Angel City FC’s first ever NWSL match, their Challenge Cup debut against fellow expansion side San Diego Wave FC, will provide our first look at the roster that’s been built by the club’s technical staff over the past year, which began with the first player the team signed, forward Christen Press.
While each NWSL expansion team is its own experiment, Press has been through a previous version of an expansion only a few years ago in Salt Lake City. But, as she points out, what’s happening in Los Angeles feels very different than what we’ve seen in the NWSL before, especially when it comes to their approach to sponsorships. Each new club partner must allocate 10% of the value of their deal to local causes, whether that’s creating local green spaces with Klarna or mentorship programs for young women with kit sponsor Birdies. The list goes on, and other teams have already picked up the model.
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On a call during her commute home from an Angel City training session on Thursday, Press spoke about where the team stands right now, how the club aligns with her personal values and the intersection of Angel City, sponsorships, and her role as a player.
(This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Angel City’s a bit of a different project than Utah Royals was in 2018, in terms of coming into the league and being a true expansion team. I wanted to get your read on what’s different with Angel City?
The entire project of Angel City is so incredible. As a person that has spent a lot of my life trying to push the needle forward for women across industries, but specifically in sports, it’s incredible to be a part of an organization with a vision that’s so aligned with my own personal one. As a player, it gives me and the whole team something bigger to play for. It’s deeply meaningful in that way.
I think as a team, it’s going to be really hard. I think expansion teams are always hard with the way the league is set up. We’ve got a lot of players that haven’t spent a lot of time together, so this preseason has been precious to us. We’re taking each training and the games that we have — we’re lucky it was a really long preseason, and we also have the Challenge Cup to get prepared and to get to know each other, get to know the staff. It’s going well. I feel like we’re in a good place as a team, and we’ve had some good moments of progress.
And, well, we’ll find out exactly where we stand in our first Challenge Cup game in a couple of weeks.
It’s like a week away at this point! It feels like I was just in Louisville for the NWSL Championship, somehow. Angel City, as an expansion team, was unlike any other we had seen before because they did have such a long run-up to starting. It’s always been, ‘here’s an expansion team, they’re starting in a month!’ Have you noticed a difference? Are things a little more in place with that lead time?
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When it comes to the brand, the business strategy, Angel City is light years ahead of anything I’ve seen in the NWSL, or anything I’ve seen in women’s sports. A lot of the time and energy and investment went into building a business model that is like no other one in women’s soccer. Ultimately, when you think about pushing the game forward, we always hear the argument like, ‘Oh, well, we’re not going to drive the same revenue.’ And we always say if you invest in us, you’ll do well.
Angel City’s done that. The two years of legwork that they’ve put in has put us in a position where we’re going to build a franchise that proves the value of women’s sports and women’s soccer.
There’s still a lot of work to be done to create a professional environment as players. We’re obviously in the process of building a training facility, which makes it really hard for the team at times, being in-market and not having everything exactly how we want it. But you do sign up for that to some extent with an expansion team. I’m hopeful that if the club takes that same ambitious approach that they did with sponsors and ticket sales and is able to turn their attention to the football side, that we’ll have one of the most incredible football environments within the next few years.
We have seen that lag a bit, like Kansas City is investing but didn’t necessarily have it place from day one — LA is obviously a tough real estate market, too. On another note, I think we’ve had this conversation in the past, but when it comes to you as a player, you’re doing so much more than just what’s on the field.
With so many things coming into place — the equal pay settlement with U.S. Soccer, the NWSL CBA being locked in, the USWNT CBA inching closer, Cindy Parlow Cone being re-elected as USSF president, a new NWSL commissioner — are you feeling like you’re going to have more time to focus on what’s happening on the field finally?
It has not crossed my mind! Just for my own personality and role in some of these events — it does feel like, even with wins, there’s just the obvious work ahead. Especially in my personal position, being at this club, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get this to the vision that the team has for it. I hope and think that I will be in a position to make more progress and make change. It will be a lot of work, but this has been an incredible run of events. We have our first (NWSL) CBA in place, which was a fantastic deal and provided us with resources, opportunities and protections that I didn’t actually think we’d be able to have.
The settlement, obviously, was a huge chunk of time for all of the U.S. women’s national team players that were involved over the last six years. To have that behind us, it’s historic, but there is work ahead there, too. Continuing up the chain and working with U.S. Soccer to continue to push FIFA for better, continuing to fight for the global game.
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My generation of players has so much to be proud of. I’m personally very proud of all that we accomplished. Years ago, when I started getting asked these questions, I said that we were passed the torch and it was our responsibility to carry that torch as far and as high as we possibly could. That climb is not over for me. But I’m really proud of how far we’ve come in my time as a professional athlete and as a member of the U.S. women’s national team.
You have your own story in the NWSL, but one of the things that has really stuck with me from my conversations with Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim was how Angel City provided this new model for the NWSL, that the team potentially offered a different path to a better league. There’s the sponsorships, the 10% pledge, the brand, all of that, but there’s more too. You said you want to work to make Angel City better, but does it feel to you like an environment where you’re empowered to do that work?
Yeah, absolutely. I think playing for this club represents a new future for women’s sports. As soon as I signed, I thought we were going to set out to be the change that we wanted across the league and across the global game. That’s really special. I think in the ways that Angel City has done that — ticket sales being shared, collaborating with partners for community impact — it’s beautiful. As a business owner that thinks about how to make a transformative and reimagined business that is both profitable and good for society, at the same time, it’s really hard. What Angel City has done with sponsors, in particular, is incredibly smart and impactful.
Sometimes there’s a barrier between sponsors and a team, and sponsors and players, but when you start to integrate the impact side of things that dissolves. If you’re able to find a partner like Klarna, we’re all working in the same direction towards the same goals, and that is because of the impact. It’s part of the deal. Angel City put it in place as a prerequisite for anyone who wants to be a part of this club, they have to have that shared ambition for impact. That’s really powerful beyond the game, but just from a business perspective, it’s really the only way forward. It’s what people want, it’s what the emerging generation is demanding of businesses. It’s the future. I think that’s how we’ll be able to take the field with so much pride, knowing that’s what we’re representing.
If you want to invest, you can’t just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. Does it feel that noticeably different from what you have seen in the past with NWSL teams when it comes to integration with sponsors?
It feels different than what I’ve seen. The idea of making your business impact about community integration and societal changes is so transformative and powerful. For myself, with my personal alignment with so many of the values that Angel City has, there’s this unique opportunity to work with sponsors, alongside sponsors, rather than for sponsors to continue to create the societal change that I’ve dedicated my life to. To participate in that change, and now there’s just a whole other opportunity where we’re collaborating as players with our club, as players with the club sponsor, with our personal sponsors, and we’re all working in the same direction. I’ve never experienced that in the past.
From my viewpoint, it feels really different. Even thinking about where the league was five, six years ago at this point, where a primary national sponsor was the National Mango Board. It’s night and day. Not a bad thing!
There’s just a whole world out there — the business and corporate world has been opened to us because Angel City has put the value of the team and the players at the forefront since the beginning. There’s just so many partners that want to come and be a part of that, be a part of that change, be attached and associated with the work that the players have done to push women’s sports forward. It’s a really exciting time, and I can’t wait to see how it continues to unfold.
I was rereading some of the press releases for Angel City sponsorships and in the Klarna one, it caught my eye that they have plans to have a pink carpet at games for fans to have their own entrance and get their fits off. We’ve seen the culture of the NWSL has embraced the game-day entrance in such a fun way. Has there been any discussion yet at Angel City with the players on this front? I feel like there are maybe some expectations on Angel City to be ready to go from day one.
From my perspective, getting dressed to go to work signals the importance of it. That’s where I start. There’s definitely an intersection of fashion and sports that I live my life in. There’s something professional and exciting about getting ready to go to the game, and fans seeing that as an important and special moment in your life. Of course, it’s across American sports, right? It’s fun, it’s flashy.
Inviting the fans to participate in that — I can’t wait to see what everybody shows up in on the pink carpet. I think it’s going to be really fun, a great idea. It’s another moment where you blur the line between the athlete and fan, and it’s a good way to create a cohesive community.
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Honestly, I think it’s genius. Being here in New York, seeing Gotham, getting the invite to do the fit walk and I was a little petrified. But I can’t wait to see what the fans are going to do with it.
I know the fans in LA are going to have a great time. They’re gonna blow it out of the water. It’s just our job as players to keep up.
(Photo: Angel City)
