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It’s a Private Equity World…

EFL Championship club Wrexham AFC has secured a minority investment from Apollo Global Management. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but Bloomberg’s Giles Turner and David Hellier cite a source who says Apollo’s stake is “less than 10%” and the investor will “get one board seat.” Wrexham had been looking to sell a stake at a valuation of up to $475M. Turner and Hellier also note: “Apollo’s investment could make Wrexham one of the most valuable clubs in the Championship. Its revenue rose 155% to £26.7 million for the 2023-24 season, driven by increased broadcasting revenue, sponsorship deals, and publicity from the Welcome to Wrexham documentary series.” (link)

Bayern Munich held exploratory talks this year with private equity firm EQT about selling a small minority stake, a move that would have reignited Germany’s long-running political and cultural fight over outside investment in football, according to Financial Times’ Alexandra Heal, Samuel Agini and Olaf Storbeck. The discussions collapsed after Bayern CFO Michael Diederich left the club for Deutsche Bank, and Heal, et al. note that any deal would have faced intense scrutiny in Germany, where fans have staunchly opposed private-equity involvement and where the “50+1” rule preserves member control of clubs. Bayern’s constitution requires supporters to retain at least 70% of the operating football subsidiary, leaving at most a 5% slice available for sale — a tiny window given the club’s €4.28B enterprise value. Adidas, Audi and Allianz, which jointly own 25%, are not looking to sell, sources told the FT. The overture, the FT trio notes, reflects EQT’s broader push into sports as private capital continues to reshape European football ownership, with major recent deals involving Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, AC Milan and an expected minority sale at Real Madrid. (link)

KKR is in talks to acquire a majority stake in Arctos Partners as it looks to push further into sports investing, according to Bloomberg’s Allison McNeely, who reports the “buyout giant is exploring sports investments including teams, leagues, media rights and financing” but notes “talks between the firms are ongoing and could change. … A representative for New York-based KKR declined to comment, and Arctos didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.” (link)

Eldridge and Arctos are partnering with CAIS Advisors to open a new investment fund that gives individual investors access to the normally closed world of sports and media ownership, according to Bloomberg’s Laura Benitez. CAIS will oversee the portfolio and selected Eldridge and Arctos as independent managers for a vehicle that will deploy capital across the NFL, NBA and other major North American leagues, along with film/TV assets, music catalogs and live-event properties. The fund, which is expected to allow minimum investments as low as $25K, will charge a 0.95% management fee and offer semiannual redemptions of up to 5% of net asset value, pending board approval. CAIS says the initial portfolio will span more than 30 sports franchises and related media assets, extending a broader trend of major alternative-asset managers moving aggressively into sports as a $500B market with a 20-year annualized return near 13%. (link)

LMU AD and host Craig Pintens welcomed Pat Crakes, Principal of Crakes Media to dissect the current economic structure of sports media, arguing that the streaming ecosystem provides plus-sum support to an old, declining pay TV system that still pays most of the industry's bills.

➤ The Streaming "Silo" Problem: While streaming is additive, platforms operate in revenue silos, and moving content behind an individual paywall creates friction and inherent reach loss.

➤ The Bundling Imperative: For non-football properties, separating media rights (like regular-season basketball) from football severely limits value. College basketball is approximately 13-15% of the total value outside of football, making it strategically necessary to bundle with football to generate extra multiples and secure financing for non-revenue sports.

➤ The Super League Math: Crakes noted a true college football "Super League" would require about 20 schools to extract most of the media value from the current system. However, this idea is currently impractical due to the system being tapped out after recent realignments, the lack of necessary capital, and the unpredictable interference of state governments.

CLICK HERE for the episode or listen anywhere you get your podcasts.

U.S. Soccer has launched “Never Chase Reality,” one of its largest public-facing campaigns to date ahead of the U.S. Men’s 2026 World Cup run. Built in-house by the federation’s newly unified marketing and communications team, the effort is anchored by a 90-second video tying the USMNT’s history and ambitions to broader American ideals while positioning fans as part of the team’s “complete circle.” Here’s more…

➤ Chief Marketing & Communications Officer Catherine Newman tells Marketing Dive’s Chris Kelly the work blends psychology, creative storytelling and player-driven insight, with distribution spanning broadcast, digital, out-of-home, Times Square placement and U.S. Soccer’s membership network. 

➤ Newman, who joined in 2024 to re-set the organization’s marketing ahead of major global events, said the campaign will evolve throughout the World Cup cycle and is supported by new media partnerships, including Snap. She added that U.S. Soccer is emphasizing belonging and unity during a politically tense moment, noting: “The number one reason that people love soccer above any other sport was because it was a place that they felt they belonged. We don’t check your status when you come in. That’s not who we are.” 

➤ Newman also talks about the decision to produce the campaign in-house: “We reset the marketing communications function and brought it together, so we now have a holistic view across everything we do as a brand. … When we’re in camp with [the players], we are there 24/7, so it enables us to make it in-house, because we have an insight that no agency could ever hope to have.” 

➤ Check out the full article. (link)

NASCAR Senior Director of Consumer Intelligence Damian Arbuckle tells the Sports Geek’s Sean Callahan that his unit’s core charge is to “get the right message to the right person through the right channel,” turning a once-messy ticketing dataset into a centralized fan-intelligence engine that now supports both the league and 15 owned tracks. More from the conversation…

➤ Arbuckle, who came to NASCAR via analytics work at Tampa’s Hard Rock Casino, says his team has connected 70-80 data sources into a Snowflake warehouse and uses tools like Tableau and GrowthLoop to build and activate more than 2,000 audiences a year in minutes rather than “hours, if not weeks,” driving targeted email, SMS and outbound sales campaigns. 

➤ Arbuckle: “It’s kind of like going and sitting down at a casino table and then already knowing what card’s coming up next, and the models that we have, we’re right nine times out of 10. Every once in a while we are wrong and they’ll let me know it, but just knowing that the odds are on my side and all this hard work that we’ve done, we know mathematically that this is going to work more likely than not.” 

➤ Arbuckle notes that motorsports growth (including F1) has helped NASCAR, but the business is still heavily driver-centric, and when a star retires, “people tend to not come back right away. … Maybe all these Kyle Busch fans are on the brink of not coming back. How do we get ahead of this and say, OK, let’s go win some of these folks back and get them to have affinity for a new driver?” 

➤ NASCAR now maps where those fans live and works with content and marketing to migrate them to new drivers or marquee events. Across all of it, Arbuckle frames analytics not as code or models alone but as turning “mathematics into English” that track operators can use to sell more tickets and deepen engagement. 

➤ Lots more in the full podcast. (link)

LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil is nearly a full year into his role and tells SBJ’s Josh Carpenter: “We’re doing what I think hopefully most businesses will do with a four-year-old company. And that’s first to assess the strategy, where are we going? Why are we going where we’re going? The mission is really clear to take some of the best players in the world to the world and grow the game of golf. So, once you have a mission, then your doors become pretty clear. Then you set the strategy. How are we going to get there? What does it actually look like? We have that nailed down internally. Then you build the structure and then you go get the people that fit that structure, and we’re somewhere in the middle of that process.” (link)

Tech leaders are increasingly floating the idea that AI could eventually replace corporate CEOs, with Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai saying: “What a CEO does is maybe one of the easier things…for an AI to do.” OpenAI’s Sam Altman has pushed the idea further, arguing that AI systems may soon be able to run divisions – or entire companies – with the real bottleneck being society’s comfort level rather than technical capability: “On the actual decision-making – for most things – maybe the AI is pretty good, pretty soon.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who calls the notion of AI-run companies “too far-fetched for me,” insisting “human agency is going to be very much part of it.” Elon Musk, by contrast, predicts a future in which AI surpasses human intelligence entirely – “it is difficult to imagine that any humans will actually be in charge” – even as he continues chasing automated factories and tells shareholders that work itself may become optional “in the same way that…you can grow your own vegetables in your garden or you could go to the store and buy vegetables.” (link)

Revenue Brew’s Beck Salgado examines how AI is reshaping entry-level sales roles, profiling companies where humans and AI agents now operate side-by-side. Workforce-orchestration firm Asymbl has deployed 65 digital workers across 10 functions and is targeting a workforce that is 40% digital by next year – a shift CEO Brandon Metcalf says has already yielded $5M in savings. He argues this is not the end of early-career sales jobs, emphasizing that sales remains rooted in human connection, even as Asymbl’s prior SDR (Sales Development Representative) earned a promotion after successfully training an AI agent named “Teddy” to boost output. Early-career fractional SDR Tony Brophy explains the real threat is not AI but overcomplication and complacency, and he stresses the importance of fundamentals such as calling lists and following up. He also says today’s sellers must build a digital presence that accelerates learning and client acquisition. Despite rapid automation, both executives and practitioners maintain that sales remains one of the most durable entry points for young professionals. Brophy adds: “It’s like putting jet fuel on your business. Because if I can get more clients, I can learn faster, spend no time having to actually sell my own service because I’m full up, and then I just learn how to serve those clients better.” (link)