Sport Village Cislago, Como: Mercury/13 continues to chart an unprecedented course for both men’s and women’s football ownership by striking sponsorship deal with purpose-led transformative social media platform WeAre8 for F.C. Como Women. Zoe Kalar, CEO of WeAre8: “Change can only come from women’s football”.
On a cold January Saturday on the F.C. Como Women training grounds outside of the cinematic city of Como in Northern Italy, SoccerBible was invited to an exclusive event to witness a new chapter being written in the short, but incredible story of the independent Serie A femminile club.
As part of a first-ever friendly match between F.C. Como Women and French Division 2 club Olympique de Marseille, the club launched a new kit and title sponsorship deal with transformative social media platform WeAre8. The match was uniquely broadcast globally on women’s football broadcasting platform DAZN and their YouTube channel, also introducing an innovative broadcast format geared towards the female viewer.
F.C. Como Women’s new multi-year deal with WeAre8 marks the first time in the history of European women’s professional football that two companies led by women serve as kit partners –tech entrepreneur Zoe Kalar, founder of WeAre8, and Beatrice Casati, CEO of Casati Flock, Italian producer of high-quality flock powder.
And it also serves as a reminder that women’s football continues to be a space for transforming the blueprint for football ownership, as we know it in men’s football, by securing value-based sponsors pushing for equality on and off the pitch. A type of sponsor rarely, if ever, seen in men’s football.
WeAre8 is “how social media should be, as if TikTok, Instagram and Twitter had a love baby with a conscience”, says founder Zoe Kalar minutes before the game starts. The next day, by the majestic double staircase in Parco Civico Teresio Olivelli, nonchalantly facing Lake Como, she and the players will go on to do a photo shoot wearing the new home and away jersey with “WeAre8 – The People’s Platform” written across the chest.
The platform, which was launched in 2022 and currently has over 2 million users, is built to make social media a safe and positive space through eliminating algorithms that control what you see and feel, protecting users from toxic content through advanced AI moderation systems and launching a transformative economic model where money ends up in the pockets of content creators and users instead of a few tech giants. This also means that WeAre8 will play an active part in ensuring that both F.C. Como Women players and users who engage in ads with them generate revenue for themselves.
With the recent announcement from the king of algorithms, CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg, that fact-checkers will be removed from all Meta platforms, likely resulting in a spike in harmful content, WeAre8 could hardly have stepped on the women’s football scene at a better time. According to a report from FIFA, women footballers at the 2023 World Cup were 29 percent more likely to receive sexualised and homophobic messages than players at the 2022 Men's World Cup. Also, if in doubts whether Meta’s platforms were ever a particularly safe space for women: an early iteration of Facebook was created to rank Zuckerberg’s female classmates at Harvard.
The launch this January weekend is also confirmation that the F.C. Como Women project is not just a feminist fever dream. For those not yet in the know, the new adventure for the only 5-year-old club really took off a mere 9 months ago when multi-club ownership group Mercury/13, founded by entrepreneur and UN speaker on gender equality Victoire Cogevina Reynal and tech entrepreneur Mario Malavé, blasted on the women's football scene, pledging to invest $100 million into transforming women’s clubs and elevate their commercial value in Europe and Latin-America. Their first acquisition was F.C. Como Women (not to be mistaken with Como 1907 Women). Next in their portfolio will be a club in Spain, then England.
In European women’s football, this type of setup is like a unicorn. For one, in the five big European top tier leagues (Italy, England, Spain, Germany, France), an independent women's club is practically non-existent. The only other club currently in Serie A femminile is Naples, while all the teams currently in the English WSL are affiliated with a men's club that will already have a brand identity deeply rooted in age-old history and was originally built to cater to the needs of male players and fans.
Second, while the popularity and commercial potential of women's football is booming globally – in Europe alone, the commercial value of women’s football is expected to reach an annual value of €686 million by 2033, meaning a six-fold increase according to UEFA – financial backing of this magnitude mixed in with a multi-club ownership model is still unprecedented for any women's team anywhere in the world.
However, anyone voicing doubts of the longevity of this pioneering project were quickly silenced when F.C. Como Women announced their ground-breaking deal with Nike in August, marking the global sportswear giant’s first partnership with an independent women’s Serie A football club. This was followed by an elegant re-brand, from website to logo to kits. Then came the hiring of Ines Rovira, the first creative director in a European women’s club. That was then followed by a six-figure investment in Mercury/13 by Italy international icon Giorgio Chiellini. And just this December, two-time USWNT gold medalist Lauren Holiday joined the board of Mercury/13 as part of an investment from the American private equity fund Avenue Sports. And now, with this value-based sponsorship deal with WeAre8, the team behind the club once again charters a new course for football ownership.
“F.C. Como Women was built for brands like WeAre8 and Casati. Female visionaries that saw the world in the same way we did,” says co-founder and co-CEO of Mercury/13 Victoire Cogevina Reynal of the partnership. Ever since the launch of the investment group, Mercury/13 has sought out value-based sponsors that share the mission of elevating the women’s game and, ultimately, the emancipation of women. Which made it hard to find the right match.
“It’s still very hard to find sponsors for women’s football. It’s even harder to find value-based sponsors. There’s still such constriction. I spoke with over 100 brands (before WeAre8), and I would feel underestimated, but we made it our advantage. You blow people’s minds when they don’t expect anything from you.”
The apprehension luckily paves the way for, in a footballing context, ‘unlikely’ brands, who suddenly see women’s football as both a business opportunity and a chance to be part of something bigger:
“Businesses that care about women or have made them their main consumer never saw sports as a platform in which they had any place. Now, they see it. While the audience is not as big as in men’s football, the earned media value these brands get from associating with something like this is huge. And they get to participate in a movement. I think a lot of brands can see, especially after the Paris Olympics, that this is the way the world is moving, but they are still figuring it out.”
According to Reynal, brands shouldn’t be figuring it out for too long. “Women’s football waits for no one. We are at a moment in time where all these things are coming together at once, where women’s sports have unequivocally become a gender equality movement, and it will most likely be the most powerful movement we see in our generation. From an economic standpoint, that’s huge”.
Did Kalar of WeAre8 ever consider sponsoring a men’s team?
“I love men’s football, but change can only happen in women’s football. The men’s game is a completely different type of game. They are paid a lot of money, and the clubs make money through broadcast deals and large sponsorship deals. That’s not where the future lies. We see the broadcast deals declining, and I would argue it’s not working particularly well for the fans or the players in the men’s game either. There’s a lot of hate and abuse. But there’s too much money involved on the men’s side for them to change anything. The old world still works for them.”
“Women just get it on another level, and there’s an excitement about trying the new, because the old world is not working for them. And the players (of F.C. Como Women) are not doing anything they haven’t always done. The only difference is that now they have a gigantic social amplification and economic engine behind them to support them.”
For the F.C. Como Women players, the attention and financial backing is welcome: “Of course it adds more pressure on us, I mean, we’re playing a friendly that’s shown on DAZN. But that’s what all teams strive for, to become known. Especially in Italy where women’s football just recently became professional. You want to grow that attention. And exposure is extra important for us, because we’re playing against teams like Roma and Juventus, who already have their men’s teams that are known worldwide”, says Filipino-American forward Sarina Bolden, who scored the first goal in the 3-1 win, after the match.
Because the F.C. Como Women project is still so new, and the road uncharted, creating a club that caters to the needs of women players and fans is a build-as-we-go process on all levels. Which might create some kinks along the way, but also has certain advantages compared to more established clubs: “They are very open to feedback and interested in the players’ experience. Because it’s a new investment group and new staff, they really want to understand our wants and needs as athletes,” says American forward Alexandra Kerr who joined F.C. Como Women in November from Orlando Pride.
For Reynal and Mercury/13, every aspect of building a club for women is looked at through “a female lens”: “We’ve seen through hundreds how men’s clubs have been built. What they have done right, and what have been the pitfalls. We want to rethink how we can create a market that appeals to the other half of the world. Women have been part of an eco-system that was never built for them. In general, women consume differently than men. And so far, we’ve seen a huge copy-paste mentality within clubs. ‘If fans behave in this way on the men’s side, they are going to behave in the same way on the women’s side. ‘If male players need this type of infrastructure, training and nutrition, women are going to need the same, only, they weigh less’. And it works to a certain point. But eventually it doesn't work anymore.”
Initiatives to cater to this female lens include a trainer specialising in the physiology of women, a renovated training centre and the programme “Beyond” where players get advice on, for instance, handling their finances during and after their footballing career.
And then there is the launch of the new broadcasting format at the match against Olympique de Marseille, where Reynal debuted as head pundit. She moved freely around from pitch to booth during the match, the focus of her commentating being on the players’ stories and interviews with guest pundits. The format was almost podcast-like, and more informal than what viewers are accustomed to from traditional commentary from big broadcasters and men’s games.
“I’m sorry that I don’t know her name yet, but please let her commentate every game. Please”, one happy viewer wrote on Instagram after the match.
“The idea was really born out of having a bunch of women around the table that said, ‘I don't enjoy normal commentary’, I always wish they told me more about the players’,” says Reynal. “I’ve been a football fan my whole life, and I’ve felt the same way. This is kind of our chance to rip up what football should be and build it in favour of women on and off the pitch instead”.
Late at night, in a van home from a dinner with the team and the staff after the match, I ask Reynal if she thinks that big men's clubs with affiliated women's teams might someday take a cue from how Mercury/13s does football ownership – from entering into more conscious-based sponsorships to catering to their women players and fans. “It’s funny. Just the other day, Mario (co-CEO of Mercury/13) and I asked each other what success would look like ten years from now. And I said: it would be if a president of a men’s club called me up and asked: how do I do this?”
Imagery courtesy of F.C. Como Women.
Follow F.C. Como Women on Instagram here.