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Figures from Mercury13 have said they want their purchase of Bristol City Women to allow “hundreds of millions of pounds to flow in†to the womenâ€s game from other investors. They believe their deal will provide a blueprint for how to separate a womenâ€s team from a menâ€s club.

Mercury13, which also owns Italian side Como Women, completed its acquisition of a majority stake in Bristol City on 18 September, subject to league approval. The WSL 2 sideâ€s new era began with a 1-0 victory away to Southampton on Sunday.

What will the future hold, though, for the two-time Womenâ€s FA Cup finalists now that they are no longer owned by Bristol Sport, another multi-sport ownership group. “This is a team that belongs to the top tier of English football and weâ€re going to help them get there,†says Mercury13â€s co-founder and co-CEO, Victoire Cogevina Reynal.

Her fellow co-founder and co-CEO, Mario Malavé, says: “This wasnâ€t a traditional takeover, that word really doesnâ€t reflect what this was. Itâ€s all about unlocking growth and unlocking resources. No one got pushed out, no one got pulled in. Itâ€s our responsibility to make the biggest beneficiaries the players and the staff, and we feel now responsible to honour that and show that we can catalyse a new era.

“We are hoping this becomes a blueprint and we hope other people take inspiration from this carve out – we think itâ€s the first that has full operational and commercial control – and we are hoping to start a trend.â€

The agreement allows the team to continue to train at their existing base, the Robins High Performance Centre, and play their home fixtures at Ashton Gate, along with Bristol Cityâ€s menâ€s teams and the Premiership rugby club Bristol Bears.

That makes things sound rather straightforward but those at Mercury13 say it was anything but. “Both sides were potentially a bit naive in how much work a deal like this was going to take,†says Hannah Haynes, the groupâ€s chief strategy officer, who led their work on this acquisition. “It was 16 months from the first meeting to completion. So itâ€s an incredibly proud moment.

“It really is a full-service deal that touched upon every single side of a sports business from IP to employment to data to real estate to corporate structure – a monumental amount of work was required to carve out not just the womenâ€s team from a menâ€s integrated club, but also it sitting underneath a multi-asset group in itself being Bristol Sport. It is the first of its kind, I think, anywhere.â€

Bristol Cityâ€s Gemma Lawley, Harley Bennett and Esther Morgan of Bristol City Women leave their dressing room during the WSL 2 match against Southampton. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/WSL/Getty Images

Asked if the investors plan to change things such as Bristol Cityâ€s kit colour, badge and even name, Haynes says: “This is day zero – in terms of the strategy that will now go into this, but we are very mindful and respectful of Bristol City; its heritage, its legacy, its fandom. That is so important to us. Thereâ€s work to be done before we are able to answer any questions like that. But we will be taking this team forward in the Mercury way.â€

Cogevina Reynal says: “The focus right now is very much on performance on the pitch. In a moment where thereâ€s peak interest in investing in this country, weâ€re showing the way on how to do it [a deal like this], which will then allow hopefully hundreds of millions of pounds to flow into the game at the moment that it most needs it.â€

It has indeed been a busy year among English womenâ€s clubs for ownership structure changes and investments. In May, the Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, bought a minority stake in Chelsea Women for a reported £20m and in June Aston Villa agreed a deal to sell their womenâ€s team to V Sports, their parent company, to help their menâ€s team comply with profitability and sustainability rules. West Ham were in talks over selling a stake in their womenâ€s team to Monarch Collective, a US private equity firm.

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For Charlotte Healy, who was appointed head coach in June after working as Manchester Unitedâ€s assistant coach, Mercuryâ€s investment means a lot to her. “Just to be seen is a big step in itself, to have people who see potential in womenâ€s sport. These guys really care about womenâ€s sport. They see more potential in the womenâ€s game than anyone Iâ€ve ever spoken to. It was so inspiring – you could hear a pin dropping with the players listening to them.â€

Multi-club ownership models are still relatively new in the womenâ€s game. Could Como and Bristol City soon be loaning players between one another in the transfer market? Malavé sought to reassure fans in this regards. “Knowledge-exchange is a given, so if thereâ€s something Bristol is doing very well weâ€d be silly not to try to get the Como folks to learn from it and vice versa. But the reality is that the chances of that happening [signing a player from Como], of finding a specific player who is perfectly suited for Bristol … could it happen? Sure. But is that the reason we are here? No.

“This is not something we do out of charity – we are convinced that if we give this dedicated management and set up Bristol City Women as their own entity to act independently, the value is going to grow tremendously.â€

Mercury13 have come to the West Country to make money. They are investors, pure and simple, whereas for so long, womenâ€s teams were seen by many clubs as something they ought to run even though it cost them money. “I am not the traditional owner of a football club; Iâ€m a latin woman with tattoos, that is 34 years old,†Cogevina Reynal says. “I donâ€t think a lot of people would expect me to own a football club. We donâ€t invest in other sports, we donâ€t invest on the menâ€s side of the sport.

“It all starts with the premise that womenâ€s teams are completely under-resourced, by every single metric that you can measure, and [weâ€re] going to give them a much better chance to succeed.â€

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