Bay Collective, the multi-club ownership group (MCO) backed by U.S. investment firm Sixth Street and headed by Kay Cossington, has completed its majority takeover of Sunderland Women.The deal, agreed in April, even after an initial exclusivity period between parties ended in February, has been granted Women’s Super League (WSL) approval. Around 80 per cent of Sunderland Women is now owned by Bay Collective, with the Wearside club retaining a minority interest.This latest move continues a flurry of recent investment activity around the women’s game in England, with Sunderland the fourth Premier League club to sell a share in their women’s team to an external party in the past two years.Unlike at Chelsea, Aston Villa and Everton before them, Sunderland did not first undertake an internal restructuring of where the team sat in their corporate structure. A bottom-line benefit will be obtained but, it is understood, was not a factor in the decision to sell and was not needed at a club which entered the Premier League in 2025-26 with low historic losses and plenty of headroom under financial rules.Instead, this deal represents Bay Collective’s entry into an English market plenty remain keen to tap.The Athletic has spoken exclusively to the key parties in a deal which all involved hope will propel Sunderland Women back to the top tier of the Women’s Super League, a division they have not inhabited since 2017 — and more beyond that.Kay Cossington is excited.Her enthusiasm punctures a grey midweek day, both in London, where Cossington is based, and in the north east of England, where she has made a growing number of visits in the past eight months, with plenty to come.“We really believe in the DNA and identity of the club,” she tells The Athletic, two weeks on from that April announcement. “Sunderland has such a rich history, produced many, many Lionesses, and has incredible infrastructure. It has the insane support of a fanbase which is really important to us.”Cossington has been the head of Bay Collective since June 2025 and the Sunderland purchase marks the first addition to a portfolio which began in 2023 with San Francisco’s Bay FC in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). More are expected to follow.How long were Sunderland a target club?“In August, September last year, there were good conversations with the club on their ambition for the women’s game. Those conversations were really rich and authentic, especially knowing the club as well as I do, having worked with many players that were in the academy way back.”Cossington spent 20 years at the English FA in roles which saw her move from coaching youth teams (including a 2009 under-19 European Championship-winning side which boasted Lucy Bronze and Jordan Nobbs, then both of Sunderland), all the way up to the post of women’s technical director. The appointment of Sarina Wiegman as national team coach was a particularly resounding success. Cossington was awarded an MBE for services to football in 2024.Kay Cossington received an MBE for service to football in 2024 (Andrew Matthews – WPA Pool/Getty Images)Now, she is tasked with heading up an MCO that has plenty of financial muscle behind it.Sunderland’s men’s team has been transformed under the chairmanship of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and, though the women’s team has not mirrored their ascent since he arrived in early 2021, marked improvements have been made. Spending collapsed to near-zero with the previous ownership group; under Louis-Dreyfus there have been continued increases, albeit their budget remains one of the lowest in the two WSL tiers.Sixth Street paid a then-record $53million (£40m) expansion fee for Bay FC to join the NWSL three years ago, and other football investments have hardly skimped headlines either. Big money has been spent on revenue-sharing agreements with both Barcelona and Real Madrid.Money will evidently flow to Sunderland Women, but Cossington stresses the team won’t just see wads of cash thrown at it.“Will we see increased investment? Yes, of course,” she says. “But it won’t be a large amount all in one go. We want to build this in a sustainable way.“People ask me a lot about speed (of progress) and what we’re planning. We are going to invest sensibly. We’re going to build infrastructure and platforms and foundations. Will we see a high volume (go) into player salaries in year one? No. But we’ll see a difference, and a difference in all of the other components as well.”While there is talk of caution, Bay Collective are clearly not here to make up the numbers. Already, high-profile hires are being made.Cossington is the obvious but another recent joiner was Hannah Forshaw, who arrived earlier this year as a senior adviser. Forshaw was Everton Women’s CEO last season, and previously spent over a decade at Liverpool, around half of it as vice-president of club operations. She is helping with the transition process at Sunderland and now the deal has completed, teams across the club’s commercial and football operations are to be built out.It will be done under Bay Collective’s hand but a minority stake means Sunderland retain a key role too.Tom Burwell became Sunderland men’s team’s interim CEO in March, a position since made permanent. “There was never going to be a scenario where we sold 100 per cent,” he tells The Athletic in the bowels of the Stadium of Light, a few hours before a Premier League game with Nottingham Forest.That, says Burwell, helps explain why the deal took a while to complete, with the transaction distinct from many majority takeovers.“There were complexities in negotiating how somebody would come in and buy control, but not end up with all of the control you and I would normally expect. We were selling 80 per cent in an institution governed by a wider ecosystem.”The partnership manifests itself in the form of five commercial contracts agreed between Bay Collective and Sunderland. They instruct, for example, rights around using the club’s intellectual property or how commercial deals may be split. The work done has put long-term arrangements in place and will drive a professionalisation of the women’s team.“In a world where women’s sport is continuing to grow,” says Burwell, “I think we recognise we probably were not best placing ourselves for that growth. Whether that’s funding, people, resource, integration with the men’s club, any of those; it was about prioritising that or others prioritising that where we couldn’t.”Sunderland’s Katy Watson celebrates scoring against Newcastle in March (Stu Forster/Getty Images)Those agreements will also ensure logjams don’t occur when it comes to works now planned to improve infrastructure. At Bay FC, Sixth Street are investing in a state-of-the-art performance centre, due to open in 2027. No such blueprints are in place on Wearsid but it speaks to the extent of the group’s ambitions.Sunderland Women already inhabit the club’s Academy of Light training base and much discussion, says Cossington, has centred on “how we can maximise that for the women’s team, but under the ‘one club’ umbrella”.Burwell concurs: “We’ve put in governance that sits around that. We’ve got a huge amount of space that has the opportunity for further development for the women’s programme.”He arrived at Sunderland via Bia Sports Group (BSG), which oversees Sunderland’s owners’ sporting investments. Notably, BSG managed the women’s team sales process.“It’s an indicator of where the football club was,” says Burwell. “There wasn’t an investment professional (at the club), so the expertise to actually complete a transaction with a private equity firm like Sixth Street needed to be from outside the club.” Other BSG figures involved in the deal, Mike Papadimitriou and Scott McCubbin, also hold high-ranking positions at Sunderland.All parties are coy on the price of the 80 per cent stake — “a revenue multiple we’re very proud of” was as far as Burwell would venture on a recent episode of the Business of Sport podcast (Sunderland Women’s revenue in 2024-25 was £872,000) — and there is nothing specifically earmarked for the proceeds.“We have an overall budget for the club and we will continue to operate that way. We’ve not ring-fenced anything.”Sunderland AFC’s latest accounts showed £19.8million ($26.4m) in interest-free debt owed to the club’s owners at the end of July 2025, a figure which hadn’t moved in a year but which was now free of the past accompanying intention it “will be converted to equity at a later date”. Might the proceeds from the women’s team sale be used to repay that debt?Burwell says it was never a consideration. “That’s not a conversation we’ve had as the football club, or as BSG (the deal) came from recognising the opportunities in women’s sports were probably not delivered by ourselves in the best possible way.”One key area is the pathway offered to local youngsters. Sunderland has a rich history of developing female talent; Bronze, Nobbs, Jill Scott, Demi Stokes, Lucy Staniforth, Poppy Pattinson, Carly Telford, Lionesses all, each spent time at the club’s academy as youngsters.England’s Lucy Bronze is a product of the Sunderland academy (Rafa Babot/Getty Images)That academy is split between the Academy of Light and the Beacon of Light, which houses the Foundation of Light charity. Younger age groups inhabit the latter as currently, the main training base isn’t set up to accommodate the full gamut of girls’ teams.“The Foundation has always led on girls’ football,” Jamie Wright, the charity’s chief operating officer and deputy CEO, tells The Athletic. “We’re hoping we can still play a big part in this new dawn with Bay Collective.”The work of the Foundation can hardly be overstated. “We’ve got over 800 girls taking part in weekly training programmes now,” Wright says. “Sunderland has always been at the forefront of the women’s pathway in the north east.” When funding has not been available from elsewhere, the charity has filled the void.The arrival of new figures and new money will change matters. The Foundation was not involved in sale discussions, though all three parties spoke of a desire to work together and Cossington was glowing about existing player development, highlighting Sunderland’s as “unique” and something which attracted Bay Collective to Wearside.“We love the passion of the academy and youth development, and player development. That’s something you can’t rush. We want to build an academy this community can be proud of.”That academy looks destined to come together under one roof eventually, as new funds improve the scope of what is possible.“We’ve had past conversations with Alex (Clark, women’s team general manager) about how we make the pathway more sustainable,” says Wright. “We can’t fully fund that girls programme without donations. We relied on a very generous donation from a supporter of the women’s team and the foundation to fund the academy for the last three years.”The private contribution stemmed from showcasing the girls teams at half-time during a men’s game, and though it would be a wrench to relinquish a programme the Foundation has overseen for many years, Wright is realistic.“It’s a funny one because you feel like you’re giving it up but ideally, you want the academy to go to the club. You want the girls to have the same opportunities the boys have had.”Sensible investment is the message espoused, with Cossington referencing “patient capital”, but she also acknowledges wider economics in the women’s game. “The world around us is moving at pace and we have a very clear plan on how we can build a sustainable, successful club, (but) we understand we need to invest ahead of revenue.”And new partnerships provoke broad thoughts.Sunderland Women currently play the bulk of their games at Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground, a 2,500-capacity (250-seat) venue eight miles south of the city centre. The team enjoys a smattering of matches at the rather more grandiose Stadium of Light; if promotion to the WSL is achieved, agreement is in place for all league games to played at the men’s home.Sunderland Women currently play most home games at Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground (Stu Forster/Getty Images)“We have a groundshare agreement and a commitment to support the women’s team with their need for a world-class stadium,” says Burwell. Would it make sense to instead move to a smaller, purpose-built home? “Those questions are the reason we asked for them to be our investors: they’re the experts in women’s football.”It is a distant thought. For now, Cossington emphasises “obsessing on the process” and three stages of development: optimising what they have already, innovating on top of that to win more on the pitch (promotion is hoped for “as early as is feasibly possible”), and, finally, “How do we transform Sunderland Women so one day we turn out to a full stadium and it’s an incredible experience?”.“This is a really bold statement but I’d love to be sitting there one day and the Stadium of Light is sold out and everyone’s coming to watch the women play.”