Look at how many major golf companies have come out of California.

It makes sense…

California has great weather, lots of golf courses, wealthy consumers, and a massive population.

But then I started thinking about other sports, and realized how much innovation in the industry seems to cluster geographically...

Let’s Dive In 👇

Silicon Valley of Sports

Sports have their own versions of Silicon Valley.

Once a location develops an advantage in a particular sport, it can become self-reinforcing:

You need athletes to test products, places to play, manufacturers, coaches, teams, facilities, events, and communities of people obsessed with the activity.

And unlike pure software, sports have a major physical-world component.

That makes geography surprisingly important (and something to think about when building a company or investing in the industry).

Major Sports Innovation Clusters

Once you start looking, these clusters are everywhere.

Let’s run through some examples.

🏃 Portland is big for running/outdoor sports.

Nike is the obvious giant, but the ecosystem that has developed around it is quite impressive.

Columbia Sportswear, Keen, and the Adidas North American headquarters are all in the Portland area.

When you have decades of footwear designers, marketers, product developers, and sports executives cycling through the region…you expect to see others emerge.

*this is an ecosystem built mainly around one company

🏎️ Charlotte is a motorsports hub.

This might be the most obvious example.

Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, RFK Racing, Trackhouse Racing, 23XI Racing, and many others are based around Charlotte.

Then add NASCAR’s teams, engineers, mechanics, manufacturers, suppliers, simulators, and specialized technology companies.

*this is an ecosystem built mainly around one league

🏄 Southern California dominates surfing and skating.

This one happened differently, as the culture came first.

1. people surfed and skated

2. communities formed

3. people started building products for those communities

4. some became global brands

Vans, Stüssy, Volcom, Hurley, RVCA, Oakley, and countless others have roots in Southern California.

*this is an ecosystem built mainly around an activity

🏔️ Utah + Colorado dominate outdoor sports.

Black Diamond and Cotopaxi in Utah. Outside, BOA, TrainingPeaks, and Skratch Labs in Colorado. Plus a much larger ecosystem of ski, cycling, climbing, running, and outdoor companies.

This one makes intuitive sense:

1. mountains create participants

2. participants create communities

3. communities create problems worth solving

4. entrepreneurs build products

*this is an ecosystem built mainly around the topography

🚴 Northern Italy has a hold on cycling.

When doing a triathlon, I noticed this one big time…basically all of my cycling gear came from Italy.

Pinarello, Campagnolo, Castelli, Selle Italia, Wilier, and other iconic cycling brands all emerged from Northern Italy.

Over generations, the region developed deep expertise across bikes, components, apparel, and manufacturing until the knowledge effectively became embedded in the region.

*this is an ecosystem built around topography + activity

👟 Herzogenaurach, Germany holds two major companies.

This might be the craziest one.

Adidas and Puma are both headquartered in the same small German town.

What’s the reason?

They were founded by brothers Adi and Rudolf Dassler, who originally built shoes together before a falling out led them to create rival companies.

Today, two of the world’s largest sports brands call a town of roughly 25,000 people home.

*this is a unique ecosystem that doesn’t fit a category like the other ones

Why Does Sports Innovation Cluster?

When you look across these examples, I think you’ll start to notice some patterns.

Here are the four ingredients that I believe create sports innovation hubs:

1. Participation/Culture

People need to actually participate in the activity as they experience the problems that outsiders don’t even know exist.

• Surfers build surf products.

• Golfers build golf products.

• Cyclists build cycling products.

People want to live around others who care about the same things they do, creating a passionate community of ideas, employees, customers, and founders.

And once the flywheel gets going, it’s difficult for another area to replicate.

2. Anchor Companies

A successful company in a unique geographical location becomes a talent factory.

It creates thousands of people who know how to build, market, manufacture, and sell products.

Employees learn specialized skills, build relationships, and understand an industry from the inside.

Eventually some of those people leave and go build something else (which is usually just an iteration of where they came from).

3. Specialized Talent

Once enough specialized people live somewhere, companies have another reason to locate there.

• a golf company needs club engineers

• a footwear company needs footwear designers

Talent attracts companies, just as companies attract talent.

If you’re starting a golf company, hiring in California is probably easier than hiring somewhere with no golf industry.

4. Infrastructure

The internet made geography less important for a lot of businesses, but not for a lot of sports innovation.

You still need:

• waves to surf

• tracks to race

• mountains to ski

• athletes to test products

Natural geographies make sense for why certain segments of an industry are located in a particular area…

But for some (like racetracks), it was man-made infrastructure that created the next wave of innovation.

Where are the next sports innovation hubs?

There are probably sports clusters forming today that will look obvious 20 years from now.

A few that come to mind that are worth watching:

• Miami (Padel) - a huge connection to Latin America, and one of the strongest padel markets in the country. Miami-Dade already has roughly 214 padel courts with another 45 planned across six projects. It wouldn’t surprise me if Miami becomes the U.S. hub for a global sport that historically hasn’t been as American.

• Las Vegas (Live Experiences) - Vegas has gone from barely having major professional sports to becoming one of the most interesting sports markets in the country. The big opportunity is the technology that can be built around these properties.

• Austin (Fitness/Wellness) - a large healthtech/startup ecosystem mixed with the city’s wellness culture, young population, tech talent, wellness culture, and capital. It’s also the run-club capital, so I think we’ll see some interesting concepts emerge here.

• Salt Lake City (Outdoor) - Utah already has the outdoor foundation and now you have the Jazz, Utah Mammoth, a growing tech ecosystem, major investment in a downtown sports district, and the 2034 Winter Olympics coming. It has a lot of the same ingredients we talked about earlier.

I’m sure I'm missing a bunch of places (especially internationally)…but I think there’s an interesting takeaway here:

Don’t just look at WHAT is growing (women’s sports, AI, etc), but pay more attention to WHERE things are growing.

Geography still matters!!!

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Read more

For most of sports history, the end product was designed around competition (not the average person).

Basically…you trained for whatever sport you played and, if you were good enough, moved up the competitive ladder. Consumers had to adapt to the sport.

I think we’re increasingly seeing the opposite happen (as sports are now adapting to the consumer).

And it might be one of the biggest opportunities in front of us.

Let’s Dive In 👇

Read more

As a professional hockey player once said to me, “We don’t get that NBA money.”

Heck, the 3-point line is only 40 years old.

• Approximately 25 million Americans play basketball, the majority of whom are young athletes.

• Travel basketball has turned into a massive money …

Read more

Yes it has its downsides, but for those who aim to build companies, it created a new way to build (and greatly expanded the economy).

What is happening/going to happen with AI is the next great wave for builders.

• Internet democratized distribution.

• Social media democratized audie…

Read more

And what a long way it’s come from its leather-helmet days.

• Today, the NFL is the most valuable sports league in the world.

• College football has become a true professional league.

• And high school football still owns Friday nights across much of America.

But the game itself is changing (and technology is playing a massive role i…

Read more

Jacob Rothman, who sold Perch to Catapult, is coming to speak with Profluence members on September 25th.

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Now for today’s deep dive👇

I posted this to LinkedIn a few weeks ago…

It generated a ton of buzz and was definitely worth exploring further (took me a long time to put this all together, but was so worth it).

American Metros & Sports Teams

America has roughly 54 metropolitan areas with 1M+ people, yet none of its five biggest professional sports leagues has more than 32 teams.

And it’s even crazier because those 30-ish franchises aren’t occupying 30-ish unique markets.

NYC and LA have multiple teams in each league:

Meanwhile, the latest metro estimates put San Diego at ~3.3M, Orlando ~3.0M, San Antonio ~2.8M, Austin ~2.6M, and Portland ~2.5M, and they combined ONLY have eight Big Five teams.

Should there be more teams?

Yes…but the biggest constraint is league-imposed scarcity (not a lack of demand).

And that scarcity is a huge reason franchise values have exploded, but to continue the growth…expansion is going to become necessary.

How Many Teams Can These Leagues Support?

If we’re talking realistically supportable franchises, not “what will commissioners actually approve,” I think the number is substantially higher than 30.

I wouldn’t just take every major city and assume a U.S. league can work there…the sport’s popularity, travel, arenas/stadiums, media economics, currencies, taxes, and player willingness matter.

But if the question is…

“How many franchises could each of the Big Five plausibly support while still feeling like the same major league?”, here’s where I’d land:

So I think the U.S. could probably support ~180 Big Five franchises versus 142 today (without getting into ridiculous territory).

Once you include international markets, I think this gets much more interesting.

There are obviously huge caveats, especially around Europe, but here’s how I’d think about each.

🏈 NFL: 40–44 teams

The NFL is the most fascinating one to me because the league is basically telling us this is coming.

Roger Goodell said recently that he has “no doubt” there will eventually be NFL teams outside the U.S (and the 2026 season has a record nine international games across seven countries).

I’d see the eventual footprint roughly as:

There are enormous markets like São Paulo and Melbourne where demand could exist, but the geography makes it much harder.

Financially, the NFL could probably support the most expansion out of any league (it’s intentional at this point that they haven’t added any teams, as the demand is there).

On top of this:

• The NFL's biggest competitor is really college football

• International leagues don’t really exist, and the NFL has just recently started building player pipelines across the globe (ex. NFL Africa).

🏀 NBA: 42–48 teams

This is where I think the largest global opportunity exists.

Read more

We have Brian Kopp, a Partner at Ryan Sports Ventures, coming to speak with Profluence members on August 28th.

🔗 Learn More & RSVP Here

Now for today’s deep dive👇

Sports Are Eating Entertainment

Something really interesting is happening in sports right now.

And it actually has very little to do with what happens on the field.

A few recent examples:

1. Kim Kardashian is executive producing Team Moms, a reality show following families around an elite youth baseball program.

2. The NFL is increasingly promoting its players' lives and relationships off the field, with Justin Herbert and Madison Beer as the latest example.

3. Netflix has built an entire content ecosystem around sports, from live NFL games to Quarterback, America’s Sweethearts, Running Point, Untold, and more.

4. Athletes are increasingly showing up at fashion shows, concerts, celebrity events, and other cultural events.

5. Sports documentaries and reality shows have become mainstream entertainment (even for people who barely watch the actual games).

Put all of this together, and I think something much bigger is happening.

For most of modern history, sports were a category of entertainment, but now sports are increasingly becoming the place where all of those things collide.

Let’s Dive In👇

Taylor Swift Was The Perfect Case Study

You really can’t talk about this without starting here.

Taylor Swift didn’t actually do that much for football itself…

She simply gave millions of people who previously didn’t care about the NFL a completely different reason to care about it.

The goal was for the flow to be:

1. Someone could enter through Taylor Swift.

2. Then become interested in Travis Kelce.

3. Then start watching the Chiefs.

4. Then learn the other players.

5. Then watch more NFL games.

And suddenly...

You created a football fan without ever selling them football.

This was an inflection point in history because sports organizations have historically marketed themselves primarily around the sport.

• Want more NFL fans? Market football. But now Taylor Swift.

• Want more Formula 1 fans? Market racing. But now Drive to Survive.

• Want more soccer fans? Market soccer. But now Welcome to Wrexham.

The strategy is to identify the other things someone already cares about (and connect them back to sports).

The NFL Clearly Learned From This

Look at what is happening around the NFL right now.

• Justin Herbert is engaged to pop star Madison Beer.

• Joe Burrow’s relationship with influencer Olivia Ponton has generated enormous attention.

• Jaxson Dart is dating creator Marissa Ayers.

The NFL is leaning more into the “celebrity stuff” as it looks to reach younger and female audiences.

And it makes perfect sense as the players have huge audiences, and so do their girlfriends. Put them together and suddenly both are being introduced to people who may have never cared about the other.

Audience Arbitrage! S/O to the NFL marketing teams for figuring this out (and riding the wave).

I’ve said this before and will continue to say it…

Sports have become far less about the actual games, and way more about entertainment.

Sports Is Eating Reality TV

Kim Kardashian’s Team Moms is another fascinating example.

The premise of the show is that it’s centered on youth baseball, but we all know the actual entertainment won’t be primarily focused on baseball.

It’s going to be about drama, probably between the moms and coaches…aka reality TV (sports just happens to provide the setting).

And we’re seeing this everywhere:

• Welcome to Wrexham isn’t just about soccer.

• Quarterback isn’t just about throwing footballs.

• Drive to Survive isn’t just about cars going around a track.

Sports are one of the best reality-TV factories ever created because the drama is typically not manufactured (it’s authentic).

A sports team is basically an entertainment franchise where nobody has to write the script (and unlike a movie franchise, the story never really ends).

Fashion & Music Figured This Out Too

Sports and fashion used to be relatively separate worlds.

That’s basically impossible to argue anymore (just look at the tunnel walk before an NBA game).

For some “fans,” like one of my college buddies, what players wear walking into the arena is more interesting to them than what happens during the game.

Look at what has happened:

• Jerseys are now streetwear.

• Teams are lifestyle brands (ex. Yankees caps).

• Luxury brands increasingly work with athletes.

• Sneakers became an enormous cultural category.

And sports merchandise is increasingly designed to be worn by people who may not even watch every game.

The team logo itself has become a piece of culture (you’re now monetizing identity, not just fandom).

What we’ve seen in fashion has also happened with music…

NBA All-Star Weekend, Super Bowl, Formula 1 races, major boxing fights, and other sporting events increasingly feel more like week-long entertainment festivals than individual games.

The actual competition is just the centerpiece (but everything else gets built around it).

Sports Has Something Everyone Else Wants

This is where I think the shift gets really important.

Read more

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Now for today’s deep dive👇

Why Outsiders Keep Winning in Sports

Some of the most successful sports companies of the last decade weren’t built by people who spent their entire careers in sports.

In fact, many were founded by people who barely worked in the industry at all.

Some examples:

• WHOOP was founded by Will Ahmed while he was at Harvard.

• Peloton was co-founded by John Foley, whose background was largely in e-commerce and technology.

• DraftKings was started by Jason Robins, Matt Kalish, and Paul Liberman, who came from technology, analytics, and marketing backgrounds rather than traditional sports betting.

• Strava was founded by Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath, two entrepreneurs with backgrounds in technology rather than traditional fitness.

And I think there’s something important in that.

The next billion-dollar sports company probably won’t come from someone trying to build a “sports company.”

It’ll come from someone who sees something working incredibly well somewhere else and realizes...

Why doesn’t this exist in sports?

Let’s Dive In👇

The Insider Problem

There’s obviously a huge advantage to knowing an industry really well.

You understand the customers, know the people, recognize the problems, and have a network to help you get started.

But there’s also a downside.

The longer you spend inside an industry, the easier it becomes to accept how that industry works.

You start hearing things like:

• “Teams don’t buy that.”

• “Fans don’t want that.”

• “Athletes won’t use that.”

• “Leagues would never allow it.”

• “That’s not how sponsorship works.”

And sometimes those things are true…but sometimes they’re only true because nobody has built a better alternative yet.

I see this all the time in sports.

There are a lot of incredibly smart people making existing businesses incrementally better, but some of the biggest opportunities come from people asking a completely different question.

What already works somewhere else that hasn’t made its way into sports yet?

Innovation Gets Imported Into Sports

WHOOP didn’t invent the wearable…

Instead, they took a pretty boring piece of equipment and layered a bunch of other business models on top of it:

Hardware + Software + Content + Subscription + Community

That combination turned a fitness tracker into a multi-billion-dollar company.

DraftKings did something similar by taking fantasy sports and combining it with mobile technology, gaming mechanics, data, and eventually betting.

The ideas themselves weren’t necessarily new. The application to sports was.

And I think we’re going to see significantly more of this over the next decade.

Every Major Technology Eventually Comes To Sports

This may be the easiest way to think about the opportunity.

Over the last few decades, massive industries have been created around:

• AI

• Software

• Fintech

• Robotics

• Healthcare

• Creator tools

• Biotechnology

• Computer vision

Sports doesn’t need to invent any of these technologies.

It just needs entrepreneurs to figure out the best ways to apply them to sports.

And we’re still really early in that process.

1. AI is already changing scouting, coaching, content creation, ticketing, sponsorship, athlete development, and fan engagement.

2. Computer vision is changing how games are filmed, analyzed, officiated, and understood.

3. Fintech is creating new ways to monetize athletes, teams, fans, and sports assets.

4. Healthcare and biotechnology are increasingly colliding with performance, recovery, longevity, and fitness.

5. Robotics will eventually have applications across training, officiating, venue operations, rehabilitation, and probably a bunch of things we haven’t thought about yet.

Sports is basically becoming an application layer for technologies being built everywhere else.

And that’s a pretty exciting place to be.

There’s Another Type of Founder Winning

There is one interesting counterpoint to all of this.

Read more

On one side, some of the biggest names from the last fitness boom have struggled:

• F45 voluntarily delisted from the NYSE in 2023 after its share price fell below $1.

• Honors Holdings, once the largest Orangetheory franchisee in the world with 143 studios, entered bankruptcy proceedings.

At the same time...

1. A relatively new fitness competition called HYROX has exploded to roughly 1.5 million participants during its current season.

2. Equinox is selling a $40,000/year longevity program.

3. Run clubs and adult sport leagues are exploding in growth.

4. Fitness competitions are becoming mass participation sports.

5. And gyms are increasingly becoming places where people train for something rather than simply places where people “work out.”

Put all of these together, and I think we’re watching a pretty significant shift in the fitness industry.

I’ve been eyeing these trends for some time and am finally ready to tackle it head-on.

Let’s Dive In👇

The Last Fitness Boom

The last big wave in fitness was built around boutique studios.

Instead of paying $15/month for access to equipment, people started paying significantly more for a specific experience.

Some examples:

• F45

• Barry’s

• SoulCycle

• CrossFit

• Pure Barre

• Club Pilates

• Orangetheory

The model was to take a relatively small footprint, build a strong brand around a specific workout, create community around the classes, and charge a premium.

For a while, it worked extremely well, but there was a weakness hiding underneath the model:

The economics were tied to real estate, as every new location required:

• Staff

• Buildout

• Utilities

• Equipment

• Local customer acquisition

Whether 10 or 100 people signed up, many of those costs remained fixed.

That becomes painful when growth slows, and that’s where we’ve seen struggles with companies like F45 and Orangetheory.

To me, this shows that opening more physical locations isn’t necessarily the best way to build the next massive fitness company.

And that’s where things get interesting.

HYROX Flipped the Model (and helps the rest of the ecosystem)

HYROX is the most fascinating company in the space right now, and they started with a pretty simple idea.

Create a fitness competition that almost anyone who trains regularly can prepare for.

Every HYROX race follows essentially the same format:

That standardization is the most important part.

Because they’ve suddenly turned a CrossFit-like workout into a sport (can train for it, compete, go to events, improve, and be a world champion).

In 2018, the first HYROX event took place in Hamburg, Germany, with ~650 competitors.

By the end of 2026, roughly 1.5 million people are expected to have participated across 130 global events.

Look at this chart of their 2025 financials (it’s pretty fascinating):

Read more

UK-based IG Group announced it will acquire Underdog in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion (with incentives that could reach $2B+).

Who said sports tech companies can’t get big? Who said sports tech companies take too long to reach an exit?

The Underdog acquisition perfectly fits the thesis I always talk about of “sports as a wedge”, or “using sports as a platform to scale”.

Post-acquisition, IG Group announced plans to scale Underdog’s platform beyond sports into financial markets, culture, and politics.

Whether you’re building a startup, investing in sports, or simply trying to understand where the industry is headed, I think there are a lot of lessons worth studying.

Let’s Dive In 👇

History of Underdog

Started by 2x-exited betting founder Jeremy Levine and his co-founders in 2020, it only took 6 years from founding to exit.

How?

It was a series of strategic decisions (and timely pivots) that compounded over time.

A potential sign that the founders were looking for an exit…

In March 2026, Underdog laid off about 20% of its 500 employees after shifting to prediction markets (a move usually done to increase EBITDA).

Before getting into some key lessons, let’s take a quick look at the deal.

Underdog Deal Terms

Underdog has nearly 1 million monthly active users, and more than 60% are under 30.

Underdog generated approximately:

• $466 million in trailing-12-month net revenue

• Up from roughly $380 million the year before (~21% growth)

IG Group agreed to acquire Underdog in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion, consisting of approximately $1.1 billion upfront plus a $200 million earnout tied to Underdog’s 2026 performance.

For illustration purposes, an investment at the seed round likely turned into:

• $250k → worth roughly $5M

• $500k → worth roughly $10M

• $1M → worth roughly $20M

• co-founders → likely $100M+ each

Kind of surprisingly, you don’t see any so-called “Sports VCs” on the cap table (definitely a miss by those who passed on them in 2020).

To keep the team motivated…IG Group is also offering eligible Underdog employees the ability to earn up to an additional $850 million through a management incentive plan if the business significantly outperforms financial targets in 2028 and 2029 (this is separate from the $1.3B paid to shareholders).

IG is excited about this deal, as they expect Underdog to:

• More than double its U.S. revenue

• Increase its U.S. active customer base by more than 10x after the acquisition.

Ok, this is all great…but what lessons can we learn from Underdog?

Let’s get into them ⤵

Read more

• Private equity is pouring in.

• Media continues to fragment.

• AI is rewriting entire business models.

• New leagues are launching every month.

• Youth sports is becoming increasingly expensive.

We’re only halfway through the year, but I wanted to step back from the headlines and share a few observations on wh…

Read more

I recommend listening to my recent podcast with JM Arseaneau, co-founder of Winnia.

After selling his last data company, he’s been diving deep into AI agents and their role in sports.

Listen/Watch on YouTube

Now to today’s briefing 👇

Nearly three years ago, I talked about the power of generative AI as it was going mainstream.

See the full article here:

But today…

The next wave of AI technology is emerging before our eyes.

Agentic AI.

*Note: if you haven’t played around with AI agents yet, I HIGHLY recommend it

Sports are Drowning in Data

The story of agentic AI starts with what has taken place over the last twenty years.

Every sports organization is sitting on mountains of information:

• CRM records

• Ticketing data

• Sponsorship data

• Venue operations

• Email engagement

• Mobile app activity

• Merchandise purchases

The problem is no longer about visibility (most organizations already know what should happen).

The problem is execution.

Organizations simply don’t have enough time, people, or coordination to make it happen consistently and act on the insights sitting inside their systems.

The next generation of technology will focus on enabling decisions (rather than just helping people make decisions).

Why “Agentic” Matters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a keynote that enterprise AI agents would create a “multi-trillion-dollar opportunity” for many industries.

The word “agentic” comes from agency, the ability to take action toward a goal.

Traditional software waits for instructions, but agentic AI pursues objectives.

Instead of asking:

“What should we do?”

Organizations can increasingly ask:

“Can you do this for us?”

That shift from information → decision → execution is what makes Agentic AI potentially one of the biggest technology transitions since the internet itself.

So what is Agentic AI?

A commonly accepted definition is:

AI Agents are autonomous software systems that perceive, reason, and act in digital environments to achieve goals on behalf of human principals, with capabilities for tool use, economic transactions, and strategic interaction.

AI agents can:

• employ standard building blocks, such as APIs

• communicate with other agents and humans

• receive and send money

• access and interact with the internet

AI agents enhance large language models (LLMs) and similar generalist AI models by enabling them to automate complex procedures.

They can execute multi-step plans, use external tools, and interact with digital environments to function as powerful components within larger workflows.

For example…

An AI agent could plan attending the World Cup using input from a consumer along with API access to specific web sites, emails, and communications platforms to decide what hotels or flights work best. With credit card permissions, the agent could book and pay for the entire transaction without human involvement.

The Agentic AI Era

To understand why Agentic AI matters, it helps to understand how we got here:

Agentic AI Era (2025+)

This is where things get interesting, as instead of:

Human → Software → Action

The NEW workflow becomes:

Human → Goal → AI Agent → Action

An AI agent can:

• Analyze information

• Make decisions

• Execute tasks

• Measure results

• Improve over time

The shift is from software that helps people work to software that works alongside people.

Think of it more like a digital employee (and one that never sleeps).

The First Major Opportunity in Sports

The most obvious sports application is…

Read more

Every major sports business started with someone noticing a shift before everyone else.

• Hudl saw coaches manually sharing film.

• Fanatics saw e-commerce consolidating sports commerce.

• Teamworks saw athletic departments drowning in spreadsheets.

• PlayOn Sports saw millions of families unable to watch local games.

The question shouldn’t be:

“What company should I start or what solution should I add next?”

It’s:

“What trend is creating new opportunities?”

Then I’d adapt the frameworks.

10-Step Framework for Building a Sports Company

Here’s the reality…

Every billion-dollar sports startup started as an idea that didn’t seem like much at first.

The key isn’t having the perfect idea from day one…it’s knowing how to spot opportunities, test them, and refine them into something valuable.

*Whether you’re just getting started or already doing millions in revenue, this post is a helpful exercise to go through.

1. Follow Participation Growth

Every sports boom creates infrastructure needs.

Examples:

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• 6/19: Dylan Zane - Velocity Capital Q/A session

• 6/23: Office Hours w/ Profluence team

• 7/1: Founders Fundraising Q&A session

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

🎙 Podcasts

• Mike Carney - CEO, OnDeck Partners

• Andy Sandler - Partner, Temerity Capital

Hear from Mike on how they’re building their MCO model and how Andy’s family office is building a portfolio of sports team assets.

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

💬 New Members

• Dan Cataldi - Groov

• Emily Sciorra - NuCO2

• Scott Ticer - Touchlynk

• Jake Davidson - Corebball

• Wesley Pabis - Augmento

• Patrick Magee - Wii Stream

• Andras Nemes - Future Stars

• Philip Hover-Smoot - Atlas Cup

• Ashley Preston - Athlete Chlabs

• Krista Reinking - North Signalco

• Brett Lyons - Commercial Leader

• Kasim Al-Delaimy - Airena Sports

• Matt Fleckenstein - Genius Sports

• essica Walker - Mobile Ultrasound

• Michael DiLorenzo - Fiumecapital

• Aidan Byrne - Total Athletic Development

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

🛠️ New Member Resource Added

We just added a list of U.S. women who are angel investors.

Get it Inside Profluence

Now to today’s market briefing ⤵

The Death of Mom & Pop Ownership (in Sports)

Something unusual is happening in sports.

For over 100 years, minor league baseball teams were primarily owned by local families, entrepreneurs, or community operators.

Today, institutional capital is quietly rolling them up into multi-club ownership platforms.

It may seem like a niche trend.

I think it’s a preview of where the entire sports industry is heading.

Let’s Dive In 👇

The Quiet Roll-Up

Minor League Baseball, with 120 affiliated clubs across the United States, has quietly become one of the most active consolidation stories in sports.

Multi-club ownership groups have begun consolidating teams under a single platform, bringing private equity playbooks and operational scale to one of America’s oldest sports ecosystems.

The biggest player is Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH).

Backed by Endeavor and Silver Lake Capital, DBH has quietly acquired 48 affiliated clubs, making it by far the largest owner in Minor League Baseball.

Major League Baseball currently caps ownership at 50 affiliated teams, meaning the platform is already approaching the league’s ownership limit.

The thesis is straightforward: create scale through shared technology, sponsorship sales, ticketing systems, procurement, analytics, and operational best practices that can be deployed across dozens of organizations.

But DBH isn't the only group entering the space.

OnDeck Partners, launched by Marc Lasry & Avenue Sports, is taking a more measured, community-first approach.

Rather than assembling the largest possible portfolio, the company is focused on building a smaller collection of clubs while preserving local identity and investing in the ballpark as the center of community entertainment.

There’s also…

Prospector Baseball Group, backed by Arctos Partners, is building a modern baseball platform grounded in technology, operational expertise, and long-term ownership, while emphasizing local traditions and the fan experience.

Rather than pursuing sheer scale alone, the group has positioned itself around strengthening community-rooted franchises through smarter operations and strategic investment.

DBH, OnDeck Partners, and Prospector Baseball Group all represent the rise of multi-club ownership.

They simply have different visions for what the future of hometown sports should look like (one philosophy is primarily about operational scale, the others are about amplifying local connection, community gathering, and year-round venue activation).

Why Is This Happening?

The traditional answer seems to be that baseball is under-monetized.

But the real answer is more about:

1. Real estate.

2. Live entertainment.

3. Community infrastructure.

A ballpark in a smaller city becomes an anchor location:

• parking

• hospitality

• event space

• concessions

• premium suites

• existing customers

• corporate sponsors

• local brand awareness

• municipal relationships

Yet many are used only 60-70 nights each year.

That’s an incredibly underutilized asset, as a ballpark is already a complete entertainment district.

The MCO Flywheel

Multi-club ownership creates leverage across their shared services and best practices:

• Data

• CRM

• AI tools

• Marketing

• Procurement

• Sponsorship sales

• Ticketing technology

• Entertainment booking

Instead of 30 independent operators solving the same problems, one platform solves them once.

That’s why institutional capital likes these businesses.

We first explored this in a 2024 newsletter:

The Real Thesis Behind MCOs

The future of sports is about owning places where people gather.

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A YouTube sports channel can attract millions of viewers, sell merchandise worldwide, fill live events, and influence participation in the sport itself.

The creator economy is quickly becoming the new wave of media (and sports are right in its crosshairs).

Let’s Dive In 👇

The Evolution of Internet Businesses

When simplifying it down, the historical flow looks like this:

Information (90s) → Commerce (2000s) → Social (2010s) → Creator (2020s)→ Ecosystem (today)

Each phase of evolution has moved “power” closer to the individual.

What once required a media company, retailer, or institution can now be built by a creator(s) with a loyal audience. Sports are simply the latest industry experiencing this shift.

The FULL progression looks something like:

We’re now entering Phase 5: Creator-led ecosystems.

Creator-Led Ecosystem Example

One of the best examples of Phase 5 of the creator economy is…

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📅 Upcoming Member Events

• 6/5: Founders Fundraising Session

• 6/10: APAC member virtual meetup

• 6/17: Community Networking

• 6/19: Dylan Zane - Velocity Capital Q/A session

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

🎙 Podcasts

• Bobby Basham - Exec, Chicago Cubs

• Kira Pritchard & Jon Solomon - Aspen Sports Institute

We chatted with Bobby Basham about innovation in sports and how the Cubs approach it, as well as with the Aspen Institute about the future of soccer.

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

💬 New Members

• Brian Dickson - Vensure

• Alyson Stemas - The Suite

• Brandon Mccaghren - PGF

• David Shuler - Minnehaha Equity

• Matt Marino - Private Office Ventures

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

💸 Sports Innovation Series: Soccer

This month’s innovation series focused on the Soccer landscape.

🔗 Members Can Watch the Recording Here

The Soccer Industry

Soccer (football for everyone outside the U.S.) is the most popular sport on the planet.

Clubs, leagues, and startups are racing to capture new fans, measure performance, and monetize engagement at a global scale.

The numbers speak for themselves…

• 250M+ active players

• 3.5B+ football fans worldwide

• 200+ countries and territories where the game is played

• $11B projected revenue for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the largest in history

Yet the tech stack powering the game is still fragmented and ripe for disruption.

And just last week there were three big announcements in soccer:

1. PlayerData, raised $12 million in Series A funding as it expanded from a lower-cost GPS wearable into connected ball technology and AI-powered video.

2. Coachbetter, a Zurich-based sports technology company, secured $8.2 million in pre-Series A funding to modernize the operational infrastructure of amateur and youth soccer clubs.

3. Manchester United’s Harry Maguire co-founded and invested in Feedz, an AI coaching app that converts spoken audio notes into structured player reports for athletes, parents, and coaching staff.

The 2026 World Cup may become the largest catalyst for soccer innovation in history (as North America pushes toward becoming a more serious soccer market).

Let’s Dive In👇

The Soccer Economy

Soccer dominates every global metric across audience, participation, and sponsorship dollars.

• The English Premier League has an $8B domestic rights deal through 2029.

• FIFA’s 2026 World Cup is projected to surpass $11B in revenue, the largest in history.

• The average NWSL club is now worth approximately $184 million, up 77% since 2024 as women’s soccer continues its rapid growth.

• The average MLS club is now worth approximately $690 million, with LAFC and Inter Miami both valued above $1.4 billion.

The momentum extends beyond traditional leagues.

New formats are attracting meaningful investor attention, with startups such as the Kings League and Baller League raising significant capital and demonstrating demand for creator-driven, digitally native versions of the world’s game.

Here’s a market map outlining the soccer technology industry with 40+ companies included:

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It provided clues to where the entire sports industry is heading.

The biggest realization I walked away with is this:

Sports are evolving from a static/legacy industry into one at the forefront of innovation (largely due to their resilience, AI-hedging, and deep fandoms).

PEAK brought together ~1,400+ founders, executives, investors, operators, and innovation leaders across sports and its adjacencies.

But once the dust settled, I started thinking about the key patterns (as the same themes kept surfacing over and over again).

Let’s Dive In👇

1. Everyone Is Trying to Figure out AI

A year ago, every conference conversation sounded like:

“How will AI impact sports?”

At PEAK, I was having conversations with founders about what AI tools they’re using, with operators about how they’re building agents to minimize headcount, and with investors about what companies are now defensible.

Many of the conversations focused on these aspects:

• Operationalizing AI

• Rebuilding workflows around it

• Using AI to create entirely new experiences

• Integrating AI fast, but with the right foundation & security protocols

In my view, the winners won’t necessarily be the companies with the best AI models, but the organizations that integrate AI deepest into their infrastructure.

Another interesting takeaway I found from talking with startups that started over the last year or two, compared to companies that started a decade ago in sports…

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We talked with executives at the Indiana Pacers + Indiana Fever, along with two consultants that they are working with.

I wanted to share more of it here.

Let’s Dive In 👇

5 Key Insights from the Pacers Convo

Setting some groundwork first, there is a new sports monetization stack taking place:

• Data layer

• Distribution layer

• AI optimization layer

• Content + brand layer

If you only take one thing away from this newsletter…

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