Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, July 7th. Today on Forbes, the new owner of the San Diego

Wave soccer team is the world's first woman private equity billionaire. Lauren Leichmann wasn't

always into soccer. That changed after she watched the 1999 Women's World Cup final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena,

where Brandy Chastain scored the winning penalty kick for the U.S. women's national team,

and her celebration, which included falling to her knees and ripping off her shirt,

made front pages across the country.

Over the following years, Leichmann and her husband, Arthur Levine, who lived

in Los Angeles, would often drive past the UCLA soccer field while picking up their

daughter from school. They soon started donating to the university, including helping

rebuild the soccer team's locker room, and struck up a friendship with the team's coach,

Jill Ellis, who would go on to

coach and win two World Cups with the U.S. women's team and then served as president of the

National Women's Soccer League's San Diego Wave from 2021 until last December.

Leikman's growing passion for soccer culminated in the couple's purchase of the wave for an estimated $113 million last October.

In a video interview from her home in Miami, with framed photos of her family displayed on a bookshelf behind her, she says, quote,

We started looking at buying a women's sports team about three years ago.

It's something that interests us. It's a good investment, and it's something we can do together as a family.

Two of her three kids are involved in supporting the team's management,

and like men and her family attend as many games as possible.

In May, Alex Morgan, who won two World Cups with the U.S. Women's National Team and also

captained the Wave until her retirement in 2024, joined the Wave as a minority investor.

Leichmann knows a thing or two about good investments. In 1984, she co-founded Beverly Hills,

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