Beyond the Final Score: How Sports Became the New Investment Frontier

Summary

• Mark (Avenue) argues sports have a durable loyalty asset: “Real Madrid could be horrible, and you don’t switch.” A losing team keeps its fans and adds more over time, with three main revenue channels: “ticket sales, sponsorship, and then media.” His COVID-era observation that people avoided offices but still attended games also supports bets on sports adjacencies such as Cosm.
• Mark’s valuation verdict: “everything is pretty fairly valued” — buy a basketball team today and expect, in his view, “3 or 4%,” because owners spend to win. The Bucks were losing $100M because they were in the luxury tax yet sold for $3.5B; Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets sold for $3B. His point is that winning can build franchise value despite weaker current cash flow.
• Alexis’s women’s-sports call started with a 2019 tweet that got him “dragged by millions”: a headline said Megan Rapinoe’s Seattle team had sold for roughly $3–3.5M, while Alexis thought she was worth at least that much annually in brand deals. Serena and Venus are his case study — more Americans watch the US Open women’s final than the men’s — and “it’s not activism or charity, it’s the free market.” Alex Morgan’s reply to that tweet led to Alexis becoming Angel City’s founding controller.
• Alexis is still buying at “ground floor” prices — his L.A. League One Volleyball franchise was priced around what would have been a normal seed round in prior years, or sub-$100M — while underwriting to billion-dollar franchises. His operating edge is software-driven, asset-light front offices of “maybe a dozen people max,” with agents handling enterprise-sales outreach and software scaling social content.
• Alexis’s exit thesis is that AI threatens Hollywood and music while sports remain one of the few ways to capture guaranteed live attention. Video generation puts Hollywood in “existential crisis,” and entirely AI-generated chart-topping songs are “already here.” Streamers such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix may need sports within 5–10 years, creating potential exits for emerging leagues.
• Watch-list frontier: Alexis names padel; his NWSL lesson — “I should have bought the league instead of just starting a team” — led him to start Athlos in track and field, with other Olympic sports such as gymnastics and swimming as possibilities if communities can be built between Games. Mark’s pickleball story — he says he bought in for $50K and sold two years later for $5B, while the host earlier called it “100x” — is the panel’s extreme upside example.

Deep dive

1. The asset that survives its own failure

• Mark’s lesson from owning the Bucks: any normal product with a hole in it gets discarded — “yet Real Madrid could be horrible, and you don’t switch. You’re still going to be there.” The result is an asset that can add fans annually, monetized through three channels: tickets, sponsorship, and media.
• His COVID-era anecdote: people would not return to offices but would still attend Knicks and other team games, hugging strangers after baskets — “sports will transcend.” Hence Avenue’s ecosystem bets such as Cosm, the mini-sphere venues where “you feel you’re sitting at the 50-yard line,” and other sports adjacencies.

2. Alexis’s women’s-sports arb: transcendent stars, $3M teams

• The 2019 mispricing: Alexis saw a headline saying Megan Rapinoe’s Seattle team had sold for maybe $3–3.5M, while he thought she was worth at least that much annually in brand deals — “the math didn’t match for me. It must be really poorly run.” As “a heat-seeking missile for online engagement,” he read Alex Morgan’s and Rapinoe’s millions of followers as latent franchise value.
• His wife Serena Williams nearly talked him out of it. He points to Serena and Venus as evidence that investment can make women’s sports as valuable as men’s: Billie Jean King’s pay parity and the sisters’ opportunity helped them become greats and expand tennis. Today, he says, more Americans watch the US Open women’s final than the men’s: “It’s not activism or charity, it’s the free market.”

3. Fairly priced — because winning eats the yield

• Mark says buying a basketball team today might produce “3 or 4%,” but the desire to win eats into cash returns — “if you want to win, you spend money.” His comparison: the Bucks were losing $100M while in the luxury tax yet sold for $3.5B; Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets sold for $3B. His conclusion is that winning builds the franchise value buyers pay for.
• Alexis is still pricing new properties like seed rounds — sub-$100M “easily” for his L.A. League One Volleyball franchise — targeting zero-to-one operating value and billion-dollar franchises.

4. Where the operator dollar goes

• Alexis touches nothing on the sporting side — he “can’t take any credit” for his TGL team’s championship this year. His leverage is running teams “very asset-light” going forward: a front office of “maybe a dozen people max,” managing agents for enterprise-sales outreach and using software instead of headcount to scale social content, especially now that AI has made software “truly commoditized.”
• Mark’s version, from arguments with his GM: is the $20M player 10 times better than the $2M one? “No, he’s not. He’s a little better.” So the mandate became finding $2M players producing like $20M ones — “and that’s really hard.” His self-deprecating contrast: pep talks — “Go out there and win. Put it in the basket.”

5. Exits: AI threatens alternatives, streamers may need sports

• Alexis’s chain: image generation arrived faster than tech expected, “videos are just moving images,” and green-screen blockbusters could be reproduced at a fraction of their budgets, putting Hollywood in an “existential crisis.” Entirely AI-generated chart-topping songs are “already here.” What survives is live stakes: “sports will be the last one left standing” — even robots will not replace traditional sports because “no one wants to watch a bunch of European robots face off against a bunch of American robots in 18 hole-in-ones of golf.”
• The potential buyers are streamers. Alexis cited Netflix content featuring a man climbing a building that drew millions of viewers, and said companies such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix will, in 5–10 years, “absolutely need” the last thing that can guarantee millions of people tune in: sports. That creates exit opportunities for emerging leagues.
• His brand gauge, the “tattoo test”: Reddit passed when Fernando Takai tattooed its alien on his body three years in, though he later had it removed — “Sorry, Fernando.” Sports logos routinely carry that kind of durable attachment, making them “still so undervalued” in a world of more and more AI slop.

6. Next frontiers

• Alexis names padel. His NWSL lesson was, “I should have bought the league instead of just starting a team,” so he started Athlos in track and field and is looking at Olympic sports such as gymnastics and swimming — sports that are extremely popular every four years and then disappear — if a community can be built between Games.
• Mark pitches curling in the closing banter, including the idea of a broom sponsor.