AVDX - Global Women's Sports Growth Expands MCO Market
2024-03-20 08:26:27 ET
DENVER, Colo., Mar 20, 2024 ( 247marketnews.com )- AvePoint Inc. (NASDAQ: AVPT ), AvidXchange Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: AVDX ), Paycor HCM Inc. (NASDAQ: PYCR ), Airbnb Inc. (NASDAQ: ABNB ), and Brera Holdings ( NASDAQ:BREA ) are mentioned or featured.
Spotico reported, last week, that Ron Burkle is selling the San Diego Wave for an NWSL record $113 million to Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine, the founders of Levine Leichtman Capital Partners.
The total sales price sets a new NWSL record for the most expensive transaction value and Burkle’s better than 5,000% return on his $2 million NWSL expansion fee, in less than three years, even exceeds Jerry’s return, in percentage terms, on his $150 million Dallas Cowboys purchase in 1989.
The move is in line with three unmistakable trends; professional team values are on the rise, women’s professional sports is undergoing a massive international growth spurt, and ownership groups are supported by increasingly more sophisticated investors.
Take, for example, Bay FC, the newest NWSL team, which was formed by four former U.S. women’s national team members, who teamed up with Alan Waxman, the CEO and co-founder of Sixth Street .
As Yahoo Sports reported;
Wagner made her pitch, which, she knew , “might sound a little bit wild.” Five years earlier, with the NWSL struggling to survive, it might’ve been laughed out of the room. But Waxman was intrigued. His team dug into data and trends. And what they saw in an NWSL expansion franchise was “the most massively, structurally undervalued investment, not only in sports, but across everything we do at Sixth Street,” Waxman said.
It takes a lot to excite experts, like Waxman, who committed $125 million , “the largest institutional investment ever made in a professional women’s sports franchise,” to cover Bay FC’s expansion fee, training facility, and other items.
Sixth Street has approximately $75 billion in assets under management and made investments in AvePoint Inc. (NASDAQ: AVPT ), AvidXchange Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: AVDX ), Paycor HCM Inc. (NASDAQ: PYCR ), and Airbnb Inc. (NASDAQ: ABNB ), which Bloomberg reported generated nearly a double for Sixth Street .
Yahoo Sports further stated that Waxman mentions Bay FC alongside Real Madrid and Barcelona, the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Yankees, other teams in which Sixth Street has invested . He envisions billion-dollar valuations. He, and everyone at the club, also knows that all of this will take time.
Waxman’s support highlights investment bankers’ appetite for professional sports ventures and that movement is going next level via the Multi Club Ownership (MCO) model, in which investors own multiple clubs, in different leagues, that help the teams improve and reap large potential player development rewards.
Red Bull may be the highest profile MCO, with soccer properties that include a former amateur German team that it turned into a billion dollar asset and its Formula 1 race team.
Brera Holdings ( NASDAQ:BREA ) is the first public MCO listing and it recently appointed Dicey Perrine to head its US Operations in a move that signals that it plans to grow its US presence at an opportune time, as several major drivers should accelerate the popularity of “The beautiful game” in the states.
Soccer already surpassed baseball as the favorite sport for adults aged 18 to 29 and, according to a recent Gallup poll, an all-time high of 31% of Americans are soccer fans and Telemundo Deportes commissioned a report entitled The Future is Fútbol , which confirmed that soccer is the fastest-growing team sport in America.
In addition to soccer’s organic growth, which made it the fasting growing high school sport and on pace to pass football, several massive change waves are poised to take that growth next level.
It’s no surprise that World Champion, Lionel Messi, chose to play for Inter Miami of Major League Soccer (MLS), as the US 2026 World Cup preparations are heating up.
Per worldsoccertalk.com ; With the explosive growth and strengthening of the game domestically over the past 30 years, it is especially exciting to think about where we go from here. The 1994 FIFA World Cup in the USA still holds the all-time tournament attendance record (despite only having 24 teams and fewer games than subsequent tournaments) and was the most commercially successful edition ever. When 2026 brings the World Cup back to North America , with an expanded field of 48 teams, those records will surely be smashed .
Perrine joins an all-star management and advisory team that includes Daniel McClory , renowned investment banker and Brera’s Executive Chairman, who just acquired a majority stake in Brera Holdings .
“I believe that this strategic move underscores the robust confidence Mr. McClory places in Brera’s potential and heralds in a new era of international focus and expansion beyond the Company’s Italian roots,” stated Pierre Galoppi, Brera’s Chief Executive Officer.
The company also recently introduced an all-star advisory board that includes Massimo Ferragamo , Chairman of Ferragamo USA, Alan Rothenberg , Major League Soccer Founder and World Cup Director, Sports Business Leaders, Paul Tosetti and Marshall Geller, and Football Icon, Giuseppe Rossi, to Brera’s all-star Advisory Board .
In addition to soccer, Brera Holdings invested in women’s international professional volleyball, recognizing the sport’s growing popularity and potential.
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Global Women’s Sports Growth Expands MCO Market