Marc Ganis, Kevin Demoff and Henry Hodgson at Sportico's Invest London
The event spotlighted how teams and leagues are exploring new frontiers.
Executives with experience across global sports shared their investment strategies—and the challenges they’ve faced—at Sportico’s Invest in Sports London event on Tuesday, which spotlighted how teams and leagues are exploring new frontiers.
The NFL, for instance, will play a league-record nine regular season games outside the U.S. this year. After a Week 1 game in Australia, a first visit to Rio De Janeiro and a trip to London, teams are headed to Paris, Madrid and Munich over the next month. The next step in American football’s overseas expansion, league executives said, is bringing more international players to the U.S.
The reigning MVPs of America’s other major men’s team sport leagues were all born elsewhere, while the NFL has yet to have an international player make a similar impact in recent memory.
“If you look at sports that are truly global sports—the NBA, soccer, F1—what they have in common amongst many other things is that there are faces of athletes from across the globe,” NFL UK general manager Henry Hodgson said. “I think we will get there.”
The growth of flag football has also increased the sport’s exposure internationally, with the number of U.K. kids playing the game doubling year-over-year to roughly 250,000, Hodgson said. When the NFL played its first game in Dublin last year, the league delivered flag football kits to every primary school in Ireland.
“Globalization is the R&D of the NFL,” Kroenke Sports and Entertainment president of team and media operations Kevin Demoff said. “If we’re going to have that foreign-born player be the best player in the NFL, which will be the true catalyst for growth, it has to start with a unique commitment.”
The NFL wasn’t the only sports entity weighing in on international opportunities. Sportico’s London event featured a panoply of topics and high-level expertise.
NBA Europe leaders provide update
The NBA continues advancing its efforts to stand up a European league, with hopes to launch in 2027. J.P. Morgan’s Eric Menell said franchises will likely sell for at least $1 billion in the continent’s marquee markets, while the NBA’s George Aivazoglou shared his vision of what a flourishing competition will provide.
“This is something that will feel very natively European,” he said, adding that, “if it’s successful, which I think it will be, it will be a global property. … It will transcend Europe.”
At the same time, MSP Sports Capital chairman Jahm Najafi predicted that the NBA’s current media deal, stretching into the 2030s, will be the last of its kind, as the league looks to engage fans around the world on an individual basis.
“This will probably be the final media rights sale they will do—next on their list is going direct-to-consumer to get 90% of the media rights, because the delivery from a content and from a technology standpoint is very, very costless, eventually,” he said. “If you think about the NBA coming together with another global league and maybe a third league, and three of them say this is the only place that you can watch these three sports globally, what do you think people globally will pay for that on a monthly basis?”
Competition driving the women’s game
In women’s soccer, growing leagues in the U.S. and in Europe are battling for talent, investment and—ultimately—fan attention.
“I hope that they grow in parallel,” Monarch Collective managing partner Jasmine Robinson said. “The global football ecosystem is much healthier for having a global fanbase to build into, and there’s so much more opportunity to have players moving across these leagues and bringing fanbases into different spaces. The women’s game is at such a moment of growth that it’s not like there’s competition because there’s only so many dollars or fans in the market.”
PCP Capital Partners director Amanda Staveley added the competition on the business side will spur further investment.
“The U.K. and the European leagues will catch up quite quickly,” she said. “They have to, or else they’ll be left behind.”
Bullish about the potential of women’s football, Staveley also said PCP’s investment in West Ham is contingent on acquiring a stake in the women’s team in addition to the men’s side.
What’s in store for LIV Golf 2.0
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil described new investor BC Partners Credit as a “White Knight,” with the golf league rebuilding its business model in anticipation of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund ending its support.
LIV Golf 2.0 will maintain its focus on reaching fans around the world, with particular attention to markets like Australia, South Africa and South Korea.
O’Neil cited Formula 1 as a source of inspiration as the league looks to grow its media rights revenue despite the challenge of competing in numerous time zones.
Formula 1 leads the way
F1 has become an exemplar of a truly global sporting venture, driven in large part by off-track storytelling that builds the brands of its leading racers.
“Six or seven years ago, probably the back-end of the grid was more of a liability than an asset,” former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said. “Now, you’re probably looking at, even for the worst team in Formula 1, a $2.5 billion valuation, and it’s only rising. So that’s been fascinating.”
Horner also discussed what he plans to do next, with eyes on leading an IP-backed venture. “The appetite to invest in live entertainment and sport is off the charts,” he said.
Identifying opportunity on a global scale
TGL has expanded its broadcast reach into 152 countries and is now looking to leverage flag football’s global growth as it develops a new league in that sport.
As Dynasty Equity looks for new investments, CEO K. Don Cornwell said TV ratings are a key indicator of potential. But so are YouTube views, which represent the size of a sport’s digitally native audience, as well as betting handle in certain markets.
“It protects your downside,” Cornwell said of sports with popular gambling tie-ins. “You know there’s going to be a level of engagement if people are gambling on it.”
Dozens of top executives from the U.S., the U.K. and around the world gathered for Sportico’s event at Fulham Pier, which was sponsored by ScorePlay. Sportico’s next event is Nov. 10 in New York.