It has been a momentous week for Chelsea Women.
Monday brought the shock news that their head of women’s football Paul Green, who — alongside manager Emma Hayes — built Chelsea into the Women’s Super League’s dominant force, had been relieved of his duties after 13 years.
As well as casting the London team’s future under a cloud of uncertainty, Green’s departure overshadowed another announcement.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, NBA superstar, 2020-21 champion and two-time Most Valuable Player with the Milwaukee Bucks, is joining the club’s ownership group alongside Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and founder of venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, which purchased a minority stake in Chelsea Women last year.
Antetokounmpo posted a picture of himself wearing a Chelsea shirt on his X account on Sunday, alongside a message regarding the deal:
I’m proud and honored to partner with my friend @alexisohanian, joining the ownership group of @ChelseaFCW, a historic club built on passion, excellence, and a winning culture. Chelsea’s history speaks for itself, and I’m excited to contribute to the future by supporting… pic.twitter.com/LEzNakL9Rd
— Giannis Antetokounmpo (@Giannis_An34) February 8, 2026
Chelsea Women welcomed Antetokounmpo with a post on their official X account, and club officials confirmed his addition to the ownership group when approached by The Athletic.
This week, Eric Nehm, The Athletic’s Bucks writer, spoke exclusively to Antetokounmpo to explore why he decided to get involved with Chelsea Women.
“I’ve played soccer,” says the Greece-born 31-year-old. “My dad was a professional soccer player. I have a lot of friends who play soccer.
“I was having a conversation with Alexis Ohanian, and he was telling me about the plan that he has. He was telling me how he wants to make a difference and do things that his daughters can remember him for, and I was like, ‘Damn, I didn’t even think about that’.
“So, I was like, ‘OK, what are you doing?’, and he was like, ‘I’m doing this, I’m doing that, I’m trying to keep on pushing forward and investing in women’s sports and just change the narrative around that’. And I said, ‘Hey, I mean, just let me know when and what I gotta do’, and then the opportunity came to my desk of investing and being a minority owner of Chelsea Women. I was like, ‘Say less. I want to do it’.”
Here, we look at what this newfound partnership between Antetokounmpo and Chelsea Women could mean for the team’s future.
A young Giannis Antetokounmpo in January 2015 on a visit to Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge home stadium (Gary Dineen/NBAE via Getty Images)
Do we know the size of his stake?
No one involved has divulged the financial details of Antetokounmpo’s investment, or the size of his stake. It is also unclear whether he has bought directly into Chelsea Women or into Ohanian’s minority holding.
What is clear is that with more than $300million (£220m) in NBA career earnings and tens of millions more to his name through a variety of endorsement deals, he is an investor of significant means, as well as one with a global profile.
What is the ownership structure of Chelsea Women?
In April 2025, it emerged Chelsea had transferred ownership of their women’s team to Blueco 22 Midco Limited the previous June, booking £198.7million — a move the club claimed would better position the women’s team for direct outside investment, but also carried the significant benefit of helping the men’s team to achieve compliance with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) for 2023-24.
Ohanian then came on board as Chelsea Women’s first minority investor in the May, paying around £20million for a stake of about 10 per cent in the club. As well as giving the team an enthusiastic new public backer, the deal also acted as market validation of their initial valuation of Chelsea Women as worth approximately £200m.
BlueCo has no interest in selling its majority stake in Chelsea Women, but is building out its ownership group with Ohanian and now Antetokounmpo.
Are Chelsea the most valuable women’s football club in the world?
Senior figures at Chelsea would argue so, and likely point to Ohanian’s investment as compelling evidence that the market agrees.
That valuation of £200million eclipses the $250m (£183.4m at the current rate) Willow Bay and former Disney CEO Bob Iger paid to buy Los Angeles-based National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) side Angel City in 2024.
The reality is less clear-cut.
Barcelona Femeni from Spain, the dominant women’s club side in Europe on the pitch for much of this decade, have never been made available for purchase or minority investment. Neither have Arsenal Women, the current holders of the UEFA Women’s Champions League title. Both would likely command significant interest on the open market.
Eight-time UEFA Women’s Champions League winners Olympique Lyonnais Feminin offer a favourable benchmark for Chelsea. In May 2023, a group led by Michele Kang acquired a 52.9 per cent stake in the French club in a deal that reportedly valued them at just $54.4million.
(Tiego Grenho/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
What benefit does being associated with Antetokounmpo have for Chelsea?
Perhaps mindful that Green’s departure would dominate the conversation around Chelsea Women this week, the club have not yet opened up on where their newfound relationship with Antetokounmpo could take them.
Antetokounmpo may not be a household name on the level of LeBron James or Michael Jordan to those who do not follow basketball, but over the course of a 13-year professional career, he has established himself as one of the most famous faces in the NBA, as well as one of the greatest basketball talents of his generation.
His journey, from growing up the son of poor Nigerian immigrants in Greece to earning his place in the pantheon of basketball greats, is among the most inspirational in any sport and his brand, positioned around his work ethic and passion, carries more authenticity than most. Finally, the combination of his Nigerian heritage, his Greek upbringing and his American sporting success ensures his fame is truly international.
Those are all significant positives for Chelsea Women as they seek to continue building their own profile, as well as helping to provide a lift for women’s football more broadly.
How do they best take advantage of the association?
Richard Adelsberg, chief executive of Ear To The Ground, a sports advertising agency that counts the NBA among its clients, identifies one intriguing option.
“I’d definitely go into the apparel space,” he told The Athletic, pointing to the fact that both Antetokounmpo and Chelsea Women have deals with Nike.
“Brands and football clubs play it safe. They talk a lot about the softer things around women’s sport, around empowerment and growing the game.
“But his brand (Nike has taken creative inspiration from Antetokounmpo’s NBA nickname, ‘The Greek Freak,’ for his signature shoe line) has such an edge to it, and there’s an opportunity to stand out and do something culturally credible.”
There are broad parallels between what Adelsberg suggests and perhaps the most high-profile fusion of football, basketball and fashion: the collaboration between Paris Saint-Germain and the Jordan brand, which sits under Nike’s vast umbrella.
What is the value for Antetokounmpo?
BlueCo regards women’s football as a huge potential growth area, and feels Chelsea Women are well-positioned to help drive and benefit from that rise. If that proves the case, then they, Ohanian, Antetokounmpo and any other investors who come aboard stand to benefit financially.
Antetokounmpo’s motivations are partly personal and partly business-minded.
“I always wanted to invest in sports, and the moment I was able to make a good living and I started to get involved with business, I was like, ‘Oh, it’d be wonderful for me to be involved with a team’,” he tells The Athletic.
(Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
“I just love sports in general. It doesn’t have to always be basketball. Growing up, I played every sport. The only thing that I wasn’t good at was swimming — I can’t swim. But I played everything. Volleyball, I was good at. Track and field, I was good at. Basketball, I was good at. Soccer, I was really good at. I can’t golf, but I still invested in a golf team. I just love being around sports, and I can see myself doing that when I retire.
“I’ve also met and been around people who helped me make possible decisions about business, and mentored me throughout the little time I have in the offseason to make the best decisions that I can and use my brand as currency, which at first I didn’t understand.
“But as I’ve got older and as I retire, my brand is currency. Me being involved with things can push the business forward and also can move the needle for a lot of people, and that’s very valuable in business.”
Have other U.S. sports stars done this with football clubs?
Antetokounmpo cited James’ investment in current Premier League champions Liverpool and their NBA counterpart Kevin Durant’s purchase of a minority stake in PSG, who won last season’s UEFA Champions League, as helping to open his eyes to the possibilities of investing in the sport, but the presence of elite America-based athletes within the ownership groups of European clubs is becoming more common.
The 49ers Enterprises group that owns Leeds United includes another NBA star in Russell Westbrook, as well as golf Major winners Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas and swimming great Michael Phelps. Legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady has been a very visible minority shareholder at Birmingham City.
Chelsea Women are not even Antetokounmpo’s first foray into football ownership. In 2023, he became a minority investor in Major League Soccer club Nashville SC, along with his brothers Thanasis, Kostas and Alex.
Will Antetokounmpo be a visible ownership presence at Chelsea Women?
The NBA regular season schedule is unrelenting from October to April each year, and the play-offs to decide its champions stretch into June, after the European club football season ends. But the Bucks are currently facing an uphill battle to make those play-offs, and Antetokounmpo is eager to introduce himself personally this summer, telling The Athletic: “This is probably the only off-season that I’m going to have that I’ll be able to probably go out there and be around the team, meet the players, meet the staff and see what it’s about.”
In the meantime, as they seek to overcome this season’s disappointments and face relinquishing the WSL title they have won eight times since 2015 and in each of the past six years, Chelsea Women might find inspiration in Antetokounmpo’s words after he and the top-seeded Bucks were eliminated in the first round of the 2023 NBA play-offs.
“It’s not a failure; it’s steps to success. There’s no failure in sports,” he insisted. “There are good days, bad days. Some days, you are able to be successful; some days, you are not. Some days, it is your turn; some days, it’s not. That’s what sports is about. You don’t always win.”