Montpellier just the start as Smith aims to ‘walk the walk’ in multi-club ownership

“I wanted to try to build something that I wish had existed when I was playing.”

At the core, that is what has driven Bex Smith, the former New Zealand captain, to set up a multi-club ownership group and attempt to create environments for women’s teams that her generation could only dream of. On Wednesday, her vision took a step towards reality as her investment group Crux Football completed the purchase of their first team, buying a 100% stake in the French club Montpellier.

Smith says the acquisition of more clubs will follow and, while Crux Football is a new name for the sport, there are familiar figures among their investors, not least the legendary former USA captain Julie Foudy. But Smith, who founded the company and is the chief executive, is calling the shots and, in an interview with the Guardian, the two-time Olympian explains why Montpellier and why France but also – given all the different careers a retired player could try to pursue after hanging up their boots – why club ownership?

“As a tiny kid, I never actually wanted to be a professional footballer. That was not really my dream – I just kind of fell in love with football [but] I always thought I wanted to be an entrepreneur like my parents and do something that I really was passionate about,” says Smith, who has a masters degree in psychology and initially moved into a competitions manager role at Fifa after retiring, working on the 2019 Women’s World Cup where one of the hosts cities was, incidentally, Montpellier.

“I thought: ‘How can you make the biggest impact in the game?’ That’s always been my goal,” says Smith. “How can we get positive, sustainable growth into the women’s game? Now I really feel like the club women’s game is exploding. Some clubs, in some ways, do really great things, but then often they’ll be good at one side like the commercial or media, but maybe not necessarily as good on the pitch, or they’re really good on the pitch but not really necessarily taking care of the media or the visibility of the players, the storytelling, commercial partnerships. And so I really wanted to try to have a go at running clubs in a way that, from a player perspective, I would have liked.

“Our model is very player-centric – we will start from the players first and give them what they need. From there, you build the team around the team. What I see when I talk to players and hear people in women’s clubs, is they always say it’s the same issue: ‘We don’t have enough resources. It could be so much better. It could be so much bigger.’ And the fanbase is dying to see more of their team in a better way, in a more professional way.”

Smith sees potential in Montpellier, who finished sixth in the French top flight last term and this season are currently 10th of 12 teams, after losing all three of their opening games. She says their “Barcelona-quality pitches” were one of many attractions, and more broadly felt the investments coming into the French league made it a great time to enter that market. To try to ensure they have local expertise, they have appointed Paul Bouffard, previously credited with successfully growing Bordeaux’s women’s team between 2018 and 2022, and the new president of Montpellier Féminines.

Smith has secured investment in Crux Football from several notable figures, including the former Netflix vice-president Cindy Holland and her partner, Anne Imhof, who were previously early-stage investors in the NWSL club Angel City. Also part of the group is Ted Knutson, the founder and chief executive of StatsBomb, a huge player in the football data industry, and the global head of sport at EssenceMediacom, Misha Sher, who has dedicated many years of his career to women’s football and has worked with player and coach clients including the former Arsenal manager and current San Diego Wave head coach, Jonas Eidevall. It is a list of names that will mean people take notice. Yet, they are in an increasingly crowded environment, with more and more investors trying to buy women’s clubs.

The American businesswoman Michele Kang has bought OL Lyonnes, Washington Spirit and London City, and another multi-club ownership group, Mercury13, added the English second-tier club Bristol City to their portfolio in September. Smith believes more and more multi-club groups could follow in the women’s game: “The trajectory has been phenomenal and so quick, those that were offered teams five years ago are kicking themselves because they didn’t get in.

“I do think that there’s going to be a massive influx of investment into the women’s game. I think the things that sort of differentiate us from potentially others – and by the way, I think it’s amazing that there are others out there that are investing – is what I’ve experienced and that’s through the lens of being a player, wanting to set global standards for what players need.”

What next, and where next? Smith says it will not be long before more clubs follow. “We are moving quite quickly on that front. Potentially already as early as early next year, it’s possible that we could be closing our second club. It’s possible that even the third club could be somewhere around summer or fall [autumn] of next year. So we are looking to move quite fast because our model is about scale and it’s about bringing all of the skill set and expertise that we have into as many clubs as we can.

“But we also want to be wary that we do it right, that we spend the time that we need to with Montpellier because it’s a hefty club. That is for sure our focus right now. We’ve been trying to stay a little bit covert and we have been a bit quiet because I like to walk the walk before we talk the talk.”

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