on billboards. They want to know: ‘How am I aligning myself to a message that really has purpose?’ And what I find beautiful about this partnership is the authenticity. It’s not just about: ‘I’m investing into this club, I’m dumping a lot of cash and I want to see a return in a couple of years and then I’m on to the next investment.’ It’s truly born organically through a passion of wanting to make a difference. Revenue will be a byproduct of us creating stories and telling stories and sharing them authentically. So, I believe that in the future this is the true path to sustainable revenue.”
