It’s time for a change. After 11 years investing in retail and consumer (and over 27 years total in the space), I’m shifting my investment focus to sports. Why? Because sports build community.
When I was growing up, the “third place” (a place outside home and work) was the mall. I remember going to the mall with my friends to hang out on weekends or even after school. That started my fascination with retail and consumer behavior. But today, retail isn’t really a third place and doesn’t foster community in the way it had in the past. So what does now? Sports. Because sports happen in real time (unlike TV shows where we can all binge at different times), they lend themselves to creating community – whether that’s at live events, watching a game at a sports bar, or live tweeting while watching. Sporting events, playing amateur sports and watching sports are our new “third place.”
The data is clear. Interest in sports overall, and in particular, women’s sports, has skyrocketed. One recent example: game 5 of the WBNA championships saw over 2.2m viewers on ESPN, a new record (go NY Liberty!). Viewership numbers across most sports are increasing. Demand is so high that ticket prices are rising across sports from tennis to baseball. There are new leagues, new expansion teams, new sports tech startups and new merchandise opportunities across all sports in the US right now.
While I’ve never been an athlete (does playing on my high school tennis team count?), I’ve always been a sports fan. I’ve been a tennis fan my whole life – my first tennis memory is watching Chris Evert play. When I was growing up, I watched the Baltimore Orioles break my heart year after year. In college, I became a college basketball fan. More recently, I’ve become a WNBA fan and an F1 fan. So I’m looking forward to this new chapter in my investing career.
Going forward, I’ll be focusing my investment activity on a few specific verticals within the sports category: women’s sports (teams and leagues), fan engagement, and sports as community. A few years ago, I made my first sports-related investment in Break Sports, a platform that democratizes access and brings people together around recreational sports (think tennis, pickleball, golf, soccer). I’m also thrilled to announce that I’ve just made my second investment in the space in Unrivaled Basketball, a new 3×3 women’s basketball league founded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart that will launch in January 2025.
If you’re a founder in the space or a fellow sports investor, I’d love to connect.