I almost put this in my Overheard section, as I’ve probably heard or read it ten times this week. Can we please retire it and be more thoughtful than “I didn’t have that on my bingo card”? Could it have officially jumped the shark?
So, no bingo cards here.
Mainstream sports biz spent the week on Apollo buying 16% of the Yankees, Paramount clearing its last antitrust hurdle to swallow Warner Bros. Discovery, and whether the NHL is really headed to Texas. Meanwhile, a free local streamer died, and its rights found new homes within weeks; a relaunched tennis league paid Coco Gauff partly in equity; a $17 million fencing federation borrowed an audience of 200 million; the PWHL put its own logo up as loan collateral; and the executive who ran Formula 1’s parent company is running the same playbook on horse racing.
The question is not whether something surprising happened. The question is whether somebody has built a platform that will still matter after the surprise wears off.
That’s the beat. Welcome to Issue 004.
The Cap Table
1. Victory+ is dead, and the pieces went four different directions · Media · Platforms
Victory+ launched in September 2024 as a free, ad-supported local sports streamer and shut down September 1 after the Rangers, Ducks, and NWSL walked over missed payments. It had two million app downloads, and viewership beat cable for the Stars. Free access just never produced enough revenue (Yahoo Sports). The rights scattered: the Stars and Ducks to Prime Video, the NWSL to Roku, and the Lynx to FOX 9+ for their final game (SBJ). BZZR picked up the Rangers’ paid DTC service and Rams preseason (Yahoo Sports).
Full disclosure, and my one personal line this week: I led the BZZR build, so read the rest of this with that in mind.
Reach is not a business model, and “free” is a pricing decision, not a distribution strategy. Victory+ proved that fans will show up for local games on an app. It never proved anyone would pay for the privilege, or that advertisers would pay enough to cover the rights and the teams’ patience. The Stars’ CEO, Brad Alberts, said it plainly (Yahoo Sports): “If this would have been run differently, there’s no reason why we couldn’t have continued this.”
The tell: the rights did not die with the platform. They went straight to Amazon, Roku, a local broadcaster, and a paid service within weeks. The inventory was never the problem. The operating model was.
2. Trbine wants to lend to athletic departments before private equity buys them · College · Capital
George O’Conor’s Trbine has built a revenue-based security that works like an interest-only loan. A department issues bonds secured by a percentage of future athletic revenue, renewable every seven years, at a projected cost of capital of 4.5% to 8.5%. Using Ohio State’s $336M in revenue as the example, pledging 5% (about $17M a year) could raise roughly $500M (SBJ).
The need is real: a GAO report found that 94% of Division I programs spent more than they generated in 2023-24, or 330 of 352 schools (House Education and Workforce Committee).
O’Conor’s pitch to athletic directors is refreshingly unglamorous: “It’s borrowing money. It’s a bridge. And if you still want to sell part of your thing in seven years when you know what you’re selling, consider it then.”
That is the right instinct. Most of the private equity conversation in college sports assumes a department knows what it is worth today, and nobody does, because the revenue-sharing era is barely a year old and Congress is still rewriting the rules. Buying time is a legitimate strategy when the price discovery has not happened yet.
The skeptic’s read: it is still debt against the same revenue every other stakeholder wants a piece of, and “refinance once things stabilize” is a bet on stability that nobody in college athletics has earned. A bridge is only as good as the other side.
3. Equity is the new appearance fee · Leagues · Athletes
World Team Tennis is back after five years, under Intrepid Sports Group, founded by former USTA and UTR executive Stephen Amritraj. Coco Gauff plays two of six December events for the Florida Flamingos, and her package includes WTT equity tied to the team. CNBC and Fandango carry it through Versant’s USA Sports (SBJ). The same week, Kerri Walsh Jennings became co-owner of Major League Volleyball’s NorCal Rumble expansion franchise and explained why she picked MLV over LOVB (Front Office Sports).
This is a pattern, not a deal. Challenger leagues cannot outbid incumbents on cash, so they are paying stars in ownership. It is the smartest currency a startup league has because it turns the most expensive line item in the budget into the most motivated shareholder on the cap table.
It is also a slow-motion problem. Equity only works as compensation if it is worth something later, and every star with a stake is a star with an opinion about the next raise, the next expansion market, and the next down round. Leagues handing out paper should write the governance before they need it.
4. USA Fencing hands the microphone to 200 million followers · Federation · Media
USA Fencing staged a Creator Showdown in Lower Manhattan, pairing more than a dozen creators (200 million-plus combined followers) with four Team USA fencers, built with the London agency Creator Showdown. A 2027 edition already has a title sponsor. The federation’s annual budget is roughly $17M, mostly registration and dues (Sportico). Separately, Togethxr signed on as USA Fencing’s official media partner through LA28 (SBJ).
This is an NGB building its own commercial and distribution layer instead of waiting for someone in Colorado Springs to do it for them. Creator Showdown’s CEO, Carsten Thode, named the failure mode most rights holders live in: creators get tickets and a hospitality box, and “what you get are sort of vanity posts from the creator.” USA Fencing put them on the strip instead.
The only question that matters for a dues-funded federation is whether creator attention turns into registrations or just impressions. A $17M federation borrowing a 200 million-follower audience for a day is a great headline. The 2027 title sponsor says somebody thinks it is also a business.
5. The PWHL’s logo is now collateral · Women’s · Capital
Mark Walter’s PWHL Holdings pledged nine league trademarks, including the PWHL wordmark and logo, as collateral on a loan from BlackRock’s HPS, per a June 30 security agreement. Loan terms and the value of the IP were not disclosed. The league raised more than $100M earlier this year from Kilmer Sports Ventures and Ilitch (Sportico).
Women’s sports IP just became a financeable asset class. That is the most bullish sentence you can write about the category, and also the most dangerous. A lender taking the logo as security means somebody ran the numbers and believes the brand has durable value independent of any one season. It also means that if the numbers are wrong, the brand is the first thing on the table.
Fumbles & Vaporware
TAM Fam. Amplify filed for a sports ownership ETF that can hold up to 15% in private team stakes (GlobeNewswire), and REX launched Alpha Sports to build ETFs tied to MLB and NHL teams (Markets Media). Two ways to buy a sliver of a sliver of a minority stake, arriving right as the institutional money finishes buying. When the retail wrapper shows up, it is usually because the people who got in early would like a buyer.
Cap Space. Grand Slam Track athletes are still waiting on half of what they are owed, with the money stuck in escrow after the bankruptcy (The Guardian). Meanwhile, Athlos is partnering with Cash App so athletes get paid within minutes of their result being confirmed (City AM). Every new track and running league now pitches against GST’s ghost, and the first slide in that pitch is not the format. It is proof the check clears.
Doh: Peloton launched three new treads, from a $2,195 folder to a $6,695 flagship with AI running analysis bolted on (CNBC). The bet is that runners want to be coached indoors the way cyclists do. Runners have a word for that. It's not called the dreadmill for nothing.
Signal Check
Two-thirds of U.S. parents call their kids’ extracurriculars at least somewhat expensive, and only 10% call them very affordable (SBJ / CivicScience).
Put that next to this week’s Overheard. Every league dreaming of turning young players into lifelong fans is building on a base where two out of three families already feel the cost. The participation funnel is not just the cheapest audience in sports. It is the one most likely to shrink first when the season checks get bigger.
Who’s Building
Greg Maffei and Danny Epstien (Horse Racing League). The former Liberty Media CEO who oversaw the modern F1 era is raising $30M for a team-based thoroughbred league: 10 teams, 12 races over three days from March to May 2027, $10M in purses, exclusive deals with Santa Anita, Gulfstream, and Keeneland, and several franchises already sold at mid-seven figures (JohnWallStreet). The F1 playbook, applied to a sport that already has the heritage, the venues, and the betting handle. The job is not to invent an audience. It is to give an existing one a reason to care about teams.
Florian Lussy (r-evo). A former North Texas distance runner turned sports-tech and live-events operator, Lussy is building r-evo on the premise that every running brand, broadcaster, and race organizer understands: running is one of the most-participated-in sports in the world, and almost nobody watches it. His answer is not another event series with faster splits and more sponsor flags. It is city-based franchises, athletes with stakes in those franchises, street races built for spectators, and a format scored on duration rather than distance. He has told City AM he wants running to compete for attention with SailGP and Formula 1. The launch is in Europe, but the problem he is solving is most acute in the U.S.
Ryan Clark (Pivot25). Let go by ESPN in July after 11 years, now backed by Howard Schultz, who is taking a stake and coming on as a strategic adviser (SBJ). The flagship show has 1.5 million YouTube subscribers and a multiyear Netflix deal, and the plan runs to live events, licensing, and corporate partnerships. An individual platform outgrowing the network that let him go, two months later.
Overheard
“You are literally growing up playing in this league, and then you become a fan of that league on top of it.”
Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, who invested in League One Volleyball through her firm Next 3 Ventures, on why she backed a league that runs both youth clubs and a pro tier (Front Office Sports).
That sentence describes the most underpriced asset in American sport: the kid who plays becomes the adult who pays to watch. LOVB is built on it. Youth clubs and a pro league sit under one roof, so the path from registration to ticket is handled end to end by a single company. She called it “vertical infrastructure,” and that is exactly what it is.
Most of the industry runs that pipeline in pieces. Clubs, schools, federations, and pro properties each own a slice of the same athlete, and none of them owns the relationship. That gap sits under half this issue. USA Fencing is borrowing creators’ audiences because a dues-funded membership never became a viewing public. r-evo is trying to turn millions of weekend runners into fans. The Horse Racing League is working the other direction, trying to turn people who already bet into people who care.
The test for builders is whether the participation layer and the spectator layer sit on the same rails. Vertical integration is the fastest way to prove it, and also the easiest to get wrong: the moment families suspect their club fees are underwriting a pro payroll, the flywheel turns into a grievance. But if your participants never become your audience, you do not have a platform. You have two businesses sharing a logo.
Build Accordingly.
Bouker Pool · Managing Partner, Weck Enterprises · Reply to this email or DM me on LinkedIn.
Got a tip, a fumble, or a build worth covering? Send it. Overheard exists for you.
Full disclosure: I advise and invest across sports-tech, media, youth sports, endurance, and wearables. When B&P covers a company I’m involved with, I’ll do my best to note it in the item.