Kang backs London City Lionesses despite £10.6m loss as auditors flag funding reliance

London City Lionesses executives say owner Michele Kang remains committed to funding the club’s growth after they recorded a £10.6m loss in the 2024-25 season, a campaign that ended with promotion to the Women’s Super League.The accounts show Kang injected £12.5m into the club via her vehicle YMK Holdings, as revenue rose modestly to about £900,000 from roughly £700,000 the previous year.Auditor EY highlighted a material uncertainty related to the club’s dependence on benefactor financing, a familiar issue across women’s football as clubs scale wage bills and infrastructure ahead of slower-moving commercial revenues.Kynisca chief financial officer Paul Morton, who sits on the London City Lionesses board, said: “We’ve seen her track record of funding. We’ve seen the commitments that she has made in writing to all of the clubs. We prepare the accounts on a going concern basis because we see the projections, we see her funding commitments, and we go, ‘yep, happy days’.”Morton added that EY had reviewed the commitments but was required to flag the concentration risk created by a single key funding source, describing the disclosure as typical given the club’s current funding model.Kang, a US billionaire, owns women’s clubs across three major markets, including France’s OL Lyonnes and NWSL side Washington Spirit, under the Kynisca multi-club structure.At London City, the investment has underwritten recruitment and operational spend designed to establish the club in the WSL as the league’s only fully independent side without ties to a men’s professional team.The club also continues to advance plans for a dedicated women’s training base in Kent, part of a broader push to build infrastructure typically associated with established top-flight organisations.London City are expected to post another sizeable loss for the current season after spending heavily on players ahead of their first WSL campaign, but chief executive Martin Semmens said the strategy is aligned with a longer-term plan.“I think the most important thing Michele said to me when we first met, and still says to me every day, is that she believes so much in what we’re doing, that every penny that we spend is an investment, not a cost,” Semmens said.He said Kang also wanted the club to develop a route to sustainability, not to limit future investment but to validate the underlying business model as women’s football continues to professionalise and attract new capital.