Sharon Coolidge and Alexander Coolidge | Cincinnati Enquirer

Silicon Valley billionaire Meg Whitman has now gone all-in on Cincinnati – twice.

The first time was in 1979 when she was 23 and fresh from Harvard Business School. She moved across the country to Cincinnati to become a brand manager for Procter & Gamble, and she fell in love with the city.

Now, four decades later, Whitman and her husband, Dr. Griff Harsh, are investing $100 million in Cincinnati's Major League Soccer team, putting their family on par with local business families like the Castellinis and even the Browns.

On Thursday, at Major League Soccer's Board of Governors meeting in New York City, Whitman was introduced, taking a seat next to the team's majority owner, Carl Lindner III.

Whitman, Lindner and FC Cincinnati President Jeff Berding sat down with The Enquirer Thursday, just before the meeting got underway.

What was clear: Whitman is passionate about soccer and has done her homework. The CEO famous for making Ebay the global marketplace now believes Major League Soccer has the potential to eclipse baseball and football as America's favorite sport.

"When I think about business, I always think about, what are the trends?" she said. "Be said. "Because if you can be in a business where the wind is at your back, versus gale force in your face, it's easier. It's clear to many people, and including now our family, soccer may be the professional sport of the future."

Whitman's investment comes at a critical time.

FC Cincinnati officials won't say how they'll use the cash infusion – or discuss financial results. But the team is likely unprofitable, as are most MLS teams currently, according to Forbes.

Team owners paid a $150 million franchise fee and are financing a $250 million stadium, plus built a $30 million training facility making it likely the Whitman investment will help cover those enormous facility costs.

Team owners will likely use the money to minimize the financial burden of building the new West End stadium. Less money spent on stadium debt means more money for operations – like building a winning roster of players.

If Whitman's bet on the sustained growth of popularity in American soccer is right, it could ultimately pay off handsomely. The ten-most valuable teams in Europe are worth $1.8 billion to $3.8 billion, according to accounting giant KPMG.

From shampoo to Ebay to soccer

Whitman started her career at Procter & Gamble in 1979, where she was a brand manager assistant assigned to work on a test market product that could have become an Ivory shampoo. That idea didn't make it to store shelves, and she went on to work on the Head and Shoulders brand

She still ticks off the name of her first P&G boss, Earl Blanks, as having an impact on her business career.

Whitman lived on Riverview Court in Mount Adams, then Cincinnati's bustling destination neighborhood for entertainment. Her husband, a neurosurgeon, managed to do some work at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, but his work took him to California, and Whitman went, too.

Today, with a $3.6 billion net worth, she is one of the 50 richest women in America, known for taking eBay from a company of 30 employees and $4 million in business in the late 1990s to one with 15,000 workers and $8 billion in annual sales a decade later.

She's now the CEO of Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg's new video streaming platform, which will focus on short-form entertainment – 10-minute episodes instead of 30- or 60 minutes – designed to stream on smartphones. Quibi is short for "quick bites."

Whitman was intrigued by Major League Soccer as far back as 2017 when she was announced as a potential owner of a Sacramento MLS franchise. She left that group, though, and continued to focus on her day job.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati was granted an MLS expansion team, with an ownership group led by Lindner and Berding as team president. They have a grand vision: a $250 million stadium in the West End, a $30 million training facility in Milford, development around the stadium and a winning team.

Wins were elusive this past season, and the whole dream is proving more expensive than initially envisioned, Linder said. But the vision remains the same. So last year, at this time, an effort to add to the ownership team was initiated.

'We thought this was the best of everything'

Whitman wasn't necessarily looking, but when she was approached by the Raine Group, the company in charge of finding investors, she was intrigued.

On Sept. 13, her son, Will Harsh, had a scheduled call with Berding, who was at work in his Fourth Street office.

Berding told him about the team's success as a USL team and the passionate fan base. And he laid out the team's vision, including the stadium development.

Soon after they hung up, Will Harsh called back and asked if Berding could meet Whitman in Chicago that Sunday, where she was headed on business.

The two had dinner at The Florentine, inside the J.W Marriot.

"It was an easy conversation," Berding said. And it was a long one.

"I left the meeting thinking she was great fit, that she'd be a tremendous addition to the ownership group," Berding said. "She complements Carl (Lindner III) and Scott (Farmer) and George (Joseph) and all the owners. She has a great depth of knowledge that can help in running a team and building a stadium, and I'm going to call on her."

Whitman said she felt the same way. Her family has strong ties to Cincinnati, but it was the ownership group that sealed the deal.

"I have run businesses for many years, and it's who you are in business with and leadership team," she said. "We thought this was the best of everything we had looked at."

Whitman's investment for a 20% stake assumes the team is worth $500 million, up from $285 million estimated value by Forbes.

But values are surging as investors eye the 2022 expiration of several of the league's TV deals ESPN and Univision – that could set the stage for more lucrative deals. European soccer teams generate roughly 37% of their revenue from TV broadcasting, according to a New York University study.

Also on the horizon: the U.S. is set to host part of the FIFA World Cup in 2026 – which is investors bet will further boost American interest in the sport.

Amazed by Over-the-Rhine's revival

Whitman retains ties to P&G as a board member, coming back to town five times a year for board meetings. She stays at 21C and has been intrigued by what she's seen in Over-the-Rhine. The FC Cincinnati stadium development is just to the west of the neighborhood.

"We're excited about it," she said. "I have been so impressed by the current attendance, at the current stadium, which is not even the new stadium, the passion and zeal of the fans. I mean, clearly people in Cincinnati love soccer," she said.

Lindner's role isn't changing. Nor is Berding's. Whitman is clear: She wants to help as much as she can.

Whitman and her husband Harsh aren't moving to Cincinnati, though they expect to go to games when they can. Harsh is the Julian R. Youmans Chair in Neurological Surgery at the University of California. And Quibi launches in April and is based in L.A.

She and Lindner have an easy rapport, finishing each other's sentences.

"It's great to have another off-the-charts family involved," Lindner said. "I think the Whitman family, Meg obviously, is very accomplished and brings some ideas and thoughts to help us meet the grand ambitions that we have as a team."

He noted her family does real estate development, and that's a very real part of the vision, the development around the stadium.

"We don't have a lot of experience in developing real estate from the ground up, so there's some natural things like that that make some sense," Lindner said. "Meg has her own network of relationships and friends ... I think the more the better.

"We have some pretty big ambitions. We have one of the nicest training centers, one of the nicest stadiums, we want to be very competitive, too, and field a winning team, and those big ambitions, it takes a lot of resources .... I don't have an answer to everything, so I love that we have such a diversified group of owners. We're much stronger that way."

Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said he knew Whitman would be a good fit with Cincinnati "from the first time I met her."

“The sun, stars and moon aligned around her partnership with Carl Lindner and their family because she has Cincinnati connections, which is that she on the board of Procter and Gamble and knows the city," Garber said.

On Sept. 21 – six days after Whitman met Berding – she came to Cincinnati to meet Lindner.

"The weekend I spent in Cincinnati, I was impressed by Over-the-Rhine and the stadium site," Whitman said. "When I was at Procter and Gamble, we didn’t go to Over-the-Rhine. And (now), Over-the-Rhine is the most amazing… And I thought the investment in the stadium was remarkable. The training center was impressive. But frankly, business is all about people, and so we really liked Carl and Martha (Lindner). We brought both boys and our grandson. We arrived like the whole family for a luncheon."

She laughs at the memory of descending on the Lindner family home in Indian Hill with her sons, their wives, and even her 4-month-old grandson.