"When that foot gets let off the throat of the women's game, it's going to explode"
- Romy Kraus
- Nov 3
- 4 min read
Bex Smith is building a new blueprint for women's football and torching the old one
She captained New Zealand on the world stage. Won the Champions League with Wolfsburg. Got her MBA while playing professionally, then walked straight into FIFA. Now Bex Smith is taking the women's game into her own hands, literally.
As founder of Crux Football, she's buying clubs across Europe, ripping them away from outdated men's structures, and rebuilding from the ground up. No half-measures. No borrowed templates. Just a radical plan for women's football to finally stand on its own two feet: commercially, operationally, culturally.
In this interview, Bex dissects why current club models are fundamentally broken, how she's weaponizing media, analytics, and brand-building to reshape them, and why she believes women's football isn't just "as good" as the men's game. It might be better.
The Lowdown
Women's football remains structurally dependent on men's clubs, and that dependency is suffocating its growth.
Most clubs in Europe lack a standalone president, marketing team, or even basic CRM.
Crux Football is buying and operating clubs independently across Europe, starting with Montpellier.
The French women's league now has €70 million in federation backing.
Crux's model distributes costs across five clubs: data, analytics, partnerships, media.
Women's football fans are more engaged, more diverse, and spend more per capita than their male counterparts.
Equal pay isn't the goal. Equal investment from the ground up is.
Female athletes need infrastructure built for their bodies, not hand-me-downs from men's systems.
The 2030 vision: Five fully independent, sustainable clubs and a new European platform for women's football.
"The structures are still stuck in the men's club"
Bex doesn't sugarcoat it: women's football in Europe is being run like a men's B-team. Nobody's focused full-time. Nobody's building for long-term value.
Most clubs, she says, don't have a single person working exclusively on the women's side. Not one commercial manager, not one brand strategist. Five percent of someone's bandwidth at best. Which means the women's game gets shortchanged at every turn.
"Most clubs don't really understand what their fan base is. There's hardly any CRM." - Bex Smith
"You pay the salary from the men's club and 5% of your time you work on women's partnership sales. That doesn't cut it." - Bex Smith
"Crux Football was built because none of this works"
Crux launched in March with a simple thesis: buy undervalued women's clubs across Europe, unbundle them from the men's operations, and build something new. Montpellier was the opening move. The French league is investing heavily, tightening licensing standards, and incentivizing clubs to develop genuine commercial and fan operations.
The model is straightforward but ambitious: elite executives at holding-company level drive tech, analytics, strategy, and partnerships down across multiple clubs so no team starts from zero.
"We wanted to start signing longer contracts so we know we have these players secured… but you need financial security to do that." - Bex Smith
"There are clubs being bought right now and unbundled from the men's. That's progress." - Bex Smith
"The women's football audience is already more valuable"
Ticket sales? Women's fans buy more frequently and in bulk. Merchandise? Higher conversion rates. Matchday spend? They eat and drink more. Social media? They engage harder. And crucially, they make the majority of household purchasing decisions, which makes sponsors sit up and pay attention.
"The women's football audience is more diverse and inclusive… more valuable to sponsors and broadcasters." - Bex Smith
"We're building a European proposition, not just a local one. That's what big brands want." - Bex Smith
"You can't grow women's football using men's templates"
Equal pay? Not the point, Bex argues. Infrastructure matters more. Most men's teams don't pay for themselves either, but they've had over a century of compounding investment. The women's game was actively suppressed, banned for 50 years in countries like England and Brazil. The starting line was never close to level.
"It's a completely different market, fan base, consumer base… it's not apples to apples." - Bex Smith
"If you invest the same in a 5-year-old girl as a 5-year-old boy… the women's game will be bigger. Period." - Bex Smith
"We're still using medical data based on male athletes. That's absurd."
The ACL injury crisis? Just the tip of the iceberg. Most sports science remains built around male physiology. From nutrition and sleep protocols to rehab and strength training, it's all misaligned.
"Our neck strength is 10% of a male's. I was great in the air. Now my neck's shot. No one told me that mattered." - Bex Smith
"We had one dressing room. Male coach in a women's team. That's how the sport was set up." - Bex Smith
"We don't want to spend millions buying the badge. We want to build value"
Some clubs in England's Championship are asking £15 million. Laughable, Bex says. Crux is hunting for clubs where they can drive value through smarter contracts, better infrastructure, and new revenue streams, not inflated hype.
"Everyone wants to go to the sales rack and see what they can pick up. That's us." - Bex Smith
"We don't want to overpay for what's not there yet." - Bex Smith
Quickfire
Franchise vs promotion/relegation? Franchise model provides stability. Relegation keeps clubs competitive. Crux wants both. The portfolio structure protects the group even if one club goes down. "You can't get relegated from the Krux Football portfolio." - Bex Smith
"But fans want jeopardy, and so do I." - Bex Smith
Would you buy in England?Yes, but only if the numbers stack up. Right now, valuations are inflated off Lionesses hype. - "Just because someone paid 55 million for West Ham doesn't mean you're worth 15." - Bex Smith
Which sponsor would you love? L'Oréal. Global, inclusive, already elevating women, and French. "There's a story there about beauty and performance we could reframe." - Bex Smith
2030 vision? Five clubs. All sustainable. A platform with its own media, culture, and community. "By 2030, we'll be profitable. But more than that, we'll be powerful." - Bex Smith
