Lindsey Eckhouse is the Chief Revenue Officer at Mercury 13, a multi-club ownership group focussed on acquiring controlling stakes in professional women’s teams in Europe and Latin America.
Lindsey has previous experience in sport with the NFL and Maclaren Racing.
Why Mercury 13?🚀:
“Back in the 1960’s there was a group of women who were training, just like the men did, as astronauts to go to the moon. There were 13 of them, funded by a private investor and when they took the programme to NASA, after years and years of training, NASA denied them on the spot, because of their gender.
Our homage to them is that we think the world would look very different now if they were allowed to go to the moon then.
So, our “Moon-shot” is looking at independent women’s clubs, giving them dedicated ownership, so that we can accelerate their commercial return and ultimately, make them sustainable businesses in their own right.”
Is it a gamble?⚖️:
“I don’t consider it a gamble. If you look at the landscape of sports more broadly, football is the greatest sport in the world, hands down and it’s very much been dominated by the Men’s game and by male fans in particular.
The rise of Women’s football specifically, is a really interesting one because you are seeing that those male fans are coming along on that journey, but it’s also opening the game up to female fans in a whole different way.
So, part of Mercury 13’s ethos is – how do we take the biggest game in the world and open it up to women?”
The FC Como Women story:
“FC Como Women are our inaugural club. They are an independent club that competes in the top league in Italian Women’s football.
This is our second season owning them and we have looked at all areas of operation and wondered how could we impact and elevate that?
We also have also changed the brand to help us stand out amongst the noise.”