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Olympic Games Paris 2024: Day 4

US rugby player Alex Sedrick scores her team’s second and winning try during the Olympic bronze medal match between the US and Australian teams in Paris on July 30. / Featured image by Michael Steele/Getty Images

Private Equity

Paris Olympics open investors’ eyes to women’s sports

With more female athletes becoming household names, women’s sports could become the next target for PE investment.

Sports have become a highly sought after asset class for private equity firms, and the Paris Olympics—the first to feature an equal number of male and female athletes—placed a spotlight on women’s sports as investment opportunities.

“I can’t remember the last time you had as many household names in women’s sports as you do today,” said Jason Menghi, an audit and assurance partner at Deloitte who works with clients interested in sports investing.

At the Paris games, the US women’s rugby sevens team clinched a bronze medal. The same day, the organization received a $4 million donation from Michele Kang, an investor who also owns three women’s soccer clubs. Kang donated another $50 million in July to kickstart Kynisca Sports International—an organization dedicated to advancing women’s sports and named after the first female champion in the ancient Olympics.

In a CNBC interview during the Paris games, Kang said she was “flabbergasted” that more investors weren’t viewing women’s sports as a significant opportunity.

Women’s sports is an underserved market, said Steven Amato, a partner at Deloitte who advises PE firms. “People are starting to say, ‘hold on a minute, there’s been a whole world here that we haven’t focused on, and it’s a good, solid investment.’”

PE and the sports world

With major leagues like the NFL now allowing private equity ownership and adjacent opportunities like stadium infrastructure, private equity is more present in the sports world than ever.

PitchBook data shows that private equity investment in professional sports has grown significantly just this year in terms of deal value, and the trend of increasing deal values and count goes back nearly four years.

Though transactions specific to women’s teams comprise little of this data, the segment could already be on investors’ radar.

“The number of people who can afford to get in this space has grown dramatically against the number of available assets,” Amato said. “There is very little supply, and a lot of demand. That is starting to lead to alternative investments.”

When making these deals, long-term media contracts provide a certainty of cash flow for investors, Amato said. Though the popularity of women’s sports is growing, with more eyes on athletes like Caitlin Clark and Simone Biles, the media deals aren’t following at the same clip or size. The NBA and WNBA both signed media broadcasting partnership deals in July, and while the WNBA’s $2.2 billion deal is monumental, it’s still just a fraction of the $76 billion for the NBA.

A bronze spotlight on rugby

The reality is that women’s sports, especially niche ones like rugby, still have a long way to go before they can generate the same revenue as men’s sports—or the same level of PE interest. But the rugby story could be a model for the future if interest in women’s sports continues to rise.

Rugby is a sport with far-reaching roots in Commonwealth countries, as well as some outliers like France—whose men’s team clinched the gold medal in Paris—but even in the UK, the salary cap for professional female players is £220,000 (about $288,500), while the men’s salary cap is £6.2 million (about $8.1 million).

The game has much further to go in America, but the bronze medal from Paris is starting to get people talking.

“Winning the bronze medal, certainly ... it’s a sport now that could be super strength for America moving forward,” said Stuart Watkins, a player manager who works with male and female rugby players at Wasserman, a sports marketing agency. “I think there’s probably going to be a focus on making sure that the program stays really strong and giving platforms for people like Ilona Maher to succeed.”

The role of players with strong personalities and social media presence—like Maher, a US women’s team member who has over 6 million followers combined on TikTok and Instagram and was recently featured on the digital cover of Sports Illustrated—could go a long way towards making rugby an attractive asset.

“There are a lot of big personalities on the women’s rugby team. It’s all personalities and how they market themselves,” said Menghi with Deloitte.

While women’s rugby likely won’t be getting any major TV deals soon, the sport could be a target for boutique PE firms looking to get in on sports as one way of diversifying their assets in a limited market.

US rugby player Alex Sedrick scores her team’s second and winning try during the Olympic bronze medal match between the US and Australian teams in Paris on July 30. / Featured image by Michael Steele/Getty Images

  • Nadine Manske
    About Nadine Manske
    Nadine Manske is a reporter covering private markets for PitchBook News. She previously worked at the Minnesota Star Tribune and is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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