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

🔗 Learn More & RSVP Here

📅 Upcoming Member Events

• 9/11: Cold Outreach Tactics Workshop

• 9/16: Virtual Community Networking

• 9/25: Q&A w/ Perch Founder (sold to Catapult)

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

💬 New Profluence Members

• Karlos Walkes - XiQ

• Marin Kim - P44 Sport

• Lori Silverstein - Straive

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• Shiri Rosenblum - Relay VC

• Chris Lambert - Players, Inc

• Xenia Bulatov - Ultimate Bots

• Tim Miller - Strike Fighter League

• Arlesha Amazan - Champion Strategies

• Felipe Guevara - AWA Nutrition Holdings Inc.

• Ben Pincus - Sports & Entertainment Commercial Advisor

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

🎙 Podcasts

• Tim Klitch - CEO, Strike Fighter League

• Tim Miller - Owner, Austin Pickle Ranch

Great conversations from the Tim’s… first pod is on owning the pickleball ecosystem and the other is on taking sports to the air.

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

Now for today’s deep dive👇

The TikTok-ification of Sports

Look around sports, and you’ll start to notice what I’m talking about.

• Cricket created Twenty20.

• Golf has TGL and an explosion of creator-led golf leagues.

• Tennis has experimented with shorter formats and faster presentation.

• Basketball has 3x3, Unrivaled, and other alternative leagues built around more condensed formats.

• Even the NFL (arguably the strongest traditional sports product in the world) has embraced alternative broadcasts, RedZone, creator content, and highlights distributed everywhere.

Adding on top of this…

You also have entirely new properties being designed from Day 1 for the “TikTok Environment”, such as the Baller League, Kings League, Slap Boxing, and new ones being created virtually every day.

So What’s Happening?

Sports are getting shorter, faster, louder, and increasingly built for people who might only give you 30 seconds of their attention.

We’re watching the TikTok-ification of sports happen in real time.

Still don’t believe me…

A UFC fighter is reportedly trying to fight a chimpanzee on live TV.

Just as the X account above properly notes the shift…

Sports are becoming more like what they started as…raw violence and shock factors.

A 19-year-old fan today might experience an MMA event through a 12-second highlight on TikTok, a meme on Instagram, a clip from a fighter’s podcast, a betting notification, and then maybe five minutes of the actual broadcast.

They still might call themselves a huge MMA fan, but they’re just consuming the sport completely differently.

Why is this Happening?

It all starts with the simple fact that attention has changed.

TikTok obviously didn’t invent short-form content, but it has helped train an entire generation to consume media in a completely different way.

Open the app, and every piece of content has ONLY a few seconds to earn your attention.

If you’re bored, you swipe.

Do that for hours a day, over a period of years, and it only makes sense that you become a completely different consumer when you turn on sports.

The younger generations want four key things out of their media:

1. faster, with less dead time

2. big personalities and drama

3. content on demand to switch in real time

4. and an experience that feels personalized to them

Traditional sports were largely built for a different environment (and they’re slowly starting to shift).

Sports are becoming content engines as one game/event now produces thousands of pieces of content.

Highlights, memes, interviews, mic’d-up clips, betting markets, fantasy outcomes, creator reactions, behind-the-scenes footage, podcasts, player content, documentaries, social conversations...

That’s one reason I think personalities are becoming so important (and you’re seeing podcasts like the Kelce’s New Heights take off).

The most valuable athletes increasingly produce great highlights and have personalities that produce content 24/7.

This Changes How Sports Are Designed

Once you start thinking about sports through this lens, many recent trends make more sense:

• Schedules are more event-driven

• Creators brought into broadcasts

• Leagues putting microphones on players

• Behind-the-scenes documentaries popping up everywhere

• Emerging leagues putting more emphasis on celebrations, personalities, uniforms, entrances, storytelling, and everything surrounding the actual competition

All of that creates more things for fans to consume.

But at the end of the day…authentic competition matters more than ever because that’s the part TikTok can’t manufacture.

The RedZone-ification Is Part Of This Too

Think about NFL RedZone.

Eight games might be happening simultaneously, and instead of choosing one and watching it for three hours, RedZone constantly moves you toward whatever is most interesting.

It’s basically an algorithmic feed for live sports, except there’s a human producer doing the swiping for you.

And I think we’re going to see a lot more of this across sports, as we’re just now starting to have the ability for it:

• Personalized highlight feeds

• AI-generated recaps

• Fantasy-specific broadcasts

• Betting/fantasy-specific broadcasts

• Player-specific feeds

• Condensed games

• Creator commentary

Two people could eventually consume the exact same sporting event through completely different products.

That’s pretty wild when you think about it!

Looking Ahead

I’ve written before that sports are one of the ultimate AI hedges, and I think the TikTokification of media actually strengthens that thesis.

I don’t think the takeaway here is that every sport needs to become 30 seconds long.

That misses the point.

***You can’t optimize away the suspense, and you can’t recreate genuine competition with an algorithm.

The bigger opportunity is building sports properties that understand how modern consumers actually discover, follow, and engage with entertainment.

That creates opportunities across new leagues and formats, creator-led sports, alternative broadcasts, personalized viewing, sports storytelling, athlete media, fantasy and gaming, live experiences, and technology that can turn one event into hundreds of different pieces of content.

And probably a bunch of categories and new types of events that don’t exist yet.

• Jonas Gundersen - CEO, Fusion Esports Group

• Paul Andrews - CEO, USA Fencing

Awesome conversation about acquiring Esports teams and also how NGBs operate (including what they look for in new sports tech solutions).

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

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🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

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

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

🔗 Learn More & RSVP Here

📅 Upcoming Member Events

• 8/25: Office Hours w/ Profluence team

• 8/28: Brian Kopp Q/A: Partner, Ryan Family Office

• 9/4: Founder’s Fundraising session

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💬 New Profluence Members

• John Solomon - Inman

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• Teri Brooks - Blitz Board Stats

• Jean Pierre Langlois - Woosah Coach

• Francois Ransom - Power Suit Motion

• Bob Heere - University of North Texas

• AP Baramuli - SparX

• João Touma - Licenci

• T. S. Riley - ProScouter

• Katrina Carlsen - Virtus

• James Duvall - FundRally App

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

🎙 Podcasts

• Alex Dreyfus - CEO, Chiliz

• Sean DeRue - CEO, IRONMAN

Great conversations with some of the largest sports companies in the world!

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

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:

Read more

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

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🎙 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

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• Philip Hover-Smoot - Atlas Cup

• Ashley Preston - Athlete Chlabs

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• Matt Fleckenstein - Genius Sports

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• 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.

Read more

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…

Read more

📅 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:

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

Thanks to our partners Citrin Cooperman, Blackstone, and Stifel for helping coordinate a great event in NYC last week.

More of these gatherings to come!

Buying vs. Building in Sports

Most founders think the next billion-dollar sports companies will be built from scratch.

I believe many of them will be assembled instead.

Not because innovation is slowing down...

But because the sports industry remains one of the most fragmented markets in the world (and private equity is entering at record rates).

There are thousands of firms still operating independently:

Most are undercapitalized, operationally inefficient, locally dominant, founder-led, and often lacking modern technology or distribution.

That creates a massive opportunity in not just building new businesses...

But to BUY existing ones and compound them.

Let’s Dive In 👇

AI Is Changing What Matters in Sports

The main catalyst fueling this trend is that artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly lowering the cost of creation.

• Software can be built faster.

• Marketing is becoming automated.

• Design is becoming commoditized.

• Content can be generated instantly.

As this happens, many traditional digital advantages begin to shrink.

But four things become more valuable when creation becomes abundant:

1. Trust

2. Community

3. Distribution

4. Real-world Infrastructure

In today’s new world…anyone can vibe-code an app, launch new software, or generate thousands of pieces of content with little friction.

However…

Sports still own something the internet struggles to manufacture authentically (making it especially interesting over the next few decades).

The Shift From Building Products to “Buying Ecosystems”

Something we’re seeing at Profluence is that many of the smartest operators are increasingly shifting from building products to buying ecosystems.

In many cases, distribution is becoming more valuable than the product itself.

This shift is in full swing across sports.

Real Examples of This Trend

Let’s take a look at a few early examples in sports, as I believe this trend is about to accelerate even further.

Pure Hockey

Read more

In this newsletter, I spoke with a Profluence member about how he’s deploying capital differently at his family office…

His approach is unique and offers a glimpse into how new capital is entering the space.

Let’s dive in 👇

Read more

• 5/8: Founder’s Fundraising Session

• 5/15: Guest Speaker Benjamin Grubbs, Creator Sports Capital

• 5/20: Community Virtual Networking

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

🎙 Podcasts

• Thomas Bata - Partner, Triple B

• Jared Kleinstein - CEO, Gondola

Hear from Tom about what they’re doing in emerging IP and how Jared is approaching the quickly changing sports creator economy.

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

💬 New Members

• Ravi Rao - playwin

• Eric Wynalek - Fytt

• Lyall Davenport - SKN

• Paul Guthrie - Withvalr

• Ben Chase - Sandberg

• Alex Bates - Links Pass

• Dennis Reich - Kinmetrix

• Jake Merhige - King Pool

• Matt McCumsey - feverup

• Luke Verbeek - Home Fans

• Fernando Anello - Kanektech

• Danish Pradhan - Airplaisports

• Thomas Crichton - Sponsor Mind

• Brandon Williams - Ball Exclusives

• Adam Emerson - Sabotage Fantasy

• Thomas Crampton - Sleepless Studios

• Shawn Tilger - GF Sports and Entertainment

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

🛠️ New Member Resource Added

We just added a list of U.S. venture capital firms with a bunch of filters.

Get it Inside Profluence

Now to today’s market briefing ⤵

The Clip Economy in Sports

Did you know that 1billion+ short-form videos are uploaded every single day?

It’s pretty incredible (and this will only increase as AI tools get better).

Right now, social media is buzzing with talk of the “clip economy”, especially following OpenAI's acquisition of TBPN.

However, no one has tied this trend back to sports yet.

Let’s Dive In 👇

The Evolution of Attention (How We Got Here)

Top-of-funnel in media has always followed one trend:

Shorter, faster, more frequent.

1. TV Era: Full games, full broadcasts (appointment viewing)

2. Highlights Era: ESPN, SportsCenter, nightly recaps (condensed viewing)

3. Social Era: Instagram, Twitter clips (on-demand moments)

4. Feed Era: TikTok-style infinite scroll (algorithmic discovery)

Each shift did two things:

• Increased content volume

• Decreased attention per piece

Clips are just the natural endpoint of that curve.

But something is different now…

Clipping is no longer controlled by media companies; it’s run by creators, agencies, startups, fans, athletes, and even distributed networks.

Top-of-funnel isn’t only MUCH bigger… but also decentralized & largely uncontrollable.

The First-Order Impacts in Sports

Clips are incredible for sports.

• A dunk travels faster than a full game

• A knockout reaches millions instantly

• A mic’d up moment builds a player’s brand overnight

Sports are the perfect clip factory because it inherently has the perfect mix of emotion, conflict, supply, & storylines.

This is why:

• House of Highlights became one of the most valuable sports IP layers purely from clips.

• Overtime built a next-gen sports media brand & league off highlights + social-native distribution.

• Whop hit a $1.6B valuation, built on monetizing digital distribution.

• Entire “clipping agencies” now exist with some creators/companies paying $1M/month to clippers.

• Companies like Pressbox, Stanify, and Alt Sports Data were founded to enable more media production, community curation, and data-driven insights.

Even politics and media have caught on to this trend.

Clipping is now the preferred top-of-funnel infrastructure.

Every league, team, athlete, and company…needs distribution. I also believe the smartest operators won’t just post clips, but incentivize others to do it for them.

As platforms get noisier & reach gets harder to earn, brands & creators must invest in community to retain views in a highly competitive environment.

Second-Order Impacts

AI is making content production almost free, which means distribution is now the scarce, expensive resource.

Read more

• 4/17: Innovation in Golf Workshop

• 4/20-4/22: PEAK SportsTech event in Vegas

• 4/28: Office Hours w/ Profluence team

• 5/8: Founder’s Fundraising Session

• 5/15: Guest Speaker Benjamin Grubbs, Creator Sports Capital

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

🎙 Podcasts

• Christian Muche - CEO, POSSIBLE

• Tom Porricelli - Partner, Citrin Cooperman

Hear from Tom about how they're entering sports and from Christian on their marketing event that has attracted top sports CMOs.

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

💬 New Members

• Ben Chehebar - Eleven

• Barry Sohl - iStat Sports

• Brian Koenig - NEXXTUP

• William Smith - Suave sports

• Kevin McReynolds - Overnght

• Season Skuro - Bubble Agency

• Brent Kocher - Komo Technologies

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

🛠️ New Member Resources Added

We just added a list of 2,500 angel investors.

Get it Inside Profluence

Now to today’s market briefing 👇

The Sideline Economy in Sports

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this concept.

In a recent Profluence Office Hours session, member Adam Halpern of WaveOn began discussing the “Sideline Economy” and how he’s weaving it into his positioning.

Everyone focuses on what happens on the field.

But one of the fastest-growing opportunities in sports is happening just off it (on the sidelines and in the infrastructure around them).

It’s worth a deeper dive, looking at some companies building in this arena, and more.

The Thesis

Here’s how I would define this massive, underbuilt layer of sports we’re calling the “Sideline Economy”:

The systems, services, and technology that support athletes before, during, and after competition.

This could include:

• Athletic trainers

• Performance tracking

• Equipment + logistics

• Medical infrastructure

• Injury prevention & rehab

• Data + coordination platforms

And it’s scaling fast (especially as professionalization continues to flow downstream from the largest pro leagues to emerging IP, to college, to youth, and even to club).

I was on a call recently with a large asset manager who is very sophisticated in sports.

She said something that resonated with me:

I will always pay for my kids’ youth sports, because it’s just as much about getting them out of the house as it is about their development. It’s a form of babysitting; people just don’t like to think about it that way.

And that leads us to the key point.

Why Now

Three macro shifts are driving this:

1. More Athletes Than Ever

While participation dipped for a few years post-2020 (we all know why).

Youth, amateur, and recreational sports are exploding.

• More participation = more injuries = more need for care

• Athletic trainer demand is growing ~11% (faster than average)

Most of us can agree that participation will only increase as Gen Z and millennials are super active (and will pass it on to their kids as well).

They very much value sports/health activities, especially when they intertwine with community & social aspects.

2. Sports Is Becoming Healthcare

Athletic training is now a recognized healthcare profession focused on:

• diagnosis

• rehab

• injury prevention

• performance optimization

This is the key shift:

Sports has become a health + performance system.

Two examples that shed light on this:

• A study found that Pickleball injuries, particularly among players over 50, are rising sharply, with roughly 87% to 90% of emergency room visits involving this demographic.

• Enhanced Games (steroid version of the Olympics) is using sports as a Trojan Horse to develop, market, and ultimately sell performance enhancing supplements.

3. Technology Is Unlocking Scale

The sports tech market is exploding, with many studies projecting it to exceed $100B this decade.

What’s driving it:

• Wearables

• Injury tracking

• Data platforms

• Real-time analytics

Look at the recent announcement of WHOOP raising at a $10B valuation.

If you lump sports + health tech together, the market is massive.

This is enabling the “sideline economy” to move from manual/fragmented to a scalable digital solution.

Let’s take a look at one sub-example:

The Athletic-Health Sideline Economy

I think of this as…

The infrastructure connecting schools, trainers, and technology into a scalable model for athlete care.

• Schools need coverage

• Athletes need consistent care

• Trainers need placement + tools

• Data needs to flow across all of it

Right now?

It’s fragmented/broken, and for a few reasons:

• Schools struggle to hire trainers

• Trainers are underpaid/overworked

• Data is siloed

• Care is inconsistent

There isn’t a coherent operating system for athlete health (especially not spanning from youth to pro to recreational).

That’s the opportunity.

Companies Around This Space

A new wave of companies is starting to define this category:

• Kitman Labs: Performance intelligence + injury risk analytics

• Fusionetics: Movement assessment + injury prevention systems

• Healthy Roster: Athlete medical records + communication platform

• The Player’s Health: Insurance + safety + risk management infrastructure

• Insurance providers like Xinsurance: Injury, liability, and participation risk

Around them, new categories are emerging, and market sizes are increasing, enabling participation by new entrants.

Where Opportunities Lie

If I’m looking to build a company in this space (or already am), I think these are categories to dig deeper into:

Read more

• 4/10 - Q/A session with Mitch Heath, co-founder of Teamworks, which is now valued at $1B+

• 4/15 - Community Networking session

• 4/17 - Innovation in Golf Workshop

• 4/20 - PEAK SportsTech event

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

🎙 Podcasts

• Kevin McReynolds - CEO, Overnight

• Chad Wilton - Co-Founder, PEAK sports conference

Hear from Chad about their upcoming PEAK conference and from Kevin on where sports media is headed.

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

💬 New Members

• Eric Fransen - Rallie

• Craig Winning - Batbox

• Richmond Taylor - Bishop AI

• Dziugas Staniulis - Confluence Investment

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

🛠️ New Member Resources Added

We also added good intel on:

• traps when raising money

• early-stage fundraising playbook

• 3 Seed round patterns and funnel formation

Now to today’s featured deep dive 👇

We go deep on an interesting trend that will impact everyone building across the sports industry.

The Death of the Middle in Sports (And Who Wins Next)

Over the last decade, we’ve seen that people like content that caters to their specific interests and tastes.

That’s YouTube Shorts, IG reels, and TikTok.

But what people really want… is a shared cultural experience.

This segment is thriving:

• Something to bond over with friends & family. Example: Hollywood movies are increasingly high-budget and focused on stories and characters everyone already knows.

• Paris hosted the highest-rated Olympics ever. The NFL had 83 of the top 100 broadcasts last year.

• Some people want to feel smart, intellectually stimulated, and high status. Example: Prestige TV (Succession, The White Lotus) pushes the boundaries of production quality and subject matter to meet that need.

Now we’re really starting to see this trend take hold in the sports industry.

Particularly in the IP sector.

Sports Properties

• UFC won on violence.

• Formula 1 won on storytelling.

• College football won on tradition.

Newer leagues like DLL (drone racing), PLL (lacrosse), and DGPT (disc golf) are winning by being optimized for a single variable.

And slowly but surely, they’ve siphoned attention, capital, and talent away from traditional “generalist” leagues.

Why Is This Happening?

Some like to call this the “barbell effect”…

Which is the idea that massive incumbents (like the NFL) and micro-niches (like Spikeball tournaments) will thrive, and everything in the middle dies.

But that doesn’t tell the full story.

To succeed, a sports organization needs three main things:

Read more

• 4/3 - Founders Foundraising Session

• 4/10 - Mitch Heath Q&A on building $1B Teamworks

• 4/20 - PEAK SportsTech event

🔗 Members can RSVP for events here

🎙 Podcasts

• Steve Bellamy - Founder, TYPTI

• Henrik Teisbæk - CEO & Co-Founder, VEO

Super interesting conversations

🔗 Listen to the podcasts here

💬 New Members

• Mark Covington - SNAP

• Trevor Elmitt - OpenLoop

• Peter Anselmo - Caldwell

• Moiz Asif - Visualize Design

• Sandeep Hingorani - Baller.tv

• Sebastien de Cabrol - Getsyp

• Jared K Miller - Edward Jones

• Nicolás Borrero - Sports Crowd

• Jacob Spotswood - Lumeandco

• Josh Johnson - Media Payments Group

• Abdullah Majed Alkassabi - Saudi Musheera Company

🔗 Connect directly with new members here.

AI & Sports

I’ve seen a lot of debate on X about artificial intelligence lately…

This account proposed a super interesting question:

And the common answer seemed to be this…

Professional athletes/sports.

Given enough time, AI + robotics will be able to do EVERYTHING better, so the only jobs that will be immune are those that people will still want humans to perform, even if AI is better.

Some examples…

• Cars — horse races are still popular.

• Chess — we don’t care about perfect play, we care about human competition.

• Robots — just as we have esports with video gamers playing NBA 2K in leagues and such, it’s still cool to watch real sports.

Waves of Technology and Behavior

In the startup world, there are two primary forces of change:

1. technological innovation

2. behavioral shifts

On the technology front, AI is the clearest wave right now…

It’s revolutionizing production, from tools that make high-quality content creation accessible to platforms that unlock smarter, faster decision-making.

The internet unlocked distribution, which allowed people to express themselves more broadly; now, AI arms them with the tools to express themselves more deeply.

Behavioral waves, on the other hand, reflect fundamental changes in how people think, act, and consume.

These shifts are particularly visible in younger generations (especially Gen Z, the first digitally native cohort).

To put things into perspective:

• Today’s college freshmen were born the same year as AWS.

• Today’s high school seniors were born the same year as the iPhone.

When technology and behavior intersect, the biggest opportunities emerge.

Setting the AI Stage

Before going too deep, I think it’s wise to lay the groundwork with some definitions and a basic understanding of the underlying technologies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) - the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior

Generative AI - a branch of AI capable of generating new and original content, such as images, videos, music, or text

Machine Learning (ML) - development of algorithms that can access data, analyze patterns, and make predictions or take actions based on the analysis, allowing computers to learn and adapt w/o explicit instructions

Large Language Model (LLM) - AI systems that learn from massive amounts of text data and can produce meaningful responses, answer questions, and have natural conversations with people, ex. ChatGPT

Computer Vision - a field of AI that enables computers to analyze, interpret, and understand visual data to perform tasks like object detection, image recognition, and facial recognition

There is a lot more to learn to truly grasp this field, but in simple terms…

AI helps computers act intelligently and perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.

Such as:

• analyze data

• perform tasks

• solve problems

• make decisions

• recognize patterns

• learn from experiences

• understand information

You can see why these are so powerful…

AI Sports Landscape

A handful of sports companies have been using AI for years…but it’s only become popularized this past year.

This has caused a major problem…

Many companies now label themselves as “AI-powered”, which is often not the full truth.

Here’s a market map of what I believe are the “true” AI sports companies:

Read more