LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 18: Minority shareholder of Chelsea, Alexis Ohanian throughout The Adobe Girls’s FA Cup Closing match between Chelsea and Manchester United at Wembley Stadium on Could 18, 2025 in London, England (Picture by Eddie Keogh – The FA/The FA by way of Getty Photos)
Eddie Keogh – The Fa | The Fa Assortment | Getty Photos
Alexis Ohanian is increasing his funding portfolio in ladies’s sports activities with a brand new stake in skilled ladies’s volleyball.
League One Volleyball (LOVB) introduced on Wednesday that Ohanian’s funding agency, Seven Seven Six, will lead the possession group of a brand new skilled workforce, LOVB Los Angeles Volleyball. The funding comes as volleyball has seen speedy development throughout all ranges of play.
Monetary phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
“We’re excited to make LOVB the third jewel in Seven Seven Six’s LA sports activities household,” Ohanian mentioned in a press release. “Volleyball is such a pure addition for Southern California, which has already confirmed how warmly it embraces new professional sports activities groups.”
Ohanian can be an investor in two different California groups: the NWSL’s Angel Metropolis FC and TGL’s LA Golf Membership.
LOVB was based in 2020 and options each youth {and professional} volleyball. The league has secured media rights offers with ESPN and Comcast spinoff Versant, in addition to as high-profile sponsors reminiscent of Skims.
LOVB has raised greater than $160 million as of November from traders that embody Gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn, former WNBA champion Candace Parker and Kevin Durant-founded Boardroom Sports activities Holdings.
Ohanian, a Reddit co-founder and the husband of tennis legend Serena Williams, has turn into one of many prime traders in ladies’s sports activities lately.
His rapidly rising sports activities portfolio additionally features a minority stake in Chelsea FC ladies’s soccer in addition to Athlos, the ladies’s observe and area startup he based in 2024. He is additionally a main donor of the ladies’s basketball program at his alma mater, the College of Virginia. Ohanian’s spouse, Williams, can be an investor within the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo, which can start play in 2026, and 3-on-3 ladies’s basketball league Unequalled.
LOVB Houston exterior hitter Sara Loda (17) and LOVB Houston center blocker Amber Igiede (3) leap for a block try on a spike from LOVB Austin reverse hitter Madisen Skinner (16) through the League One Volleyball match between LOVB Austin and LOVB Houston February 19,, 2025, at H-E-B Heart in Cedar Park, Texas.
Icon Sportswire | Icon Sportswire | Getty Photos
Ohanian’s funding in volleyball comes as the game has seen upticks in participation and viewership.
At the highschool stage, greater than 479,000 ladies participated in volleyball through the 2023-24 season, marking an all-time excessive, in keeping with the Nationwide Federation of State Excessive College Associations.
ESPN has reported report viewership for sure ladies’s volleyball video games.
Throughout LOVB’s inaugural season, the league offered out a number of matches and merchandise gross sales exceeded $1 million, the league mentioned.
Ohanian instructed CNBC in August that he believes ladies’s sports activities is an amazing enterprise alternative.
“We’re simply beginning to see what occurs when these leagues and these groups and these athletes are getting the funding of assets, of publicity, and {dollars},” Ohanian mentioned.
