NBA All-Star and Olympic gold medalist Jimmy Butler joined the NWSL’s San Diego Wave as a minority investor, including his identify to a rising listing of achieved athletes who’ve acquired a stake in ladies’s soccer membership.
Butler joins Alex Morgan, the retired Wave participant and two-time Ladies’s World Cup winner with the U.S. ladies’s nationwide workforce, as one of many high-profile minority house owners within the workforce. The basketball participant is a identified soccer fan and has a house simply exterior of the southern California metropolis, his funding within the Wave serving as a gathering level for these two issues.
“Soccer has been a ardour of mine for a very long time, and being a part of the sport in a significant means has all the time been a dream,” Butler stated in an announcement issued by the membership on Monday. “San Diego has grow to be a metropolis near my coronary heart, and I am proud to put money into a Membership that’s pushing boundaries, constructing one thing lasting, and setting a brand new commonplace for what ladies’s sports activities will be each on and off the pitch.”
Butler provides his funding within the Wave to a rising enterprise portfolio, led by Bigface, the espresso way of life model he co-founded in 2020 initially as a means of promoting espresso to different NBA gamers within the NBA Bubble in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Warriors star additionally has a number of different investments in companies throughout the sports activities, way of life and wellness industries.
“Jimmy is a competitor and visionary who shares our values and our ambition to develop this Membership,” Lauren Leichtman, controlling co-owner of the Wave, stated. “He brings a world perspective, a deep respect for the athlete’s journey, and a artistic spirit that completely enhances what we’re constructing right here at Wave FC.”
The Levine Leichtman household workplace accomplished its takeover of the Wave in October 2024 for a deal reportedly price a complete valuation of $120 million, with Morgan becoming a member of the possession group months later.
The Wave have booked a spot within the 2025 NWSL playoffs and sit in fifth place with yet another match within the common season to go. They are going to subsequent play the NWSL Defend-winning Kansas Metropolis Present on Nov. 2, and a win might take them as excessive as third place within the desk and assure them internet hosting rights for the quarterfinals.
