🔊 Billion-Dollar Sports Insurance Company?

📰 TOP STORY
Players Health Raises $60M Series C Round

• When former football player Tyrre Burks set out to build Players Health, I’m not sure if he thought it would be worth $1B one day. But now that doesn’t seem out of reach. Recently, Players Health raised a $60M Series C round led by Bluestone Equity Partners with participation from Mosaic General Partners, RPM Ventures, SiriusPoint, and TriplePoint Capital.

Players Health provides risk management services, reporting tools, and insurance products to sports organizations, empowering them to stay ahead of ever-changing safety and compliance responsibilities on its data-driven and tech-enabled platform. The company will use funding to accelerate its growth on several fronts, including:

• Advancement of its AI-powered product personalization

• Strategic M&A to broaden its market reach

• Expansion of its workforce to meet increasing consumer demand for its growing portfolio of specialized products and services

As of this writing, Players Health’s customer base includes organizations such as USA Softball, 3-Step Sports, RCX Sports, American Youth Soccer Organization, Orangetheory, and more.

Why Is This Important?

Youth sports are booming these days. Because of this, more investors are focused on the space which is currently estimated to be worth around $28B. Players Health already reaches 5.5M youth athletes and that number is expected to grow drastically. For context, that’s only about 18% of the kids that play youth sports nationwide. The youth sports market is still highly fragmented but there are various opportunities for consolidation, disruption, and better efficiency. As a result, we’ll see investors inject more funding toward growth-stage startups such as this that are solving key problems and have high upside. As a result, more billion-dollar companies will emerge. Players Health is a great example of a sports tech company that started by tackling a niche, yet growing sector, and has a strong road map and key fundamentals that investors love. It’ll be interesting to see how this space evolves.

💰 MONEY MOVES 
Private Equity Officially Enters The NFL

• Buffalo Bills Announce 10 New Limited Partners. The Buffalo Bills and Terry Pegula announced 10 new limited partners to the ownership group. The non-controlling, minority interests were approved at the NFL meetings in Dallas, TX this week. This represents the first time in franchise history that minority owners have been added. The new limited partners, pending the final closing of the agreements, include Arctos, Rob Palumbo, Sue McCollum, Theresia Gouw, Rob Ward, Mike Joo, Tom Burger, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, and Jozy Altidore (more here).

• Miami Dolphins Sell Stake To Ares Management. The Miami Dolphins and Stephen M. Ross announced an investment by Ares Management (Ares) and Brooklyn Nets owners Joe Tsai and Oliver Weisberg. The transaction also includes iconic assets such as Hard Rock Stadium and the Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix. Ares will acquire a 10% stake, while Tsai and Weisberg together will hold a 3% interest, pending the final closing of the agreements (more here).

• Anthony Serafino Acquires Minority Stake In Bromley FC. This week, it was announced that New Jersey businessman Anthony Serafino has acquired a minority stake in EFL League Two team Bromley FC. Serafino is the President of New Jersey-based Exp. Group, a multinational organization that has a distribution network of fresh food across South and Central America and the Caribbean (more here).

• Gambling.com Group Agrees To Acquire Oddjams For $160M. The Gambling.com Group has agreed to buy the parent company of OddsJam, an online service that helps sports bettors find the best odds, for an initial price of $80M. Gambling.com will also pay as much as $80M if Odds Holdings hits certain targets through the end of 2026. The deal is expected to close on Jan 1st, 2025 (more here).

• Baller League Raises €23M. Baller League, a Germany-based 6v6 soccer league, recently raised €23M Series A round, bringing its total funding to over €31M. The round, which followed a €7.6M round closed in the Summer of 2024, was led by EQT Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to expand into other global markets. Founded in 2023 and led by CEO Felix Stark, Baller League is a new indoor football league that aims to redefine the traditional soccer experience (more here).

• Brave Bison Acquires Engage Digital Partners For £10.6M. Brave Bison, a media, marketing, and technology company, has agreed to acquire the global sports marketing business Engage Digital Partners in a deal valued close to £11M. The acquisition will unite the Engage platform with the Brave Bison Media Network of sports and entertainment channels, which works for the PGA Tour, Ryder Cup, US Open, Australian Open, CPLT20, and Le Mans to offer channel and rights management services alongside content strategy and production (more here).

• INTENNSE Raises $4M. Triple B, an investment group focused on supporting transformative and disruptive businesses, announced a $4M investment in INTENNSE, an innovative team-based tennis league set to debut in 2025. The INTENNSE league will feature top talent from professional tours and college tennis, merging intensity, strategic teamwork, and unique fan engagement opportunities (more here).

 🤝 PARTNERSHIPS
Samsung Named Official Screen Partner Of TGL

• Samsung Partners With TGL. TGL presented by SoFi, the new golf league backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports, announced Samsung as an Official Screen Partner. TGL’s custom-built SoFi Center will showcase Samsung’s commercial-grade LED displays to create a visually stunning experience across TGL’s season of matches beginning this January. Samsung is TGL’s 12th Official Partner, joining SoFi, Genesis, Businessolver, Best Buy, CapTech, Full Swing, ONEFlight, SYNLawn, and others (more here).

• Sports Illustrated Tickets Partners With New York Red Bulls. This week, the New York Red Bulls and Sports Illustrated Tickets announced a 13-year partnership. As part of this collaboration, the 25,000-person venue in Harrison, NJ, previously known as Red Bull Arena will now be called “Sports Illustrated Stadium.” Sports Illustrated Tickets also will take over as the “Official Ticketing Partner” for all events at Sports Illustrated Stadium beginning in 2026. This includes all Red Bulls and NJ/NY Gotham FC home matches, as well as all international soccer games, youth events, concerts, watch parties, and other events held at the stadium (more here).

• World Aquatics Partners With Sony. The World Aquatics governing body has struck a 4-year commercial deal with the Sony Corporation. Through the partnership, Sony becomes a global partner of the governing body for six aquatic sports and will support all World Aquatics events through 2028. Official photographers and videographers from World Aquatics will use Sony equipment for the next four years, while Sony’s company Hawk-Eye Innovations will provide video replay services at a range of World Aquatic events (more here).

• Manchester City Partners With Puma. Manchester City is teaming up with Puma to launch a text-to-image uniform generator powered by the AI company DeepObjects. The club is holding a competition that asks fans to generate its future kit design with AI. Players will wear the winning design during the 2026-2027 season as City’s official third kit, and it will even be sold to fans (more here).

🔊 ATHLETES & OTHER NEWS
The Man Behind Billion-Dollar Sports Transactions

• Meet The Sports Investment Banker Who Has Orchestrated $950M Deals. Sal Galatioto is a singular force in the sports business world. The well-respected, good-humored president of Galatioto Sports Partners (GSP) is often the first call for billionaires looking to buy or sell sports teams. Behind the easygoing façade and charm, he’s a fierce competitor who knows how to win: clients, deals, and the game (more here).

• The World’s 50 Most Valuable Sports Teams 2024. Forbes recently released their rankings for the 50 most valuable sports teams globally. The NFL has the most franchises represented in a group collectively worth $289B, but the NBA is looking to shake up the ranking (more here).

• How To Make $1B, Buy A Football Club & Lose Most Of It. The world’s most popular sport is full of cautionary tales of investors losing money. Few, though, are on the scale of Everton FC’s departing owner (more here).

• NBA's Spencer Dinwiddie On How He's Engaging With The Crypto Community. A growing number of athletes are turning to tokenizing their contracts, which are paid in cryptocurrency. One such athlete is Calaxy Co-Founder & Executive Chair Spencer Dinwiddie, a Dallas Mavericks guard, who joined Wealth! to discuss his thought process and outlook on the cryptocurrency market (more here).

• TFL Introduces NIL Seats. TFL, a live event ticketing and technology company, introduced a new way for fans to support student-athletes through NIL. NIL Seats provides schools and NIL collectives with a branded e-commerce marketplace offering live events tickets, including concerts, games, and shows nationwide. Fifty percent of the order proceeds on the website will go to the school or collective to benefit the student-athletes (more here).

• How A Hockey-Loving Alberta Oilman Ended Up Part-Owner Of A German Soccer Team. Owning a sports team isn't just for billionaires anymore. There are lots of opportunities for reasonably wealthy individuals who want to get in on the game (more here).