Ron Burkle promoting San Diego Wave FC to LA couple for document worth

The San Diego Wave are being bought — and for a document worth.

Sportico reported Thursday afternoon that proprietor Ron Burkle has agreed to promote the workforce to Arthur Levine and Lauren Leichtman in two transactions totaling $113 million, essentially the most ever paid for a Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League membership. The reported deal is almost twice as a lot because the $63 million RAJ Sports activities paid to buy the Portland Thorns final yr.

A husband and spouse, Levine and Leichtman have already got bought 35 p.c of the workforce for $35 million, per Sportico. They may purchase the opposite 65 p.c for $78 million on the finish of the 2024 season. The Wave, final yr’s NWSL Protect winner and the No. 1 seed within the playoffs, open their season Friday evening with a NWSL Problem Cup match in opposition to NJ/NY Gotham FC. San Diego’s workforce is led by three of essentially the most recognizable American gamers within the sport: forwards Alex Morgan and Jaedyn Shaw and defender Naomi Girma.

Burkle, who paid $2 million in enlargement charges to convey an expert girls’s soccer workforce to San Diego, will stay the workforce’s management individual for the 2024 season.

The Wave issued a information launch saying that Burkle has introduced on the Levine/Leichtman household as “a major minority investor within the membership,” however wouldn’t touch upon Sportico’s report.

“We’re happy with the unprecedented success we’ve had as an enlargement workforce, and I’m assured that … their household’s funding will proceed to the expansion of our workforce and the San Diego group,” Burkle stated within the launch.

Leichtman stated within the launch that she was excited to “be part of forces with San Diego Wave and construct upon the spectacular basis established by Ron Burkle.” She stated the acquisition aligns together with her household’s imaginative and prescient for empowering girls and “fostering alternatives for aspiring feminine athletes.”

Co-founders of the Beverly Hills-based Levine Leichtman Capital Companions, Levine and Leichtman have a longstanding relationship with Wave president Jill Ellis relationship to her time as UCLA girls’s soccer coach. The couple are longtime Bruins donors and boosters. In 2017, Levine — a 1973 UCLA grad — and Leichtman pledged $2 million to ascertain an endowed chair in girls’s well being analysis on the college.

Within the Wave’s launch, Ellis stated Levine and Leichtman “have been nice supporters of mine for a few years, and I’ve little doubt they’ll match proper in with the San Diego Wave group, and it’s my pleasure to welcome them to the group.”