Sports investing has entered a new phase.
What was once dominated by team owners, family offices, and opportunistic capital is now drawing serious attention from pensions, private equity firms, and global financial institutions. Recent moves suggest sports is no longer being underwritten as a passion asset—it’s being evaluated as scalable, durable infrastructure.
From college athletics to broadcast technology and athlete representation, institutional investors are placing increasingly deliberate bets on where long-term value in sports actually sits.
Below are some of the most notable players leaning in right now—and what their strategies reveal.
Public Pensions Step Onto the Field
The proposed partnership between the Big Ten and CalPERS would mark a watershed moment for college athletics. If completed, a U.S. public pension fund could become an equity holder in college sports, an unprecedented step that blends governance, media economics, and institutional capital.
The significance isn’t just symbolic. Pension funds typically allocate to assets with long duration, predictable cash flows, and inflation protection. Sports—particularly at the conference and league level—is increasingly being framed in those terms, driven by long-term media contracts and entrenched fan demand.
Whether or not the deal moves forward, the signal is clear: large allocators are actively evaluating sports as a legitimate institutional asset class.
Ares Management’s Infrastructure-First Approach
Ares Management continues to surface across the sports landscape, often behind the scenes. Rather than chasing individual franchises, the firm has gravitated toward platform exposure—working alongside groups like CVC and engaging in broader restructurings tied to global sports portfolios.
This approach mirrors a familiar private markets playbook. Control the platforms, not just the assets. In sports, that means leagues, rights aggregations, and scalable operating companies that sit upstream from teams themselves.
It’s a reminder that some of the most consequential sports investing today looks a lot like traditional private equity—just applied to a new ecosystem.
RedBird Capital’s Methodical Media Play
RedBird Capital remains one of the most disciplined and recognizable names in sports investing. Its involvement in MARI, alongside a roster of heavyweight backers, builds on a longer-term thesis around sports media, live events, and content ownership.
Rather than making one-off bets, RedBird’s strategy centers on building durable media platforms where sports serves as the anchor. The logic is straightforward: live sports remains one of the few forms of content that reliably commands attention, pricing power, and global scale.
In an increasingly fragmented media environment, that scarcity matters.
Betting on the Backbone: NEP Group
Not all sports investments revolve around teams or leagues. The $700 million equity investment into NEP Group, led by 26North with Carlyle as an existing investor, highlights growing institutional interest in the infrastructure that powers global sports broadcasting.
NEP sits at the center of live event production, supporting major sports and entertainment broadcasts worldwide. As live sports continues to be one of the most valuable forms of real-time content, the technology and production capabilities behind it are becoming increasingly strategic assets.
For investors, this is a classic picks-and-shovels play—owning the systems that make the entire ecosystem run.
Wall Street Moves Closer to the Athlete
Goldman Sachs’ move into athlete representation through its bid for Excel Sports Management signals how far traditional finance has expanded its definition of sports exposure.
Athlete representation sits at the intersection of media, branding, intellectual property, and long-term earnings streams. It also offers a window into how value flows across leagues, sponsors, and media platforms.
For Goldman, the move reflects a broader embrace of full-spectrum sports economics—where teams, talent, and infrastructure are all part of the same investment universe.
The Bigger Picture
Taken together, these moves point to a clear shift in how sports is being underwritten.
This isn’t about buying teams for prestige or passion. It’s about owning cash-flowing platforms, controlling distribution, and building scalable systems around one of the most resilient forms of consumer engagement in the world.
Sports is still emotional—but for institutional investors, it’s increasingly becoming analytical.
Track Who’s Investing in Sports—Before the Headlines
As institutional capital moves deeper into sports, visibility matters. Dakota Marketplace helps you track the pensions, private equity firms, banks, and investment platforms allocating to sports, media, and adjacent infrastructure—without chasing fragmented news or outdated lists.
See who’s active, how strategies are evolving, and where capital is moving next, all in one place, book a demo of Dakota Marketplace here!
