Where is private equity investing in sports? Everywhere except the athlete's name

Private equity now invests in almost every layer of sports. It holds stakes in league media companies, NFL teams, promotions, agencies and athlete-backed brands. It pays hundreds of millions for famous names after the career is made. What it doesn't invest in is the asset all of those layers depend on: an active athlete's name, while it is still being built.

Each layer has been bought for a reason, and each new deal has moved a step closer to the athlete. The map below shows how close the money has come, and which layer is still missing.

Where is private equity investing in sports?

Every way capital currently reaches an athlete's commercial value, by what the investor actually gets:

Read down the right-hand column. Most structures pay for the name's use: a fee, a commission, a license, a share of sales, or stock in someone else's company. The income-share models buy a promise of earnings, mostly from playing. The only deals that invest in the name itself either carve off one category, like Foreman's grill, or arrive after the athlete has finished becoming famous, like Authentic Brands Group.

The agency layer went first, for good reasons. IMG was bought by Forstmann Little in 2004 and sold to WME and Silver Lake in 2013 for about $2.4B. An agency earns recurring commissions across hundreds of clients, and no single athlete can sink it. That's a business private equity knows how to price. Every deal since has moved closer to the person: from the agency that represents the athlete, to the league and team they play for, to the brands they help sell.

Why are sports agencies moving from fees to ownership?

Because ownership is where enterprise value sits, and the largest agencies have been moving toward it for a decade.

An agency's traditional business is a commission: a percentage of every deal it negotiates for a client. It earns on the deal and holds nothing once the deal ends. WME was the first to break from that model at scale. It merged with IMG, bought the UFC for $4.05 billion in 2016, reorganized as Endeavor, and now controls the UFC and WWE through TKO. An agency that once earned commissions on fighters' deals now owns the competition they fight in.

CAA is following the same path in media. In June 2026, it launched Compound Creative Holdings with TPG's Integrated Media Company: a $250 million company built to "acquire, operate, and grow" creator-economy businesses, run separately from CAA's representation arm. CAA's Kevin Huvane described creators as building media companies with "true ownership of their intellectual property".

The shift has limits. In 2021, an agreement with the Writers Guild required Endeavor to sell 80% of its scripted-content business, to separate representation from ownership in Hollywood. But the direction is clear. The biggest intermediaries in sports and entertainment are moving from earning a fee on someone else's asset to holding the asset. Today, that asset is a league, a show or a media company. The athlete's name is the next step on the same path.

Can you invest in an athlete's name?

Yes, and it has been done, in three narrow ways.

Buying a promise of income. Fantex sold shares tied to six NFL players' future earnings, then closed its trading platform for lack of volume. Big League Advance and Agentiq buy a share of baseball players' future earnings, mostly from playing. Investors hold a claim on income. They have no stake in the name, and nobody in the structure is paid to grow it.

Buying one category. Salton's deal with Foreman bought the right to put his name on kitchen appliances, forever. Everything else stayed with Foreman.

Investing once the name is made. Authentic Brands Group partners on names whose commercial value is proven: Beckham, Ali, Shaq. By the time a name reaches that kind of investor, the athlete has become a celebrity whose career is behind them.

So institutional appetite for athletes' names is proven, at prices in the hundreds of millions. What's missing is investment during the years when the name is built, when its value grows fastest and it needs capital most.

Why isn't an athlete's name an asset class yet?

An athlete's name is an investable asset like any other. It produces income, it can be held in a company, and that company can be valued. What it lacks is what every asset class lacked at the start: standard vehicles, repeatable terms and enough volume for a market to form. Today's deals are bespoke, one structure per name. Without volume, nobody builds the standard; without a standard, volume doesn't come. Every asset class has had to break that loop.

Startup investing broke it with standard paperwork. Early-stage deals used to be negotiated one at a time. In 2013, Y Combinator published the SAFE, a standard agreement for investing in a startup before it has a valuation, which YC now calls the default instrument investors expect. The startups didn't change. The structure did, and volume followed.

Music catalogs broke it with a dedicated vehicle. Song rights were long traded privately, one negotiated deal at a time. In July 2018, Hipgnosis Songs Fund listed in London to buy catalogs as an investment product, raising about £202M. Its landing was hard, with valuation disputes in 2023 and a $1.6B sale to Blackstone in 2024. The category it opened to institutions remains.

Athletes' names sit where startups and songs once did: proven value, bespoke deals, no standard structure. Read alongside the agencies' move into ownership, and private equity's move into every layer around the athlete, the name is where the industry is already heading.

Why does an athlete's name need enterprise value?

Most athletes earn from their name the way a landlord collects rent: one sponsor, one appearance, one deal at a time. That can be a very good income. It is almost impossible to sell, raise against or borrow against.

The largest fortunes in business come from enterprise value, what a buyer will pay for the business itself. Enterprise value depends on removing key-person risk, the risk that a business loses most of its value if one person stops working. A solo operator can run a business with excellent income that no one will buy, because it ends the day they stop.

Name Equity is the asset class created when the commercial value of an athlete goes beyond the sport, and their name and likeness are held in a company that owns them, so that value can be invested in and grown, rather than rented out to buyers one deal at a time.

That company is called a NameCo: the company that owns 100% of an athlete's off-field name and likeness, and the ventures built on it. Investors partner with the athlete by taking equity in it. It's the difference between collecting rent on a building and owning the building.

What does an investor bet on when backing an athlete early?

Hindsight makes this look easy. Naming the biggest star in any sport as a name worth backing early teaches nothing; it's survivor bias. The useful question is what an early investor is actually exposed to. There are three variables, and they don't always move together:

• Competitive trajectory. Results decide who the sport pays attention to. A league, a promotion and the media naturally promote the athletes who win, so results bring tailwinds that no investor could buy.
• Stardom. Some athletes are more likely to become stars than champions. Personality carries a name beyond the results.
• Monetizability. Fame only becomes an asset if it can turn into stable income over many years. A persona can draw attention and still be hard to sell to the sponsors who pay most.

Mixed martial arts shows the split clearly. Mehemmedeli Osmanli, a UFC prospect, is the kind of athlete whose results project well; but results alone don't show whether a personality will carry outside the cage. Tommy McMillen, a UFC featherweight with a loud, unusual persona, looks built for stardom; but an offbeat brand can be harder to sell to some sponsors than a cleaner one.

That's why a data layer that projects careers comes first. The aim isn't to bet on who will be promoted. It's to back athletes who will carry the whole field's tailwinds, from the promotion, the media and the fans, so the investor's work amplifies a rise that is already happening. Promoting an athlete nobody else cares about means carrying all of the weight alone.

How risky is investing in an athlete's name?

Risky enough that it can't be done passively.

A single name is concentrated risk with a wide range of outcomes. The layers private equity invested in first are diversified fee streams. A name also can't be managed like a venture portfolio. A venture capitalist can back fifty companies and accept that most will fail; the founder of a failed startup starts another company or takes a job. Investing in a name means partnering on someone's identity. That rules out a spray-and-pray approach, and it can't absorb the same rate of losses.

The answer is to operate the asset rather than bet on it, because fame can be shaped. In MMA, Arman Tsarukyan, a top UFC lightweight contender, is the clearest recent example. He moved into streams and YouTube channels well outside the sport's audience; he has joked that people now ask whether he's a streamer rather than a fighter. At UFC 331 in September 2026, he reportedly earned a $350,000 base purse. On the PBD Podcast, he said sponsorships would take him to about $3 million a year, against a little over half a million from the UFC. Fighting less than twice a year, he expects to earn several times more outside the sport than inside it.

That gap is the asset. It's also why the choice of sport matters. Where commercial value tracks competitive rank, very few athletes reach the top, and an investment in a name is mostly a bet on results. In MMA, commercial value is largely separate from results, so the people working on a name can change its outcome. First Light, an operator-investor in athlete IP, started in MMA for that reason. It partners with athletes by taking equity in companies that hold their name and likeness, then grows their value through media, branding and sponsorships.

Passive investment in athletes has a record, and Fantex is it. Hands-on co-ownership is a different proposition: less about managing risk than about running an athlete's name as a business.

What would make athlete names an investable asset class?

Four conditions, each of which has a precedent in other asset classes:

• A clear scope. A promotion holds the rights to a fighter's name and image in connection with its sport: its events, footage and promotion. The investable asset is what sits outside: the off-field name and likeness, and the ventures built on it.
• A repeatable structure. One vehicle and one set of terms usable across many athletes, the equivalent of the SAFE for athletes' names.
• An operator with control. Someone with real authority over the athlete's off-field commercial value, paid from the growth of the asset rather than from fees.
• Volume. Enough names in one portfolio for the category to start pricing itself.

Private equity has invested in the league, the team, the promotion, the agency and the brands. The agencies are moving from fees to ownership. The name at the center of all of it is the layer still waiting for its first institutional partner.

A question for investors

Which asset class have you seen go from one-off deals to institutional money, and what tipped it?