Women’s football and NFL: The biggest sports deals of 2024
Sport has been full of deals in 2024 with Premier League clubs being taken over, cricket selling stakes in franchise teams and transfers sending sports fans mad. But which were the standout deals of the last 12 months? Founder of SportsInvest Advisory Achille de Rauglaudre takes a look.
March: Women’s football on the rise
2024 has been a year of unprecedented growth for women’s football. In August 2023, sports entrepreneur Victoire H. Cogevina Reynal officially launched Mercury/13, a multi-club ownership group set to spend $100m (£80m) in acquiring women’s football clubs in Europe and Latin America.
A few months later, in March 2024, they announced their first acquisition with Serie A Femminile team FC Como Women. The club has already undergone a massive transformation under Mercury/13’s ownership, leveraging the location and luxury positioning of the club to deliver strong revenue growth and professionalise football operations.
This is just a first step for Mercury/13. This year they announced that Avenue Capital Group, a global investment firm with over $12bn in assets under management, had invested in Mercury/13 to support them in building out their women’s football portfolio, with England coming as a top priority market for their next acquisition.
That was not all for women’s football. In July 2024, Washington Spirit, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin and London City Lionesses owner Michele Kang announced the creation of the global multi-team women’s football organization Kynisca as well as the Kynisca Innovation Hub to invest in women-focused sports science and training methods research.
2025 will undoubtedly see more investors doubling down on women’s sports.
April: The largest sports-focused fund in history
In April Arctos announced the final close of Arctos Sports Partners Fund II at over $4.1bn, significantly exceeding the $2.5bn target and establishing the biggest pool of sports-focused institutional capital.
Arctos was only founded in 2019 by former Landmark Partners investor Ian Charles and Madison Square Garden Company CEO and CAA Managing Partner David O’Connor. They raised their inaugural $2.1bn fund in October 2020 with an initial secondary angle to bring liquidity to minority owners in North American leagues.
They had sports-related assets under management of $7bn as of April 2024 with around 30 investments in sports including multiple North American franchises – Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Dodgers – and multi-sports groups such as Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and Fenway Sports Group. Investments also included global sports properties – Aston Martin F1 and Paris Saint-Germain – and sports-adjacent businesses such as Elevate and SeatGeek.
And they were one of the eight investment firms selected by the NFL to acquire minority stakes in NFL franchises.
Alongside Arctos, 2024 has seen the growth of other sports-focused investment firms with the likes of Otro Capital, formed in 2023 by RedBird Capital Partners’ former sports investment team, Bluestone Equity Partners, and PIF-owned platform SURJ Sports Investment.
August: The No1 sports league opens up to private equity
The NBA, MLB, NHL, as well as football leagues Major League Soccer and National Women’s Soccer League were all already allowing institutional investors to acquire stakes in their teams. After months of rumors and negotiations, the NFL finally followed suit when they announced that eight pre-approved private equity firms (Arctos, Ares Management Corporation, Sixth Street, and a consortium involving Dynasty Equity, Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, CVC, and Ludis) would be allowed to acquire minority stakes in NFL franchises.
This decision confirmed the growing demand for institutional investment in sports to unlock liquidity events and to bring growth capital to sports leagues and teams. Sportico estimated that the average NFL team was worth $5.93bn in 2024 and that the aggregated valuation of the league’s 32 franchises was $190bn (£151bn). This trend was exactly what Arctos founders had anticipated when they identified 175 global and North American sports properties with $500bn aggregated value and around 2,000 limited partners and minority owners looking for liquidity events.
It took only three months to see the first private equity deals in NFL’s history with Ares Management acquiring a 10 per cent stake in the Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium (and the F1 Miami Grand Prix) at a reported $8.1bn valuation, while Arctos purchased a 10 per cent stake in the Buffalo Bills at a reported $5.8bn valuation.
November: A new era for athlete investments
Professional athletes turning into successful entrepreneurs and investors is not something new. Michael Jordan and Nike introduced the Jordan brand in 1997. What can be noted as a recent evolution this year is the convergence between athlete investment and institutional investment.
Indeed, 27 years after launching Jordan, NBA All-Star Jordan became a limited partner (LP) in sports venture capital firm Courtside Ventures as part of their $100m fourth fund. He had already made several direct investments such as sports-betting firm DraftKings and American sports franchises in the NBA (Charlotte Hornets) and Nascar, but this was his first commitment in an established investment firm.
A few months earlier, recent Olympic gold medalist Kevin Durant also indirectly invested in French football team Paris Saint-Germain by becoming a limited partner in Arctos, which had acquired a minority stake in the team at the end of last year. Other examples include LeBron James joining Fenway Sports Group as an LP, while Giannis Antetokounmpo launched his own venture capital fund, Build Your Legacy Ventures, to invest in sports, entertainment and technology.
Athletes will increasingly be working side by side with institutional investors, either as limited partners or even operators such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic brilliantly did by joining RedBird Capital Partners as an operating partner.