Thrive Capital led VCs into pro sports ownership; Collaborative Fund just upped that play
Thrive Capital led VCs into pro sports ownership; Collaborative Fund just upped that play
Thrive Capital 引领风投进入职业体育所有权领域；Collaborative Fund 刚刚加码这一布局
Collaborative Fund, the 15-year-old, New York-based generalist venture firm that has roughly $1 billion under management and which made early bets on Lyft, Reddit, Sweetgreen, and Olipop, among others, is taking a stake in the soccer club D.C. United and its stadium, Audi Field. 总部位于纽约、拥有 15 年历史的综合性风险投资公司 Collaborative Fund 目前管理着约 10 亿美元的资产，曾早期投资过 Lyft、Reddit、Sweetgreen 和 Olipop 等公司。近日，该公司宣布入股足球俱乐部华盛顿联队（D.C. United）及其主场奥迪球场（Audi Field）。
It’s the latest — and smallest — firm to try something that Thrive Capital opened the door to just months ago: turning venture money into pro sports ownership. 这是继 Thrive Capital 几个月前开启先河之后，又一家尝试将风险投资资金转化为职业体育所有权的机构，也是其中规模最小的一家。
To recap, Joshua Kushner’s Thrive launched a new vehicle, Thrive Eternal, explicitly built to hold “iconic franchises and cultural institutions” for decades, funded by many of the same investors already in Thrive’s venture and growth funds. The firm kicked things off by announcing a stake in the San Francisco Giants. Months later, the same vehicle — with former Disney CEO Bob Iger, a Thrive partner, joining as co-owner — bought the Lakers outright for a record $12.5 billion. That’s new. 回顾一下，Joshua Kushner 旗下的 Thrive 推出了一只名为 Thrive Eternal 的新基金，专门用于长期持有“标志性特许经营权和文化机构”，其资金来源与 Thrive 现有的风投和成长基金的投资者高度重合。该公司最初宣布入股旧金山巨人队（San Francisco Giants）。几个月后，同一基金在 Thrive 合伙人、前迪士尼 CEO Bob Iger 的加入下，以创纪录的 125 亿美元全资收购了湖人队。这是一种全新的模式。
Historically, money has poured into pro sports two other ways: individual tech fortunes, and private equity. For example, Vinod Khosla and his family agreed this summer to buy the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion soon after the Khosla family also took a stake in the San Francisco 49ers alongside OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor. That was a personal-wealth play, the kind we’ve seen over and over. 从历史上看，资金进入职业体育领域主要有两种方式：个人科技财富和私募股权。例如，Vinod Khosla 及其家族今年夏天同意以创纪录的 96 亿美元收购西雅图海鹰队（Seattle Seahawks），而在此之前，Khosla 家族还与 OpenAI 董事长 Bret Taylor 一起入股了旧金山 49 人队（San Francisco 49ers）。这属于个人财富投资，是我们屡见不鲜的操作。
Private equity firms have also been at this for years, including Sixth Street, which holds stakes in the Boston Celtics, the New England Patriots, and MLB’s San Francisco Giants; Ares, which owns a piece of the Miami Dolphins outright and separately financed Chelsea’s stadium plans through a $500 million preferred-equity deal; RedBird, which owns AC Milan outright and holds a minority stake in Fenway Sports Group, the holding company behind Liverpool and the Red Sox; and Arctos, with minority positions scattered across MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and European soccer. (Apollo, the newest entrant, has mostly stuck to sports financing deals so far rather than ownership stakes.) 私募股权公司多年来也一直活跃于此，包括持有波士顿凯尔特人队、新英格兰爱国者队和 MLB 旧金山巨人队股份的 Sixth Street；全资拥有迈阿密海豚队部分股权，并另行通过 5 亿美元优先股交易为切尔西足球俱乐部球场计划提供融资的 Ares；全资拥有 AC 米兰，并持有芬威体育集团（利物浦和红袜队背后的控股公司）少数股权的 RedBird；以及在 MLB、NFL、NBA 和欧洲足球联赛中分散持有少数股权的 Arctos。（作为最新入局者的 Apollo，目前主要专注于体育融资交易，而非所有权股权。）
Thrive and Collaborative are doing neither of those things. At the same time, the two firms’ approaches to sports ownership look very different. Thrive built a standalone, permanent-capital vehicle specifically to hold trophy assets. Collaborative is investing out of the same early-stage fund it uses to write seed and Series A checks, and treating the deal less like something to buy and hold and almost more like infrastructure. Thrive 和 Collaborative 采取的策略与上述两者皆不同。同时，这两家公司在体育所有权上的路径也大相径庭。Thrive 建立了一个独立的永久资本工具，专门用于持有顶级资产。而 Collaborative 则是利用其进行种子轮和 A 轮投资的早期基金进行注资，与其说是为了“买入并持有”，不如说更像是将其视为一种基础设施。
In a memo shared with TechCrunch, Collaborative Fund founder and managing partner Craig Shapiro framed the deal as an extension of what the firm already does. “A franchise is the ultimate consumer product,” he wrote, arguing that D.C. United’s status as one of Major League Soccer’s original clubs gives Collaborative access to an institution with a decades-long fan base to build on. 在分享给 TechCrunch 的备忘录中，Collaborative Fund 创始人兼管理合伙人 Craig Shapiro 将这笔交易描述为公司现有业务的延伸。他写道：“特许经营权是终极消费品。”他认为，华盛顿联队作为美国职业足球大联盟（MLS）的创始俱乐部之一，让 Collaborative 能够依托一个拥有数十年粉丝基础的机构进行发展。
He pointed to the tailwinds around American soccer specifically (a World Cup just behind the sport, the LA Olympics ahead of it, soaring youth participation numbers in the U.S.) as well as D.C.’s ownership of Audi Field in Washington, D.C., plus a talent-development pipeline through Loudoun County, Virginia, and rights to a future Baltimore expansion team. 他特别指出了美国足球面临的利好因素（刚结束的世界杯、即将到来的洛杉矶奥运会、美国青少年足球参与人数的激增），以及华盛顿联队在华盛顿特区拥有奥迪球场、通过弗吉尼亚州劳登县建立的人才培养渠道，以及未来巴尔的摩扩充球队的权利。
Indeed, the thesis Shapiro laid out at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event Thursday night in New York is less about owning a piece of an appreciating asset – the sports team itself – and more about what the team makes possible. Collaborative wants to turn Audi Field into what he describes as a living showcase for its own portfolio. 事实上，Shapiro 周四晚在纽约举行的 TechCrunch StrictlyVC 活动上提出的论点，重点不在于拥有一个不断升值的资产（即体育队本身），而在于这支球队所能带来的可能性。Collaborative 希望将奥迪球场打造成他所描述的“公司投资组合的活体展示平台”。
As a backer of both fitness band maker Whoop and the beverage brand Olipop, for example, Collaborative Fund is imagining a WHOOP wearables activation for fans, or Olipop drinks woven into game-day concessions. He’s thinking about the stadium’s foot traffic — tens of thousands of people showing up on a predictable schedule — as a distribution channel at a time when, because AI is making more of daily life feel synthetic, live experiences are becoming more valuable. 例如，作为健身手环制造商 Whoop 和饮料品牌 Olipop 的支持者，Collaborative Fund 设想在球迷中推广 WHOOP 可穿戴设备，或将 Olipop 饮料融入比赛日的餐饮服务中。他将球场的人流量——即成千上万的人按预定时间聚集——视为一种分销渠道。在人工智能让日常生活显得愈发“合成化”的当下，现场体验正变得愈发珍贵。
Shapiro doesn’t dwell on this, but it surely helped sell Collaborative’s investors that team valuations have been soaring, so the stake could pay off on its own. Soccer valuations in particular have been on a tear. Inter Miami’s franchise value has roughly doubled in the two years since Lionel Messi arrived, MLS’s average club value is up roughly 134% since 2019, and D.C. United’s own valuation has climbed from $35 million in 2008 to $785 million today, factoring in its ownership of Audi Field and the surrounding real estate. Shapiro 没有过多强调这一点，但球队估值的飙升无疑有助于说服 Collaborative 的投资者，这意味着这笔股权投资本身就可能带来回报。尤其是足球俱乐部的估值一直在飞速增长。自梅西加盟以来，迈阿密国际的特许经营价值在两年内翻了一番；自 2019 年以来，MLS 俱乐部的平均价值上涨了约 134%；而华盛顿联队的估值也从 2008 年的 3500 万美元攀升至如今的 7.85 亿美元（计入其对奥迪球场及周边房地产的所有权）。
If Shapiro is right that a franchise is also “the ultimate consumer product,” it could be a pretty good place to park money. Time will tell. The deal is subject to MLS approval. 如果 Shapiro 关于“特许经营权是终极消费品”的观点正确，那么这可能是一个非常好的资金存放处。时间会证明一切。该交易尚需获得 MLS 的批准。