Assia Grazioli-Venier had a front row seat to Michele Kang’s contentious acquisition of the Washington Spirit in 2022.
When Assia Grazioli-Venier invested in the NWSL’s Washington Spirit in 2020, the club was valued at about $5 million. Today, four years after a contentious saga that led to Michele Kang becoming majority owner, the team’s estimated value is $215 million, an increase of about 4,200%.
Kang acquired majority control of the club in a $35 million deal in 2022, a transition that was anything but smooth. The seller, Steve Baldwin, agreed to sell the team amid controversy, including allegations of harassment by the Spirit’s then-coach, Richie Burke, who was removed and banned from working in the NWSL following an investigation. (The league’s board of governors announced in September 2021 it had determined the Spirit and its ownership “failed to act in the best interests of the league.”)
Just a few months before the Spirit situation exploded, then-commissioner Lisa Baird resigned over a similar scandal that engulfed a different team, the North Carolina Courage.
“A change needed to happen. And it’s not personal to Steve,” Grazioli-Venier, cofounder of Muse Capital and Muse Sport, told Front Office Sports on a recent episode of Portfolio Players. “There were a lot of bad things happening at the NWSL then. Luckily, what was happening on our side was not even remotely close to any of the sexual harassment stuff, thank god. But when I heard that things weren’t being run properly, I remember thinking, ‘Not on my watch.’”
