Introduced by Andreas Munk Holm, this EUVC Live at GoWest series spotlights the thought leadership of policymakers, institutional investors, GPs, corporates, and public capital leaders around one defining question:
How does Europe mobilize its own capital to secure its technological future?
Across the sessions, one theme emerges repeatedly:
Europe does not lack talent.
It does not lack innovation.
It does not lack savings.
It lacks coordination.
For decades, sport was categorized as media.
Content.
Broadcast rights.
Sponsorship.
Merchandise.
But in this conversation, Fergus Bell, Founder and Managing Partner at The Players Fund and Prashant Agarwal, Chairman and Managing Director at Scandian, explore how athletes and rights holders are reshaping early-stage investing and argue that sport has quietly evolved into something far more structural.
It is becoming venture infrastructure. Not adjacent to venture but embedded within it.
Because athletes and rights holders now control three asymmetric assets that traditional investors cannot manufacture:
Distribution
Trust
Scarcity
And those assets compound.
The Athlete VC Evolution
Athlete investing has matured in phases.
Phase 1: Proximity capital
Angel checks driven by Silicon Valley relationships and locker-room introductions.
Phase 2: Social syndication
Teammates pooling capital. Influence is treated as value. Distribution as leverage.
Phase 3: Institutionalization
Athlete-led funds with structured mandates, governance, and portfolio construction.
This is where The Players Fund operates.
Not as a celebrity syndicate.
As a venture platform.
Its structure signals the shift:
200 athlete LPs
Pre-seed to Series A focus
Active network value creation
The model is not “post and amplify.” It opens doors, accelerates pilots, unlocks procurement, and de-risks early adoption. Access beats amplification.
Rights Are Financial Instruments
Prashant reframes sports rights entirely.
Most see them as expensive media inventory.
He sees them as asymmetric financial assets.
Because rights combine:
Built-in demand
Emotional loyalty
Recurrent consumption
Global distribution
In venture terms, they are embedded growth engines.
His OTT example illustrates the leverage:
$1M investment
23% Indian market share in one week
$60M exit
That curve is not linear.
It is what happens when IP meets distribution at scale.
Smart rights acquisition + scalable platforms = exponential outcomes.
In sport, distribution is native.
Deep Tech Has Entered the Arena
Modern sport is no longer analog. It is a live laboratory for deep tech.
Today’s teams deploy:
AI-driven talent identification
Injury prediction algorithms
Performance optimization platforms
Advanced biomechanics labs
Real-time analytics infrastructure
Moneyball was an early signal.
Now it is baseline.
Sport has become a convergence layer for:
HealthTech
MedTech
FinTech
AI
Consumer platforms
What makes sport unique is that innovation can be validated in high-pressure, high-visibility environments. If it works on the field, it works in the market.
Global Scale Is Structural
The EU–India trade agreement underscores a larger dynamic:
Sport scales geopolitically.
A 1.5B-person addressable market changes venture math.
With global fan bases:
Early IRR may appear compressed
Audience accumulation compounds valuation
IP multiplies downstream optionality
Unlike most startups, sports-linked platforms do not build audiences from zero.
They inherit them.
A league is a distribution rail.
A team is a brand engine.
An athlete is a trust layer.
The Core Thesis
Sport is not simply a vertical within consumer investing.
It is evolving into a capital stack:
Athletes as institutional LPs
Rights as asymmetric assets
Teams as distribution networks
Leagues as platforms
IP as compounding infrastructure
Entertainment was the surface layer.
Underneath, sport is becoming a venture engine.
And those who understand that shift will not just sponsor the future of sport.
They will finance it.
