{"id":3942,"date":"2026-09-06T09:15:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T09:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=3942"},"modified":"2026-09-06T09:15:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T09:15:06","slug":"meet-the-portland-fire-owners-how-the-bhathals-went-from-swimwear-moguls-to-wnba-franchise-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=3942","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Portland Fire owners: How the Bhathals went from swimwear moguls to WNBA franchise buyers"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Alex Bhathal and his sister Lisa Bhathal Merage have some rules they follow ahead of each Portland Fire game they attend. For Alex, it means wearing a lucky red shirt\u2014a switch from his usual black attire, which was correlated with two team losses. And for Lisa, she sits in seat 11 of her designated row.<\/p>\n
\n
The pre-game rituals of the owners of the first-year WNBA franchise are a product of their father, a businessman and sports investor who emigrated from India to the U.S. in 1960.<\/p>\n
Lisa remembers one of the superstitions their father would espouse: \u201cIf your left eye twitches, it means that money is coming your way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The siblings have certainly seen recent success through their family investment firm RAJ Sports. After buying the Portland Thorns in the growing NWSL in early 2024 for a reported $63 million, the siblings are expanding their roots in the city. In September of that year, RAJ Sports purchased the Portland Fire for $125 million to secure control of the newly announced expansion franchise, which began play in the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
The team now has a valuation of $380 million and has the fourth-highest attendance of the WNBA\u2019s 15 franchises, averaging about 14,500 fans per game in its inaugural season. Last month, RAJ Sports opened the Kaiser Permanente Performance Center, the $150 million joint training facility for the Thorns and the Fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that things are going to take time. But we also knew that we were going to surprise some people, and I think we\u2019ve done that,\u201d Alex told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cWe\u2019re really grateful and appreciative of being able to do this in a city like Portland, where it is the global epicenter of women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
<\/div>Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage were awarded Portland\u2019s WNBA expansion franchise in September 2024.<\/figcaption>
The influence of the siblings\u2019 parents runs deeper than just game-day superstitions. Shortly after the siblings\u2019 father Raj Bhathal immigrated to the U.S., he and their mother, Martha Bhathal, started swimwear company Raj Manufacturing in Southern California.<\/p>\n
It meant the siblings grew up in Los Angeles with a sports team to follow for about every season: Rams in the fall, Lakers in the winter, and Angels in the spring and summer.<\/p>\n
In addition to being a sports fan, Martha was an athlete. While growing up in California, she lettered in about seven sports growing up and played golf at UCLA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Raj took a liking to American sports too, even beyond fandom and swimwear. In the late 1980s, he learned about the NFL\u2019s efforts to expand internationally from an article in the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, and called up the league office through a mutual contact, and ended up becoming the first franchise winner of the World League of American Football, what was then the first transatlantic pro sports league.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe grew up with our parents as examples to us for how you show up in the world, not only in business but within a community,\u201d Lisa told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Raj\u2019s time with the circuit was cut short; the domestic teams ultimately folded as the league transformed into NFL Europe, but by then, the kids had caught the bug.<\/p>\n
They took over their family\u2019s swimwear manufacturing business in 2006 as part of a succession plan, transforming it less than a decade later into RAJ Sports with the purchase of a minority stake in the Sacramento Kings NBA team in 2013.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tremendously impactful in terms of getting a little bit of understanding and knowledge and relationships in the business side of sports,\u201d Alex said. \u201cThat\u2019s what led to ultimately us pursuing sports team ownership more holistically later in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lisa believes her family\u2019s years in the fashion industry gave her and her brother a premonition about the rise of women\u2019s sports years before the NWSL and WNBA would take off in earnest. Years ago, after the purchase of the Sacramento Kings\u2014where Raj and Alex sit on the board, and where Raj is an alternate governor and vice chair\u2014the family saw opportunities for women\u2019s sports cross their desk. At the time, some called it a fad.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people at that time were calling it a \u2018moment,\u2019 and I absolutely disagree with that. It\u2019s about the rise and the future of women\u2019s sports,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Portland, in some ways, was a natural fit. The city is home to Adidas North America and neighboring Beaverton is home to Nike\u2019s world headquarters, creating another connection between the family and the sports lifestyle industry.<\/p>\n
Lisa watched the Thorns play at Providence Park, and Alex began working on a business plan to purchase the NWSL team. Around the same time, ZoomInfo co-founder Kirk Brown\u2019s bid for Portland\u2019s WNBA expansion franchise fell through, and the siblings pounced on the opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stars just aligned for us, and it was meant to be,\u201d Lisa said. \u201cPortland is an amazing city, and Portland shows up for its sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, RAJ Sports, partnering with Nike, held its second annual Epicenter Sports Week, a summit to promote women\u2019s sports. It\u2019s a display of confidence in the future as well as an admission that the structure of women\u2019s leagues still has some uncertainty surrounding them. Besides each league navigating issues around growth and sustainability, there\u2019s questions around increasing pay to match leagues\u2019 success, infrastructure to accommodate training and games, as well as politics, most recently in the WNBA having to address the eligibility of transgender athletes.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an advantage to having two growing teams in Portland sports, Alex said. There\u2019s twice the stakeholders, athletes, and fanbases from which to learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the business of sports, there\u2019s always something crazy that happens almost every day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to backstop that against a clear direction on what we\u2019re trying to build.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Alex Bhathal and his sister Li… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[325,6820,787,1139,5703,22,792,6822,2881,6819,327,6821,328],"class_list":["post-3942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-basketball","tag-bhathals","tag-buyers","tag-fire","tag-franchise","tag-investment","tag-meet","tag-moguls","tag-owners","tag-portland","tag-sports","tag-swimwear","tag-wnba"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2172257091-e1788559039387.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&quality=75\"\/)
<\/div>