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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

League of Their Own

Ready for some football? Lupe Rose, a founder of She Beverage Co. in Lancaster, certainly hopes so. Rose has created the Women’s Football League Association comprising 32 teams that will start playing games in 2021. “There is a demand for it now,” Rose said. “We have the ability to come in and structure it so that women are taken seriously and professionally in the sport of women’s football.” She Beverage owns the league and has a business model of raising revenue through the sale of franchises to private investors. The company plans to run day-to-day operations of the league, selling merchandise and concessions, gate receipts, licensing and establish sponsorships. Twelve of the 32 teams have been sold so far, with more pending, Rose said. Among the owners is rap artist JaRule, who purchased the New York Stars franchise. Rose is part of an investment group that owns five teams, including the Los Angeles Fames, Las Vegas Devils and San Francisco Cranes. Other cities that will have teams include Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, Denver, Miami and Atlanta. “Rose is doing this right,” said JaRule in a statement. “I had to support this women’s business powerhouse SHE is building, and as a huge football fan, I think the world has been waiting to watch Women’s Professional Football nationally for (years).” Rick Taulli, managing partner of Excelsior Management, a firm that consults with companies that are going public, bought the San Diego franchise after working with Rose and her business partners. “One thing I can do is smell a winner,” Taulli said. “I knew this WFLA, this women’s football league, was going to be a winner.” Taulli said he could not disclose how much he paid for the San Diego Waves since he signed a non-disclosure form but did say it was not cheap. Rose also declined to state how much franchises cost. Each team will have a roster of 55 players, in addition to a five-player practice squad. That makes for nearly 2,000 players who will be paid by the teams. Rose said a salary cap will likely be put in place. The teams will be divided into eastern and western conferences and play a schedule of 18 games starting in late May to coincide with the start of the WNBA season. The season ends with the Diamond Bowl championship game, the league’s version of the Super Bowl. Playing over the summer months would give the players their own time to shine, Rose said. “We feel that if we launch our league in parallel to the WNBA, as you have the NBA to the NFL, it would work,” Rose said. She has hired Brandon Shelby, a standout football player at the University of Oklahoma, as commissioner and plans to hire a president for the league. Bruce Gillies, the director of the sports management program at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, said that women’s football has come in fits and starts in the past. With the right management, however, he doesn’t see why it shouldn’t succeed. “There will have to be significant initial investment in this new league to get it off the ground,” Gillies said, “probably for the first two or three years until they get some kind of following.” Other women’s football leagues that have been tried include the defunct Independent Women’s Football League; the Women’s Football Alliance, with 62 teams; the U.S. Women’s Football League, with nine teams divided into two divisions; and the Legends Football League, an eight-team league formerly known as Lingerie Football League. The Women’s National Football Conference had its inaugural season this year with 14 teams. The Lingerie League had some television exposure for a couple of years and the games could be entertaining to watch because of the skill level of the players, Gillies said. “That is going to be key, developing and finding the ladies with the skills that can showcase what they can do,” he added. Beer-ball connection Rose founded She Beverage in 2014 after a career in the music industry. She had started West Swagg Music Group in 2010, a label that got distribution through Universal Music Group. However, with the rise of the internet and free music downloads and Apple Inc.’s iTunes, the writing was on the wall as to where the industry was headed. “I was solicited by other brands with marketing and branding and one of the last ideas I worked on was for another beverage company,” Rose said, adding that she hooked up with some business partners and they decided “it would be cool to launch a brand by women for women.” The first She beverage was a beer that was made at the brewery of a friend of Rose’s. “We obtained our business license and it grew from there.” she said. Today, She self-distributes five types of beer, two hard lemonades and a variety of water, including alkaline and electrolyte types and a version that contains CBD, to Target and Walmart stores, Arco gas stations, Best Western International Inc. and Holiday Inn hotel locations and a lot of independent liquor stores. The company wants to cater to every type of beverage drinker, but its main demographic remains women. However, its beer has a huge following among men, Rose said. “Our beers are not watered down; they have a high (alcohol by volume content),” she added. “And we just introduced a wine a couple weeks ago, which we manufacturer here in Lancaster.” The Antelope Valley city will remain as the company’s headquarters for the foreseeable future. This is true even as the company prepares to open an office in New York in the next two months and will expand into other metropolitan markets where it needs a presence to ensure a level of success not just for the football league but the company as a whole. “This is where we started and this is where we are building our brewery, so our corporate offices are here,” Rose said. Chenin Dow, the economic development manager for Lancaster, said that as one of the most business-friendly cities in Southern California, it was excited to see a locally owned business grow. “We look forward to learning more about She Beverage’s latest endeavor,” Dow said in a statement. Experience in sports While She Beverage will benefit from the football league by having concessions at the stadiums where the games are played, it is not the first sports team the company has partnered with. She supports a NASCAR team and is a sponsor of the Los Angeles Sparks, the city’s WNBA team, just completing its second year in that relationship. For both years, it has provided money for scholarships to young girls. It also has advertising at the Staples Center, the downtown venue where the Sparks play. She is taking a lead along with the Sparks on how women’s sports teams can move ahead when it comes to pay for its players, Rose said. “We are working collaboratively to move women’s equality forward when it comes to equal pay,” Rose said. Cal Lutheran’s Gillies said that players in the new football league will have to be paid a survivable rate. Minimum wage isn’t going to cut it for the travel they have to do and the expenses the women will incur as a result, he added. And if the players have children at home, “that is an additional expense we don’t typically think about having to worry about with men playing sports,” Gillies said. The company is in talks with colleges in the U.S. and sports organizations overseas about working together on women’s football. “We want to connect the dots,” Rose said. “It’s not just us creating the WFLA and paying women lavishly. It does start at a junior level. It may even start at a teen level. You take it into high schools and colleges and that way you can recruit from those entities.” The league held its first draft at the end of August in Las Vegas. The desert city is also hosting the leagues next tryouts on Oct. 19, a day to be declared by the city government as WFLA Day. Taulli, of Excelsior Management, said that he knows where the company is headed and what it is going to do in terms of success with the football league. “I know the passion these ladies have. Lupe is going to drive it,” Taulli added. “She does not know how to fail. That’s perfect. You couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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