SEATTLE, WA – SEPTEMBER 07: George Kittle #85 of the San Francisco 49ers celebrates with followers and teammates after scoring a landing in opposition to the Seattle Seahawks throughout the recreation at Lumen Discipline on September 07, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. (Picture by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
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A model of this text first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth publication with Robert Frank, a weekly information to the high-net-worth investor and shopper. Join to obtain future editions, straight to your inbox.
Whereas ultra-wealthy households and their funding companies are investing in fewer startups, they’re nonetheless clamoring for a chunk of the motion in relation to sports activities.
In keeping with a brand new survey by Goldman Sachs, 25% of household workplaces have invested in sports activities or associated belongings like ticketing or arenas, and one other quarter are enthusiastic about doing so.
Final week, Julia Koch, the widow of billionaire David Koch, and her household agreed to purchase a minority stake within the NFL’s New York Giants, in keeping with Bloomberg. In June, Guggenheim Companions CEO and billionaire Mark Walter reached a deal to purchase a majority stake within the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers at a valuation of $10 billion. And a trio of Bay Space households, together with enterprise capitalist Vinod Khosla’s, purchased a 6% stake within the San Francisco 49ers in Could.
Nevertheless, whereas girls’s leagues and rising sports activities like pickleball have garnered extra buzz, investor urge for food hasn’t caught up, in keeping with the financial institution’s survey. Solely 19% of 245 household workplaces stated that they had invested in or are enthusiastic about investing in girls’s established leagues, whereas 71% expressed curiosity in main males’s leagues. A smaller share (16%) indicated previous funding or curiosity in girls’s rising leagues or males’s minor leagues.
There are some high-profile examples, with a cohort of billionaire buyers securing three new WNBA workforce franchises in June. Nevertheless, these buyers are betting on future fairness progress reasonably than cashflow for monetary return, as beforehand reported by CNBC’s Alex Sherman.
Goldman Sachs’ Meena Flynn informed Inside Wealth that household workplaces, which make investments for the long run, can afford to be affected person with workforce possession, it doesn’t matter what type of sports activities they’re entering into.
“It actually combines their pursuits from a ardour perspective in addition to long run worth creation,” she stated.
Furthermore, household workplaces see sports activities as hedges in opposition to inflation since they’ve a number of income sources equivalent to streaming rights and ticketing, in keeping with Flynn, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of worldwide personal wealth administration.
Many main league homeowners are rising their sports activities empires by investing in different sports activities and associated enterprises, equivalent to Blackstone’s David Blitzer, the primary individual to personal fairness in all 5 main males’s U.S. sports activities leagues. This 12 months alone, his household workplace Bolt Ventures has backed Fantasy Life, a sports activities betting media agency; Ballers, a series of social golf equipment for racket sports activities; and membership operator Padel Haus.
