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Jeff Kassouf
Angie and Chris Long ushered in a new era of the National Women’s Soccer League last year when, as primary owners of the Kansas City Current, they opened the league’s first purpose-built stadium. Now, the Longs are expanding their empire.
The Longs, through their family investment company Ballard Capital, have purchased Danish club HB Køge, they have revealed exclusively to ESPN. Chris Long called HB Køge “the precedent transaction” in the Long’s quest to create a global network of clubs.
“We’re not stopping here,” Chris Long told ESPN. “When we think multi club, we feel like we’ve got a blueprint with the Kansas City Current. We feel like we can take that same blueprint, use it here — although I think there’s some definitely different aspects, community-wise — and then we have some other conversations ongoing to extend it further.”
The Longs are the latest owners to join the trend of building a global multi-club network. Fellow NWSL owner Michele Kang owns three teams and counting, and Sixth Street, the majority owner of the NWSL’s Bay FC, recently announced plans to acquire more clubs and establish a global network.
The Longs will own 100% of the HB Køge’s women’s team after separating the business from the men’s side. They said they will maintain the team’s current identity. They declined to share the purchase price of HB Køge, who won three straight Danish league titles from 2021-23, leading to three consecutive UEFA Champions League berths.
The Longs said that in HB Køge — located about 30 south of Copenhagen — they saw a strong pipeline of talent development and they fell in love with a community that Chris Long compared to Kansas City’s “Midwest values.” They were embraced from their first visit to Denmark by mayor Køge mayor Marie Stærke and the women’s team’s only dedicated sponsor, Danish bank Spar Nord.
“We’ve been looking at this for a while and looked across a lot of different countries and areas, and we’re super excited about this opportunity in Denmark,” Angie Long told ESPN. “If we look at our pillars as a club, this opportunity lines up so much. It’s a place to where we think we can really attract and develop talent on the player side, also on the staff side.”
The Longs’ expectat to make HB Køge a perennial champion in Denmark and consistent UEFA Champions League participant. Chris Long said an exchange of players and staff is possible, although he noted the strength of Denmark’s league and its ability to attract top players.
What made HB Køge stand out to the Longs was the business potential. They see a significant opportunity to better commercialize a club that was not pulling “so many revenue levers,” Chris Long said — a lot like the opportunities they saw when they joined the NWSL in late 2020.
Chris Long said they will immediately double investment into HB Køge’s academy with the goal of making it “the best academy in Scandinavia,” a region historically rich with talent. They have also brought back Walid Khoury, co-founder of Southern California youth powerhouse club Slammers FC, to become the CEO of HB Køge’s women’s team. Khoury was the team’s general manager during its most recent qualification for the UEFA Champions League.
The Longs aim to increase sponsorship for the club. Through their travels and research, they have observed how many women’s teams are often treated as ad-ons to sponsorship deals primary sold for men’s teams, a practice that inherently devalues the women’s product and artificially limits its business potential.
Some of the commercial fixes are simple: Chris Long said HB Køge’s women’s team does not currently sell merchandise, a huge opportunity lost for revenue.
HB Køge’s men’s team will continue to be owned by George Altirs and his American sportswear brand Capelli Sport. Separating the businesses of the men’s and women’s teams has been “a learning curve,” Chris Long said, but it is a necessary step that the Longs expect to take again with future clubs.
The Longs have already displayed what their long-term vision looks like with the Current. They are in the middle of constructing a $1 billion Kansas City riverfront revitalization anchored around CPKC Stadium. They expect to their impact to extend into the community in Denmark, too.
Where the Longs expand to next will depend on a few factors.
There are ample global opportunities to take over a club and improve its business, Chris Long said, but there are fewer opportunities among those that have the right community support and soccer operations. HB Køge checked all three boxes for the Longs.
They still have their eyes on adding more clubs — but they are still looking for another right community and team.
“The business side, it’s wide open,” Chris Long said. “There’s just so little focus on what the women’s side can truly be from a business perspective that we know that’s going to be out there. It’s the first two [pillars] that are the ones that we’re really striving for.”
