Alexis Ohanian has spent the better part of a decade arguing that women's sports are not a charitable cause but an underpriced asset class. This week, the Reddit co-founder and venture investor made that argument again — this time from the stage at Bloomberg's Power Players conference, in a taping of The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, and in a wave of coverage tied to the debut of WTGL and his expanding role at ONIT, a college-sports venture.

The through-line across the appearances is consistent: Ohanian, an early and prominent investor in Angel City FC, the Los Angeles-based NWSL club he helped found in 2020, is assembling a portfolio that spans ownership, media rights, and event promotion in women's sport — and he is doing it years before the broader market caught up.

The thesis: an obvious, massive opportunity

Speaking to MSN about his decision to get involved with ONIT, Ohanian framed the move in the blunt terms that have become his signature. "The massive opportunity was obvious," he said, describing how college athletics and women's sports together represented a market that traditional sports investors had systematically overlooked.

That framing is not new for Ohanian, but the context has changed. Since Angel City's founding, the club has become one of the most valuable franchises in the NWSL, drawing a star-studded investor base and a valuation that has climbed sharply — a template Ohanian has pointed to repeatedly as proof that the economics work when capital and attention are directed at women's leagues.

"The massive opportunity was obvious." — Alexis Ohanian, on what drew him to ONIT and the college sports market

ATHLOS: a track meet built like a media property

Perhaps the purest expression of Ohanian's strategy is ATHLOS, the women-only track and field meet he founded and funded. In a CNBC interview, Ohanian described the property's ambition in expansive terms: ATHLOS aims "to put women's athletics centre stage year-round," rather than confining elite women's track to a handful of Olympic-cycle moments.

That is a deliberate departure from the traditional track calendar. ATHLOS packages sprint and field events with broadcast-friendly production, a record-setting prize purse for women's track, and athlete-forward storytelling — the same playbook the NBA, and more recently TGL in golf, have used to convert niche competitions into televised products. Ohanian's wager is that scarcity of women's track coverage is an artificial constraint, not a demand problem.

The reception has been encouraging enough that the meet has become a reference point in sports-business circles, cited as evidence that women's events can draw both a live audience and a streaming one when the production values match the talent.

WTGL and the Los Angeles footprint

Ohanian's Los Angeles ownership role surfaced again with the debut of WTGL, a new women's sports property in which he is an owner. Coverage of the launch emphasized the depth of his financial and personal commitment to women's sport — not a single asset but a cluster of them, concentrated in a city that has become the de facto capital of the women's sports boom, with Angel City, the Sparks, and a dense collegiate and youth pipeline all competing for the same fans.

The overlap is not accidental. Ohanian has argued that owning multiple complementary properties creates shared audiences, shared sponsorship inventory, and leverage in rights negotiations. A track meet, a soccer club, and a college-sports platform each reach different demographics but can be sold to the same brand partners.

Why now: the money is following the audience

The macro backdrop explains the timing. Women's sports have posted a string of audience records over the past three years — NCAA women's basketball title games outdrew the men's final in some years, NWSL attendance and expansion fees have soared, and the WNBA has signed media-rights deals that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

  • Media rights: Broadcasters that once treated women's sports as scheduling filler are now paying for premium inventory.
  • Expansion fees: NWSL and WNBA franchise valuations have multiplied, rewarding early owners like Ohanian.
  • Sponsorship: Brands facing scrutiny over marketing spend are reallocating budget toward women's properties with demonstrable engagement.
  • College sports: Name, image, and likeness rules, plus the unsettled conference realignment picture, have unlocked new commercial structures — the space ONIT is targeting.

The skeptical read

Not everyone is convinced the enthusiasm is durable. Critics note that women's sports investment remains concentrated in a handful of markets and a small number of celebrity-backed ownership groups, and that valuations in some leagues have risen faster than revenue. There is also the perennial question of whether a promotional push sustains itself once an Olympic cycle or a headline-grabbing star departs.

Ohanian's answer, delivered across the Bloomberg and CNBC appearances, is essentially structural: build the infrastructure — events, media, ownership — so the sport does not depend on any single athlete or moment. ATHLOS was designed to fill the calendar; ONIT to monetize college talent earlier; WTGL and Angel City to anchor a regional fan base.

Whether that portfolio coheres into a business or remains a collection of well-intentioned bets will be settled over the next several years. But the framing has clearly shifted. When Ohanian began investing in 2020, the pitch was about fairness and untapped upside. Today, with valuations climbing and broadcasters circling, the pitch is increasingly about returns — and, as he told Bloomberg's Power Players audience, he intends to be on the right side of that trade.