Angel City built a global brand. On-field success remains elusive.

Photo Credit: Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports

There is a very telling moment in “Angel City,” the HBO docuseries about Angel City FC’s 2022 debut season in the National Women’s Soccer League.

A few hours before the gates open at BMO Stadium for the season’s home opener, co-founder and team president Julie Uhrman is frantically running from one area of the stadium to another, imploring her staff to make sure that Angel City branding is all over the walls and signage. She wanted fans and attendees to see the space not as a women’s soccer team in a men’s soccer stadium, but rather a women’s soccer team in its home.

It sounds good on its face, and it has delivered significant business success. But it also speaks to what Uhrman and fellow founding owners — investor Kara Nortman and actress Natalie Portman — think the purpose of Angel City is.

Thursday’s news that Angel City was docked 3 points in the standings and fined $200,000, in addition to suspensions for Uhrman and general manager Angela Hucles Mangano, is another expression of this. To discover that Uhrman and Hucles Mangano had brokered off-the-books compensation for five different (unnamed) players, which drove their payroll $50,000 over the salary cap for a four-week period during the 2024 season, is in fact their second major violation of the NWSL’s roster rules following tampering charges in 2021.

This week’s punishments are historic — the first points deduction in league history and the maximum possible fine to be issued directly by the commissioner — but the charges are not isolated. Rather, they reveal the core of Angel City’s organizational philosophy: sell the image of success even at the potential risk of building a great team. That means aging veterans with high Q ratings and even higher salary demands have been prioritized — salary cap regulations be damned, as it turned out.