London City Lionesses' Rise: Impact of Alexia Putellas

Martin Semmens leans back in his chair at Hayes Lane, the grin giving him away before he says a word. The London City Lionesses chief executive has just been told the club’s Instagram account has racked up 34 million hits since Alexia Putellas lifted the Ballon d’Or on Monday night. It is only Thursday.

For a club that, two and a half years ago, were eighth in the second tier, the numbers feel almost absurd. So does the reality on the pitch. On Sunday, Manchester City come to Bromley in a meeting of two sides who between them boast seven of the top 30 players in the Ballon d’Or rankings. A match with that kind of star power, Semmens says, is “awesome for the WSL”.

From the outside, London City’s rise can look like a trick of the light. An independent women’s club, without a men’s team attached, owned by the US businesswoman Michele Kang, now sitting third in the top flight and preparing to face one of the game’s modern superpowers. Inside the building, the mood is very different.

Putellas changed it.

“The environment today feels like it can beat Man City on Sunday and that’s a lot down to her,” Semmens says. The impact has been commercial, cultural, psychological. “Her impact on our commercial business is extraordinary. From a leadership point of view, she allows us to start thinking about really winning.”

A World Cup winner with Spain, a four-time European champion with Barcelona, and a global brand in her own right, Putellas arrived in London carrying more than trophies. Her 3.7 million Instagram followers outstrip those of a men’s club the size of Porto. That reach has translated directly into money.

London City say her presence was pivotal in landing what they claim is the biggest front-of-shirt deal in the women’s game, a Nike agreement they value at more than the $4m (£3m) a year sponsorship of the new NWSL franchise in Atlanta. For a club that only recently climbed out of the Championship, the figure is staggering.

“It’s insanely big,” Semmens says. They chose a route that went against the grain. “Our view on how to run this business, rightly or wrongly, was to invest first, invest in everything to make it awesome, and then the commercial deal will be big. The other way, of: ‘Let’s sit back, let’s grow a fanbase, let’s wait for the money to come’ – we don’t have the patience for that.”

Kang certainly didn’t. “Michele’s vision was: ‘I’m going to invest now to prove that we can bring these deals in.’ That deal allows us to kick forward, it allows us to keep investing in players and infrastructure, because without it, we’re just burning Michele’s money, which is not the plan.”

Even with that backing, prising Putellas from Barcelona after 14 years was never going to be simple. Semmens, previously Southampton’s chief executive, remembers the early talks clearly. “The conversation went: ‘Wait until I’ve finished winning a Champions League with Barcelona and then we’ll have a conversation,’ which we loved and we respected, but we always had a feeling she would come.”

What sold her on the project? Semmens lists the pillars. Independence. Identity. Location. Ambition.

“I think she had bought into four or five significant things. One, that we are independent, we’re a women’s-first environment. [Two] there’s a lot of power in coming to London, as a city. The WSL is important – people see WSL as the growth brand. And, after that, Michele had an unbelievably massive impact [on Putellas’s decision]. Alexia said to me: ‘Well, she said she was going to do all this stuff and she’s done it. So I want to be part of that.’”

Legacy mattered too. London City can offer something Barcelona never could: the chance to build a club almost from scratch in one of the world’s great sporting markets. “It allows her to have a legacy in the future – she will grow this club to a point where she’s creating a pathway for the next young players to come through in London.”

Ambition on this scale comes at a cost. The rest of the WSL sat up when London City’s accounts showed an operating loss more than 10 times their revenue for the 2024‑25 season, the year they won promotion as second-tier champions. Eyebrows did not so much raise as shoot upwards.

Since then, the financial landscape has tightened. Salary cap rules in the WSL now state that a club’s player wage bill cannot exceed 80% of revenue, plus up to £4m or a further 25% of revenue, whichever is higher. Last season, when London City finished sixth, the league’s handbook was clear: no punishments for breaches of that cap for that campaign only. From this term, points deductions are on the table.

It made boosting commercial income non-negotiable. It also raised a blunt question: were London City within the rules last year?

“We are 100% within the rules, we will always be,” Semmens says. “It’s so important to Michele.” The plan, he insists, is not a vanity project. “The goal of the business is to be profitable within five years,” he says, likening the recent surge of spending to a “start-up fund”.

“The [salary cap] rules were set up with a clear understanding that they wouldn’t come until this year. The handbook is 100% clear. We want to see investment coming into the women’s game. Anything that kind of restricts positive and good investment obviously worries [me] but there is a need for rules and we’re 100% fine with that. We are super-transparent. We can reassure the fans that we are financially viable, sustainable, and we’ve made serious investments over the last two years to be profitable and successful in the future.”

Regulation is not the only off-pitch issue looming. If London City stay in the top three, another question arrives: can they even play in the Women’s Champions League?

Kang also owns OL Lyonnais, the record eight-time European champions. Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules are designed for exactly that scenario. Semmens, though, sounds confident.

“One hundred per cent, it can be resolved,” he says. The argument from London City’s side is that the women’s model is different from the men’s. “We will continue to argue the case that you should be able to [invest into multiple clubs] to see the women’s game accelerated. It’s not about exchanging players like the men’s game. It’s not about one club dominating and the other being a feeder club. It’s a different model but we fully understand and respect the rules.”

The club are already preparing for the legal and structural work that would be needed. “Therefore, we will set ourselves up in a way where we’re allowed to and can compete in Europe together. There are clear rules, clear precedents in the men’s game and clear things you can do to allow both teams to flourish. We’re fully aware of that and we’ll comply with the rules.”

For now, the focus is simpler: stay with the heavyweights. London City sit three points behind Chelsea and Manchester City. Semmens is not shy about where he wants them to live in the table.

The aim, he says, is to “build a squad that is consistently in the top three”. That is why Putellas is here. Why Nike are on the front of the shirt. Why Kang’s money has been poured into a once‑modest club playing at Hayes Lane.

On Sunday, the project gets another kind of test. “This is probably the No 1 game in the women’s game in the world this weekend,” Semmens says. A bold line, but it lands with conviction.

“That’s what we want to be: on the map.”