A sports team owner, an investor, and retired NBA star Andre Iguodala made a case for investing in sports during a panel at the Next Level Sports Conference on Thursday.
People are pumping millions into sports teams: The Clipper’s Intuit Dome in Inglewood cost $2 billion to build. And there are talks of NBA expansion to cities like Seattle, Las Vegas and even Mexico City. But is it a worthy investment or a bubble waiting to burst?
Jasmine Robinson, a managing partner at Monarch Collective, is putting her money behind women’s sports.
“In 2021, 2022 you started seeing a lot of the stakeholders really take seriously the audience that had been built, and the fandom that had been built, in women’s sports,” Robinson told conference attendees at the Intuit Dome. “And we really felt like that’s the key moment that signals like, this is hitting a point of acceleration. And I think that acceleration is, you know, going to continue.”
Robinson, who founded Monarch Collective in 2023, said she raised $150 million dollars to invest exclusively in women’s sports.
Andre Iguodala, who played on four NBA teams, including the Golden State Warriors, thinks players should leverage their position on professional teams to invest in their futures off the court.
“It’s just turning your brain into a different space when you’re done playing,” he said. “As a player, you really don’t have a good enough understanding of why these things work, but that’s what intrigued me in terms of starting to invest … you see how we’re all involved in this ecosystem and how we can continue to grow this thing.”
Tony Ressler is arguably at the top of this ecosystem as the owner of the Atlanta Hawks and CEO of Ares Management. He thinks sports investing has not yet hit its ceiling.
“It’s a massive asset class that I think the marketplace hasn’t fully appreciated,” Ressler said. “Investing in the world of sports, depending on the league, on the team, on the opportunity, you have a venture capital-like investment. With that level of risk, and other teams and other leagues are really…incredibly safe, incredibly attractive for a long term rate of return, maybe a modest rate of return, but with enormous stability to it.”
Oh, and by the way, if you are looking to invest in a sports team and have a few billion dollars to spend, the Boston Celtics are currently for sale.
