Women’s basketball is growing, and that has gotten legendary tennis star Serena Williams interested in the sport now. She wants to own a WNBA team, adding to her already rich portfolio of sports teams Angel City FC and Los Angeles Golf Club. Her passion for sports is an undying one, something that even runs in her family.
Her husband Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six is also named after the origin year of the Olympics. He supports his wife in all these endeavors as a proud husband.
Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian’s 6-year-old daughter Olympia Ohanian, who has also been named after the Olympics, is a part-owner of both Angel City FC and Los Angeles Golf Club. Last year on June 2023, Alexis Ohanian took to X and announced Olympia as the youngest owner of a professional sports team.
Announcing my fellow co-owner of @wearelagc… @OlympiaOhanian!
Olympia is the youngest owner in professional sports (@weareangelcity) and is now the youngest 2-team owner in professional sports.
She'll be joined by her future sibling 🥳 pic.twitter.com/wNG8Ud22l4
— Alexis Ohanian 🇦🇲 (@alexisohanian) June 8, 2023
After Olympia, Serena and Alexis decided to also add their youngest daughter, Adira as a part-owner of both teams as well earlier this year. It made Adira the youngest ever sports team owner. Speaking to Amanda Davies of CNN, Serena Williams recently revealed why she decided to make their daughters invest in sports so early in their lives –
“It’s how I was raised when I was young. My dad made us open our own bank accounts and I’m talking like we were super young. Obviously, he and my mom had to co-sign, but we had $100. We were literally five or less, and we understood the importance of ownership,” said Williams to CNN.
Williams took learnings from her own life and applied them to her daughters. Anybody who knows about Williams’ upbringing or has seen the movie King Richard, will know about the sacrifices her father made to put his daughters on the tennis map. Williams was born in Michigan and then moved to Compton, California.
Compton was a place that had many ghettos in the 1980s, and it demanded anyone growing up there to be mentally and physically tough. Richard Williams ensured his daughters Venus and Serena absorbed that atmosphere and learned to be tough.
From there, they moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, to ensure Serena and Venus Williams got quality tennis training. Even the, Richard made sure that both Serena and Venus valued and respected money and learnt to be financially independent.
However, Williams is aware that this won’t come for free. She wants her daughters to earn every penny that comes their way and work hard towards it.
She continued, “And so I think that she … will always know the importance of being an entrepreneur, being an owner and the role that it’s going to play because believe me, she’s going to work for it as soon as she can … this isn’t free. She has to work for that. And I think she will embrace that.”
“I think women’s sport is having a moment that it always should’ve had.”
CNN Exclusive: 23-time grand slam champion Serena Williams talks to @AmandaDCNN about the rise of women’s sport and revealed her interest in owning a WNBA team. pic.twitter.com/FwD7iJXAVE
— CNN Sports (@cnnsport) April 15, 2024
Serena Williams investments and what did she do with her first paycheck
Alexis Ohanian, Serena Williams, and Venus Williams are the principal owners of the Los Angeles Golf Club. Although for Angel City FC, Serena Williams is a majority shareholder. The exact percentage of holdings she has in each company isn’t out in public.
But her company Serena Ventures has invested in 66 startups. 78% of them have women and ethnic people or people of color in charge of them, running the business. Her daughter Olympia is the co-owner of both these clubs, but her exact percentage holding is also not known.
Interestingly, Serena Williams used her first paycheck in buying boxes of donuts for 99 cents and sell each donut for a quarter. That way, she also made a profit. So, it’s not just winning tennis tournaments, but also making money that was inculcated in the mind of a young Serena Williams. Given where she came from, a humble background in Compton, no one can blame her for wanting to make loads of money.
