Eva Longoria’s Soccer Play: Why Hollywood Stars Are Investing in Sports

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At the peak of the trend a few years ago, every celebrity seemed to have their own brand of tequila. Today, there’s a new investment craze: a soccer (or football, if you’re outside the U.S.) club and a complementary TV series.

Eva Longoria has both. “Necaxa,” which debuts Thursday on FX, follows the namesake Mexican club, in which Longoria has a stake, as it strives to inch up Mexico’s top league and make the coveted playoffs.

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It charts Longoria’s post-investment role as she becomes “La Patrona” (The Boss), as the players on the team call her. Yet soccer is a notoriously hard business, and one now saturated with celebrities who are using their investment to spawn accompanying entertainment. But Longoria said “Necaxa” (pronounced “Necaha”) has a standout story, and a potentially large audience in the U.S. Latino market.

Thanks to the success of “Welcome to Wrexham,” the TV series as an ancillary product to soccer investment is now almost a requirement, with Tom Brady’s “Built in Birmingham: Brady & the Blues” additionally streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video this month. The trend illustrates the closer ties that are being forged between the sports and entertainment worlds, with content being produced that blurs the line. These shows place viewers inside the action, which people want with sports. But to do that effectively, you need big names.

“The traditional owners are not terribly photogenic,” said Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan who wrote the popular 2009 book, “Soccernomics.” “They’re not movie stars.”

Enter Longoria, who invested in 2021 as part of the Tylis-Porter Group, which bought 50% of the team. Longoria’s stake was undisclosed, but one report claims the club was valued in the “low nine figures” at the time; by 2022, the club had an estimated valuation of more than $200 million.

She had previously invested with the group in the L.A.-based women’s team, Angel City F.C., but this was her first foray into Mexico’s Liga MX. “I was blown away by how big of an imprint the league has,” Longoria told TheWrap. “It is one of the most dynamic, passionate leagues in the world.”

Following the “Wrexham” model

“Necaxa” is a spiritual successor to Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac’s “Welcome to Wrexham” (the two are executive producers on this show as well). But unlike the Welsh football club, Necaxa struggles from a dearth of fandom. In 2003, it found a new home in Aguascalientes, a city more than six times smaller than Mexico City, where most residents already root for powerhouses from the capital like Club América and Cruz Azul. As many locals admit in the documentary, Necaxa is their No. 2 team. One of Longoria’s goals is to try and convert local fans.

The show follows the template set by Reynolds and Mac (who had his name legally changed in June) when in 2021, they acquired Welsh club Wrexham A.F.C. for $2.5 million and produced “Welcome to Wrexham.”

The classic underdog story underpinned the narrative, as Wrexham went from a club in the fifth tier of the English football league to the EFL Championship, just one level below the top-tier English Premier League. The actors are trying to sell a stake that values the team at $475 million, according to Bloomberg.

Their success has made non-U.S. soccer an attractive investment opportunity. Barriers to entry are low compared to American sports, which have become cost-prohibitive, according to Jordan Gardner, a consultant at Twenty First Group who advises on M&A for U.S. investors in European football. He added there’s a perception that these clubs are undervalued and have ample opportunities to improve with the right management and players.

For those treating it as a passion project and ready to get their hands dirty like Reynolds and Mac, it can also be a more exciting business than American sports. Though Major League Soccer has attracted celebrities like Matthew McConaughey (Austin FC) and Reese Witherspoon (Nashville SC), the teams are franchises. “So what you are really is a one-30th owner of MLS,” Szymanski said.

Liga MX is akin to the European model. “All the clubs are individual, and they all have their own personalities,” he added.

A European or Mexican club at a lower tier is also a more feasible investment for a Hollywood personality, especially with the growing trend of syndicated ownership, where a group of multiple investors pool their capital. “Media stars tend to be very rich, but they’re not in the mega-rich categories,” Szymanski says. “They can’t afford to buy a Manchester United outright.”

Someone like Longoria can put in a small equity piece, and gain the glory of name attachment.

Daytime talk show hosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have also followed the playbook, having bought an ownership stake in Italian club Campobasso F.C. with their friend and media founder Matt Rizzetta. Ripa and Consuelos’ effort to navigate owning a team was chronicled in the ESPN series, “Running With the Wolves” that aired last month.

As Campobasso F.C. languished in the fifth league, the dream was “restoring it to its onetime glory,” Rizzetta said. He felt it was a less-saturated market than English football, and saw a cultural opening, with 17 million Americans of Italian descent.

“Necaxa” is hoping that the same opening — but with Mexican Americans — will propel its viewership.

Retelling the underdog tale

“Necaxa” benefits from a built-in audience already aware of Liga MX, which is the second-most-watched league in the U.S. after the English Premier League (with MLS in third). It’s a clear choice that “Necaxa” is almost entirely in Spanish — barring a few wisecracks in English from Reynolds.

But as the behind-the-scenes space gets saturated, narratives need a mark of differentiation even if their underlying template is similar. Rizzetta said theirs is the “scrappy underdog” story tied to the Italian-American immigrant narrative of chasing the American Dream.

“Necaxa” also has its underdog story: its fight for fan relevance as it competes with the big guns in Liga MX. It’s a “story of going back to the glory days,” Longoria said, “of this great soccer empire that they used to be.”

From early in the first episode, there are poignant elements. They introduce a storyline about “La Tía” (The Auntie), an elderly cleaner at the club who has never been able to afford to go to a match. Such humanizing inclusions were a conscious decision, Longoria said, at a political moment when Latino communities are being persecuted with ICE raids across the U.S. The issue takes on more significance with the U.S. and Mexico just 10 months away from co-hosting the World Cup, which kicks off at the iconic Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.

For Longoria, the series is debuting at the right time. “I want to show positive images of Latinos, of Mexicans in particular,” she said. “So that the world sees the hardworking, family-oriented, kind human beings that we are.”

It’s compelling viewing, but Gardner questions whether — like tequila — the celebrity soccer business is a fleeting fad that will “probably fizzle.” Longoria, for her part, is bullish on sports, even as other TV trends ebb and flow. “If you’re smart as an investor you would invest in sports,” she said, “because that is the only form of entertainment that is practically foolproof.”

She’s turned her own words into action. In January, The Athletic reported that Longoria, with Reynolds and Mac, had invested in the Colombian club, La Equidad. Maybe her sports holdings will one day match her tequila empire.

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