Last month we covered the private equity firms deploying sports capital. This month, the funds raising it.
The shift matters.
Sports investing has moved past one-off team deals and into dedicated fund structures — vehicles with sports-specific theses, named anchor LPs, and multi-year deployment timelines.
The funds raising capital right now will set the deployment pace for the next 24 months, and the LP base they're building is increasingly tilted toward family offices, private wealth, and athlete capital rather than traditional institutions.
All of this and more is tracked in Dakota's May 2026 Sports Investing Report — and here are the five new sports-focused funds raising right now, and what each tells you about where LP capital is heading.
Want to find allocators already backing sports-focused funds? Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace.
1. Harbinger Sports Partners (Mark Cuban)
Harbinger marked an initial close of $450M toward a $750M target, with capacity potentially extending to $1B. The Atlanta-based firm is targeting minority positions in major US league franchises and, per recent reporting, is nearing its first team investment. Most notable is the LP base: Cuban has anchored the vehicle on private wealth investors, family offices, and institutional investors, in that order. That mix is becoming the template for sports-focused fund formation. Private wealth is no longer the secondary tranche — it's the lead capital.
2. CHAMP (L Catterton x Mark Patricof)
CHAMP — Champion Athlete Managing Partner — is a $500M vehicle targeting consumer brands where athlete co-ownership can accelerate growth. More than 250 elite athletes have partnered with the platform, committing over $50M collectively, with early names including Kevin Durant, Joe Burrow, Mike Trout, Cooper Flagg, and Livvy Dunne. The structural innovation is taking athlete capital — historically deployed through SPVs, individual angel checks, or branded JVs — and institutionalizing it into a single fund. For consumer brand managers, this is the closest thing to a one-stop access point to elite-athlete cap-table participation.
Looking to raise capital from allocators building sports exposure? Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace to see who is writing checks in your category.
3. Domain Capital Group — Sports Credit Strategy
Domain Capital, the Atlanta-based multi-strategy firm, launched a credit strategy dedicated to sports — targeting short-duration, asset-backed opportunities tied to player transfer and broadcast-related receivables in top European football leagues. The strategy launched alongside the close of a new separately managed account. The pitch to LPs is straightforward: low correlation to traditional corporate credit, contractual cash flows, and an asset class where the underwriting expertise hasn't yet been commoditized. Sports credit was a theme last year. It's a sleeve now.
4. InStudio Ventures — Sports & Performance Fund
InStudio Ventures launched its Sports & Performance Fund with athlete backing from across the Premier League, NFL, NBA, and MLB. The fund launched with a portfolio that already includes NFL franchises, the Aston Martin F1 team, and a collection of data and performance platforms. The structural read here is the dual role athletes play — both as LPs and as brand participants who can drive value into portfolio companies. InStudio is one of the cleaner examples of athlete capital being deployed not as a marketing layer but as a core fund-design input.
5. Gamma Waves Partners
Former Juventus president Andrea Agnelli returned to the sports business with Gamma Waves Partners, an Amsterdam-based permanent-capital firm co-founded with former Juventus captain Giorgio Chiellini and Rocco Benetton of the Benetton family. The firm has reportedly secured €55M in commitments toward a €100M target, with plans to take minority stakes in clubs, competitions, athletes, and growth-stage sports tech across basketball, hockey, cricket, tennis, baseball, and rugby. The signal: European football operators are launching their own institutional vehicles rather than waiting for US capital to come to them. Permanent-capital structures, in particular, suggest a hold-forever orientation that's structurally different from the closed-end PE model dominating most sports raises.
The Funds Raising Now Will Define the Next Cycle
Five funds, five different theses: minority franchise stakes, athlete-anchored consumer platforms, dedicated sports credit, a portfolio-led performance-tech vehicle, and a European permanent-capital operator. What unites them is timing. Each is raising — or has just closed — into an LP environment that has finally accepted sports as an institutional asset class, but hasn't yet committed at the allocation levels the asset class will eventually attract.
The fund formation pace is currently outrunning deployment, which means the LPs writing the next round of commitments will set the market for the next cycle. For fund managers, the practical question is the same one we closed on last month: who your LPs are, what mandate they're investing under, and whether you're in front of them before the next raise begins.
Sports capital is moving fast. See which allocators are backing it. Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace.
