“I get so much joy with being able to build, especially from zero. It does not interest me to own an existing team. I am much more interested in building things from scratch because you get to move a lot faster,” Serana Williams’ husband Alexis Ohanian had said in the Citius Mag Podcast last month. Well, that is what he has been doing with women’s sports.

Deloitte has predicted that in 2024, the global women’s sports industry will finally break the $1 billion barrier, and guess what? That’s a straight 300% increase from 2021! While talking about this rapid rise of women’s sports, we can hardly overlook this 41-year-old internet entrepreneur and investor. Over the past few years, Ohanian has stunned everyone with his not-so-usual investments in several women’s sports, the latest being the ATHLOS NYC, an all-woman track meet with the largest prize pool to date.

Recently, Ohanian won ADWEEK’s Brand Genius Award for all the work he has done over the last few years, not just in developing companies but also in contributing to communities by elevating women’s sports. Just like Reddit, the world of female athletes has until recently been defined by under-appreciation, both in terms of commercial potential and cultural impact. However, Alexis Ohanian considers this oversight more of an advantage than anything else in the digital age.

Reflecting on his initial thoughts about investing in women’s sports during an interview with ADWEEK, Alexis Ohanian stated, “The silver lining of women’s sports being so underinvested was that they were so easy to invest in. You can try anything you want. There is no way that things have been done before.” Probably the first time Ohanian recognized that was in 2019.

Reign FC, the Seattle outpost of the National Women’s Soccer League, was sold for a mere $3.5 million. According to Ohanian, Reign’s star athlete, global sensation Megan Rapinoe, alone would have been worth $3 million. That made him realize how under-invested women’s sports were. The effect of the realization came the next year.

In 2020, Ohanian became a founding investor in the Los Angeles NWSL team Angel City FC, purely by intuition. And it paid off. This year in July, Disney chief executive Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay, a dean at the University of Southern California, became the new majority controlling owner in the team, valuing it at $250 million.

In April, Ohanian invested in the Portland, Oregon women’s sports bar The Sports Bra. He has plans to franchise the concept throughout the country. During the Paris Olympics, he and rapper Flavor Flav even helped American discus thrower Veronica Fraley cover the rent. However, all his ventures in women’s sports are probably dwarfed by the ATHLOS NYC (previously called the 776 Invitational), set to take place on September 26 at Icahn Stadium. Do you know what is its largest selling point?

Athletes from the United States and abroad will compete for a total purse of at least $500,000, with $60,000 going to first place, $25,000 for second, and $10,000 for third. The amount surpasses most events on the professional circuit, men or women. For context, gold medalists at last year’s world championships earned $70,000.

Unlike traditional track-and-field competitions, Athlos will feature only six races—a 100-meter hurdle, as well as 100-, 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1,500-meter sprints—with six athletes each. The event features the likes of Olympians Gabby Thomas and Alexis Holmes. Ohanian has an interesting explanation for investing such huge amounts in women’s sports specifically, while the realm is mostly headlined by men.

“In sports, so many decisions are determined by past precedent, doing things the way they have always been done. In the world of tech startups, if you think that way, you fail. With Athlos, we are questioning every element and building the best version of the product possible,” Ohanian said, drawing parallels to his experience with tech startups. Despite everything, the move was not just a wild bet, but a calculated one.

According to Ohanian, social content is mostly driven by women. He believes every platform that has become a success in social media is because of teen girls. According to multiple reports, female college athletes generate four times the total audience engagement of male athletes. “Social content is driven by women. Every platform that has become a success in social media—Instagram, Snap, TikTok—it’s usually because teen girls make it a thing,” Ohanian argued. So Who was the main driving force behind such investments?

Alexis Ohanian says it all starts from home

During a conversation on the rise of women’s sports on CNBC, Alexis Ohanian admitted, “The core phenomenon here probably came from a certain someone I’m married to, right? Serena Williams is the prototype for how you can show women’s sports is and can be and should be on the same level as men’s.” Later, he also spoke about how stalwarts like Serena Williams, Venus Williams, and Billie Jean King played a crucial role in increasing viewership in women’s tennis compared to men’s events.

Are these the only names that inspired Ohanian to take this route? Well, not really! In an interview with On Her Turf, he revealed that his elder daughter, Olympia, who is also a big soccer fan, played a crucial role in motivating him to invest in Angel City FC. “A big part of the reason why I started Angel City FC was because Olympia was running around, this is 2019 in a Alex Morgan jersey,” said Ohanian. However, he also made it clear to fans that it’s not just them, but many other people and things that helped him start this new journey with women’s sports.

According to him, the main thing women’s leagues are lacking at the moment is a proper mindset. “What I think has been missing in all these other leagues is they’re not started from, in Tech we say first principles, they’re started almost as like a well-intentioned charity,” he said in April 2024. Ohanian is determined to change that, riding on his mindset to shake things up while creating openings in unknown directions. Which other sports would you like to see Alexis Ohanian investing in? Share your thoughts below.