London City Lionesses: The Rise of a WSL Contender
Martin Semmens looks like a man who has just seen the future arrive early.
The London City Lionesses chief executive settles into his office chair, grinning as he scrolls through the numbers on his phone. Since Alexia Putellas lifted the Ballon d’Or on Monday night, the club’s Instagram page has racked up 34 million hits. It is only Thursday afternoon.
On Sunday, his upstart club host Manchester City at Hayes Lane in Bromley. Between them, the two sides will put seven of the top 30 players in the Ballon d’Or rankings on the pitch. For a team that were eighth in the second tier barely two and a half years ago, the scale of the stage is staggering.
Semmens has a simpler word for it. “Awesome for the WSL.”
Putellas effect: from statement signing to structural shift
From the outside, London City’s rise can feel almost unreal. An independent women’s club, owned by US businesswoman Michele Kang, now sitting third in the WSL and trading blows with the established giants.
Inside the building, they point to one signing as the hinge moment.
“Her impact on our commercial business is extraordinary,” Semmens says of Putellas, a World Cup winner with Spain and four-time European champion with Barcelona. But the numbers only tell part of the story. “From a leadership point of view, she allows us to start thinking about really winning. The environment today feels like it can beat Man City on Sunday and that’s a lot down to her.”
Putellas brought more than medals. She brought a global brand. Her 3.7 million Instagram followers outstrip some established men’s clubs – Porto among them – and that reach has already been converted into hard cash.
London City say her arrival was pivotal in securing what they claim is the largest front-of-shirt sponsorship deal in the women’s game, with Nike. The club say the agreement is worth more than the $4m (£3m) a year Atlanta’s new NWSL franchise receive.
“It’s insanely big,” Semmens says. He doesn’t bother dressing up the strategy. London City chose to sprint, not shuffle. “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.
“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.”
Winning over a Barcelona icon
Even with Kang’s backing, prising a player who had spent 14 years at Barcelona was never going to be simple.
Semmens, formerly chief executive at Southampton, recalls the first exchanges with Putellas. “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 changed her mind? Not a single pitch, but a cluster of ideas.
“I think she had bought into four or five significant things,” Semmens explains. “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.’ And then also, 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.”
For Putellas, London City offers something Barcelona could not: the chance to help build a club’s identity from the ground up, in a league that sees itself as the next great growth market.
Spending, scrutiny and the salary cap
Ambition on this scale does not come without questions.
Eyebrows shot up across the league when London City’s accounts for the 2024‑25 season – the year they won promotion as second-tier champions – showed an operating loss more than 10 times their revenue. Even in a developing market, that level of spending set alarm bells ringing.
Since then, the WSL has introduced salary cap rules. No club’s player wage bill can 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 made one concession: no punishments would be applied for breaches of the cap for that campaign only. From this term, points deductions are on the table. For a club now nudging the top three, compliance is no longer a theoretical issue; it could define a season.
So were London City within the rules?
“We are 100% within the rules, we will always be,” Semmens insists. “It’s so important to Michele.” He talks about last year’s heavy outlay as a “start-up fund” and sets a clear target. “The goal of the business is to be profitable within five years.”
He is adamant the club has worked within the framework the league laid out. “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.”
The message is blunt: this is not a vanity project. It is a business plan on fast-forward.
Europe, ownership and the Lyon question
The next challenge may not come from the WSL at all.
Sitting three points behind Chelsea and Manchester City, London City are suddenly brushing up against the qualification spots for the Women’s Champions League. That brings Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules into sharp focus, because Kang also owns OL Lyonnais, the eight-time European champions.
Could both clubs play in the same competition?
“One hundred per cent, it can be resolved,” Semmens says. He argues that the women’s game demands a different lens. “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. 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.”
The subtext is clear: London City intend to be at the level where those questions matter, and soon.
A new power on the WSL map
For now, the focus is more immediate. London City sit three points off Chelsea and Manchester City. The target is no longer survival or consolidation.
Semmens spells it out. The aim is to “build a squad that is consistently in the top three.”
Sunday’s meeting with Manchester City, under the tight sightlines of Hayes Lane, is a test of that ambition and a showcase of what London City are becoming.
“This is probably the No 1 game in the women’s game in the world this weekend,” Semmens says. “That’s what we want to be: on the map.”
The Instagram hits, the Nike deal, the Ballon d’Or winner in midfield – they are all part of the same story. The real proof will come when Manchester City walk out in Bromley and discover whether this fast-tracked project is ready to trade hype for hardware.
