The Washington Post recently reported that Kang took over the London City Lions, an English women’s professional football team, on the 15th. Founded in 2019, London City has been suffering from severe financial difficulties recently. Fortunately, Kang’s meeting will improve the treatment of players and club officials.
The Washington Post said London City is the third team in Kang’s “global multi-club” project. Kang became the owner of the Washington Spirit in the U.S. Women’s Soccer League in February last year. Kang invested 35 million U.S. dollars to acquire a stake in the team. Kang then established a separate soccer corporation in May and acquired Olympique Lyonnais Feminine of France. Lyon is a prestigious team that has won eight UEFA Women’s Champions League titles.
Kang, who has consistently engaged in charity activities, invested a large amount of money into women’s soccer in order to increase women’s rights on the ground. Even in the U.S., the “paradise of professional sports,” the pay gap between male and female players is wide. For this reason, talented players often give up playing soccer early on. Most of all, Kang jumped into the soccer arena with confidence that women’s soccer has the potential to grow into an industry as big as men’s soccer. 메이저사이트
Kang’s dream is to run a soccer company such as City Football Group and Red Bull Football in men’s soccer. Sheikh Mansour (53), the richest man in the UAE, established a holding company called City Football Group in 2014 and acquired or bought stakes in soccer clubs in 12 countries including Manchester City (England), New York City (USA), Melbourne City (Australia), and Girona (Spain). Red Bull Football is conducting professional soccer business in four countries namely Salzburg (Austria), New York Red Bulls (USA), Bragan Tou (Brazil), and Leipzig (Germany).
“We now have three teams. Sharing infrastructure and human resources enables us to do many things,” Kang said. Kang is also paying attention to Asian, South American and African clubs. The Associated Press said that Kang’s acquisition of the soccer team is part of his mission to narrow the gap between male and female players on the ground.
Sports Illustrated in the U.S. named Kang one of the 50 influential sports players in 2023. The New York Times said, “Kang, who didn’t know Lionel Messi until a few years ago, is now a game changer in women’s soccer in the world.”
Kang is also known as an icon of self-made people in the U.S. Born in Seoul, he went to the U.S. to study abroad in 1981 when he was a student at Sogang University. “If I live like this, I will not be able to become more than a secretary. I want to live another life,” he said, before moving to the U.S. He convinced his parents to “pull in marriage funding in advance” and got into the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He paid for his living expenses by working part-time at a restaurant. He graduated early after studying hard at night to save money. He then obtained a master’s degree in business administration from Yale. After serving as vice chairman of Northrop Grumman, a global defense firm, he founded Cognosant in 2008. Cognosant is a company that provides health and safety solutions to most of the U.S. federal and state governments. In just over a decade, it has grown into a mid-sized company with 2,000 employees and annual sales of 400 million dollars.