Six-time Olympic dash medallist Andre De Grasse is investing in the way forward for ladies’s sports activities in Canada. The 29-year-old has reportedly purchased a stake in crew AFC Toronto Metropolis, one in all eight groups within the new Canadian professional soccer league, Undertaking Eight.
Undertaking Eight is a brand new Canadian ladies’s skilled soccer league, based by former Canadian worldwide participant Diana Matheson and scheduled to kick off in spring 2025.
Thus far, three of the eight franchises for the league have been introduced. The franchise charge for the brand new league is $1 million, with an estimated $8 million to $10 million in complete invested capital wanted over the primary 5 seasons, along with obligatory spending on infrastructure.
De Grasse, a father of two, says he’s at all times been a fan of girls’s soccer and hopes this chance can flip into “one thing huge.”
“Bringing a ladies’s soccer league and having a franchise in Toronto is a reasonably cool factor to have,” De Grasse advised The Canadian Press. “I hope that I can play a giant half in it.”
The main points of De Grasse’s funding or stake haven’t been introduced, however he’s no stranger to backing startup ventures via his not too long ago shaped ADG Ignite Ventures.
De Grasse performed soccer in Scarborough in his youth earlier than transitioning to taking part in basketball year-round. He got here to sprinting in his last years of highschool after being noticed by former Canadian Olympic sprinter Tony Sharpe on the York Area H.S. Championships.
“We’re thrilled that Andre might be investing in Toronto’s ladies’s skilled crew,” Matheson advised The Canadian Press. “Andre is becoming a member of an funding group in Toronto that, as he does, understands the unimaginable affect that sport has on people and communities, in addition to the numerous progress potential of girls’s skilled sport in Canada.”
AFC Toronto Metropolis is one in all three groups within the upcoming Undertaking Eight league, becoming a member of the Vancouver (ladies’s) Whitecaps and Calgary Foothills.
