Washington Spirit fans woke up to news that yet another club has joined The Kanglomerate. Spirit owner Michele Kang has successfully added London City Lionesses to her ownership profile. Technically they’re the second club to officially join the Spirit, as her takeover of Olympique Lyonnais Fémenin (Lyon Women) is still awaiting final approval from French authorities.

Most women’s teams in England are in partnership, or at least connected to, a men’s team. The Lionesses, however, are the only fully independent club in England’s top two leagues (London City currently play in the Championship, the tier below the WSL). This standing, plus the club being based in London, was likely too intriguing for Kang to pass up.

In addition to a press release distributed by the Washington Spirit, Kang also spoke about the acquisition with The Athletic and The Washington Post. Speaking to The Athletic, Kang noted the importance of having a club in a location such as London. “As you can imagine, if you’re trying to build a preeminent women’s football organization, you have to be where the center of gravity is. England is definitely one of them. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to land, and London City Lionesses being the only independent team, it was a no-brainer.”

Another intriguing factor was likely the recent news that England’s Football Association (The FA) would be relinquishing control of the top two leagues to a new company (apparently, and hilariously, operating under the temporary title NewCo). This move allows for the league to be operated as its own business rather than relying on The FA, which shares some similarities to the separation between NWSL and U.S. Soccer ahead of the 2022 season.

“The NewCo model for BWSL [Barclays Women’s Super League] and BWC [Barclays Women’s Championship] is a great example of how women’s sports will be uplifted in England and globally,” said to The Athletic. “We need more investment focused solely on the female game so that the resources are uncompromised.”

The ultimate goal for the Lionesses is to gain promotion and compete long-term in the country’s top division, the WSL. It won’t be easy, they currently sit 9th in the Championship, eleven points from Charlton at the top. However, apart from climbing the table through on-pitch performance, London City also face the task of trying to break into a WSL that currently hosts just two clubs (Bristol City & Leicester City) who don’t have a men’s team competing in – and, crucially, receiving funds from – the Premier League, the top men’s division.

But it sounds like Kang has a plan. “We are going to figure out where we can surgically add some help here, in terms of resources, without disrupting what they’re doing,” Kang told The Athletic.

As for what Kang hopes to achieve with her aggressive multi-club ownership model, well some light was shed in her chat with The Washington Post.

“My initial vision [of] the whole multi-club model was the scale, building the scale, in terms of being able to invest in the training, the infrastructure, the training programs. All those things, it’s very hard to do that for one team because we don’t have a billion-dollar media contract,” Kang told The Washington Post. “In terms of moving women’s sports, women’s football, to the next level, I don’t think we want to do just one club at a time. We want to accelerate on a global level.”

The multi-club model has come under fire in the men’s game, with City Football Group (Manchester City, New York City FC, Melbourne City, Yokohama F. Marinos, Montevideo City, Girona FC, Sichuan Jiuniu, Mumbai City FC, Lommel SK, ESTAC, Palermo, and Bahis) and Red Bull (RB Leipzig, New York Red Bulls, Red Bull Bragantino, Red Bull Brasil, and RB Salzburg) receiving most of the ire. Part of this relates to the monoculture these groups have created, centering the group over team culture and brand identity.

Kang, to her credit, seems aware of this pitfall. The press release notes that ‘Each club in Kang’s group will retain its own established identity, respecting its heritage, community, and supporter bases.’

However, it still remains to be seen what Kang’s ownership of multiple clubs will look like in practice. While it surely widens the net of supporters and players who can receive quality investment, naturally, the size of the investment increases as well, and there could be more strain to recoup costs or to quickly achieve profitability.

With London City Lionesses now officially under Kang’s ownership we’ll likely see more of her vision unfold in real time. However, in Kang’s own word, the Spirit will remain the foundation of her growing multi-club empire. Lyon certainly has a deeper history, and history of winning, but the economics of team ownership and fan engagement are things she’s hoping to replicate across other clubs in her control.

“The level of research we can do because we have multiple teams, and we can pool the resources together, is something that if we had only the Spirit would not have been available,” Kang explained to The Washington Post. “From a business perspective, globally right now, probably the U.S. has the most advanced women’s football business economics. So we’re building that business model from the Spirit, so the Spirit will be used as sort of the foundational piece.”

There’s a lot still left to do to make the Spirit into a sustainable footballing and economic success. The team needs a coach, key player signings, a dedicated training facility in one of the priciest real estate markets in the country, and of course sustained on-pitch success. But if the aim is to accomplish this quickly and in a way that can serve as a model for other clubs, this offseason should come with lots of welcome surprises. For now, though, all we can do is keep waiting.