Business
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian kept receipts from trolls who mocked his bet on women’s sports: ‘I tag them and thank them for the motivation’
Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit who is married to tennis great Serena Williams, started investing in women’s sports in 2020. And it all began with a tweet.
In March 2019, the multimillionaire wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter, female soccer stars “should get paid what they deserve” and that women’s sports is a “massively undervalued asset.”
“The argument that women’s sports don’t bring in the same dollars or viewers is inane,” he wrote—and in came ridicule from readers who didn’t believe that people would want to pay to watch women play.
One user clapped back, “if you think this imbalance is temporary then you have a great opportunity to invest accordingly.” And that’s exactly what he did.
Today, he’s the founding control owner of Angel City FC and Los Angeles Golf Club, and creator of professional women’s track and field event series Athlos. Earlier this year, Ohanian became a minority investor and board member in Britain’s Chelsea FC, and most recently, he expanded his portfolio into professional women’s volleyball.
With Ohanian’s investments growing exponentially, now he’s rubbing it in his naysayers’ faces. He revealed on stage at Fortune’s Global Forum that he never forgot getting “savagely trolled” and has been keeping those who sent him hate on social media in the loop on his success.
“I saved all those tweets from all the haters who said I was an idiot. No one watches women’s sports. You’re gonna lose all your money,” Ohanian revealed. And every time we hit another revenue milestone, I tag them and thank them for the motivation.”
Silicon Valley style growth—but it’s actually women’s sports
While pointing out how quickly his investments are paying off, Ohanian suggested that the current momentum behind women’s sports is more like the scale of a Silicon Valley startup.
“We’re a ways from overheated,” he insisted. “You’re seeing the rise in valuations, the rise in team revenues… that has grown so fast because we’re seeing just how suppressed the investments were historically. It cost me a million dollars—that was the expansion fee, and I overpaid in January of 2020—to start Angel City, that same League, the NWSL, recently charged $150 million to a group in Denver.”
“So expansion fees going up 150x in four or five years—that sounds like a tech story. It’s a women’s sports story.”
Thank you, Kevin! It’s been one of the biggest honors of my career and we’re still just getting started. It began with this tweet in March of 2019. Alexis Ohanian 🗽 (@alexisohanian) October 13, 2025
The growing sector’s revenue is expected to hit a record-breaking $2.35 billion this year—a whopping 25% year-over-year increase, according to a 2025 Deloitte report. But that’s not even 3% of the $80 billion in total for both men’s and women’s sports.
For Ohanian and others invested in women’s sports, it means the market is only scratching the surface of its potential—and the “trolls” can expect to get a front row seat (in the form of a tag notification) as the wins pile up.
