Barcelona – Apr 1st, 2022 – Victoire Cogevina, founder and CEO of Gloria, declared today her company’s commitment to invest €10M to acquire the title sponsorship rights to the first Spanish professional women’s football league. The groundbreaking pledge, made at a press conference in Barcelona, is subject to the confirmation of the candidacy of Maria Teixidor and Reyes Bellver. Teixidor and Bellver, who head the campaign under the name ‘Time Is Now: Commitment and Ambition’, contacted Cogevina with their proposal for Gloria Football’s participation. The figure represents a significant increase of the €1.2M that Iberdrola paid to sponsor the league in 2016.
Said Cogevina, “As Gloria Football is a company founded and led by a woman, this project aligns with the values and objectives of the Gloria platform, as well as being launched in a similar time frame. Thus my investors and I have, naturally, decided to partake in the growth of women’s football in Spain. By doing so we want to show our respect and admiration for all the women who have made history in this country. The players, trainers, and management are the protagonists of this growth and Gloria’s investment will be dedicated to supporting and promoting their first step into the professional world. Economic support is essential for women’s professional football to continue to grow, and being title-sponsors of the first professional women’s league is our way of contributing to making this project a reality.”
Cogevina traveled to Barcelona to be present at the FC Barcelona versus Real Madrid Champions League match, which took place yesterday at the Camp Nou stadium. The match, played in front of a world record crowd of 91,553 passionate fans, marked a new milestone for Spanish women’s football and received an unprecedented level of global press-coverage.
On March 14th of this year the Spanish sports governing body “Consejo Superior de Deportes” (Superior Sports Council) approved the statutes necessary to professionalize the competition. In the coming days the council is expected to announce the timeline and requirements for the first elections of the new association, which will be created to run the first professional women’s football league in Spain. Within this context, the Presidential and Vice-presidential candidate presented to Gloria Football (an American company with Argentinian roots) their business and development plan, in the event of their election.
Maria Teixidor is a lawyer and former member of FC Barcelona’s front office from 2015 to 2020, while Reyes Bellver is a lawyer specializing in football and President of the “Leadership Woman Football” platform. This Thursday at Juno House they jointly presented their project to head the first Spanish women’s professional football league to an audience of business people, national and international investors, as well as football industry professionals. During the event, they presented the plans for their candidacy and articulated the base-ideas of their project, which they defined as “independent” as well as having “a unique identity, visibility, investment potential, innovation, and sustainability” as the pillars of the project.
About Victoire Cogevina Reynal
After co-founding the first female owned and operated football player representation agency, Cogevina pivoted to becoming a Silicon Valley football technology entrepreneur, with her platform Gloria Football striving to become the next home of football online. She is also an activist for gender equality in football, working together with UN Women as well as sitting on the board of WiST (Women in Sports Tech).
About Gloria Football
Gloria Football is a Silicon Valley technology company building a social media platform for football fans across the globe. With an audience of already over 350,000 followers on Instagram, Gloria has rapidly become a household name in football. The company sees inclusion as one of its core values, and is committed to supporting the growth of women’s football.
Gloria is backed by a world-class team of knowledgeable investors from the fields of both technology and football, including: Alexis Ohanian (776 Fund and owner of Angel City), Assia Grazioli-Venier (Muse Capital, Washington Spirit owner and member of Juventus Board of Directors), Garry Tan (Initialized Capital), Guru Gowrappan (CEO of Verizon Media), and Peter Tomozawa (Seattle Sounders president and owner, member of LA Olympic Committee) and Razmig Hovaghimian (Rakuten board of directors and owner of Washington Spirit).
Investors
Among the notable investors confirming their support for the project are co-founder of Muse Capital, Assia Grazioli-Venier who has confirmed Muse Capital’s intention to contribute €40M to the general development of the Spanish women’s football league.
Grazioli-Venier has had a successful career in the consumer technology industry, as investor and advisor. Parallel to Muse Capital’s early stage investments, Assia was one of the first women to be a board member of a European first division club at Juventus FC (2012-2021). Assia has sustained a number of achievements that made her a leader in the battle for gender-equality in this sport. Muse Capital, with co-founder Rachel Springate, supports projects aligned with these goals. In 2019 Assia became initially an advisor and then an investor to Gloria Football.
Assia Grazioli-Venier is a venture capital investor and advisor to new high growth technology companies, entertainment companies, and technology businesses with ample experience in disruptive technology. A firm believer in the economic value of diversity in business, she is a board member at AllRaise as well as Impact46. She is also an investor in the National Women’s Football League club the Washington Spirit.
Grazioli-Venier says about Gloria: “The ability to launch the league with a record breaking licensing deal, plus a content platform dedicated to us with already 350k instagram followers, is an opportunity we simply could not pass up. Rachel and I look forward to seeing this deal become reality.”
Media Contact
Company Name: Gloria App
Contact Person: Victoire Cogevina Reynal
Email: Send Email
Country: United States
Website: https://www.gloria.app/