Golfer Brooks Koepka ranks as one of the highest-paid stars in the sport, and he has recently started putting his money to work. He participated in A Shoc Energy’s Series B in 2022 and backed tequila brand Casa Azul last year. Now, Koepka is taking his off-the-track efforts to the next level by investing in Locker Room, a newly launched athlete investment fund from Reed, an Orlando-area sports technology investment platform.
Koepka was joined by English soccer star Harry Kane and St. Louis Blues captain Brayden Schenn. The fund is in the process of raising its $25 million goal and has already made four investments, including investments in TMRW Sports and Eastside Golf. Locker Room management envisions an eventual series of funds that will leverage athlete shareholders with inbound investment opportunities and potential value-added marketing activities.
Thanks to these factors, formal athlete investment companies are starting to form a hot sector. Patricoff, founded in 2018, is building special purpose vehicles to give athlete clients access to large-scale private equity deals, while current New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers RX3 Growth Partners, which he co-founded in 2019, is deploying a second fund of $150 million. The fund is backed by Lions quarterback Jared Goff and former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, among others.
locker room
Parent company: Reed
Target funding size: $25 million
Average investment: $500,000 to $1 million
Holding period: 3-5 years
Known investments: TMRW Sports, Eastside Golf
Major investors: Brooks Koepka, Harry Kane, Brayden Shen
The locker room is led by fund CEO Brian Thompson, whose background includes developing Albany, the luxury resort in the Bahamas that hosts Tiger Woods’ annual Hero World Challenge. has competed alongside athletes and celebrities. He said the idea for Locker Room came from his efforts to source investment opportunities for athletes from his network.
“I’m just giving an example. Maybe this tequila company costs $5 million to start, so you call five people you know and they split it up. And it’s like, It was kind of a natural thing to say, ‘OK, why don’t we just stop calling you every 20 minutes when we have a deal, just throw some money in the pot and figure it out?” Thompson said. recalled. . “I knew the guys at Lead, and I said, ‘What if we created something like a subsidiary?’ Because we can use the infrastructure that we have to grow this.”
Lead’s roots go back to a Berlin-based sports startup accelerator founded by the grandson of Adidas founder Adi Dassler. Currently, the firm is headquartered in Lake Nona, near Orlando, and leads a series of funds: pre-seed Lead One, seed-level Lake Nona Fund and Series A Vehicle Advantage, with a focus on early-stage sports health investments. I am putting and technology startups.
Thompson has found a friendly audience, especially in lead board member John Voigtman, who is currently overseeing locker room efforts. Voigtman, a longtime financial executive and most recently chairman of RBC Financial, said he has seen a number of inbound investment offers athletes receive over the past decade, as well as institutional investors who can take advantage of the companies’ promotional capabilities. He said he has been considering how to organize his investment strategy. to their portfolio.
Blues’ Brayden Schenn and golfer Brooks Koepka (below) are two of the 10 athletes participating in the fund, via image from Lead.getty
“Whether it’s Tiger, LeBron, Shaq, Kevin Durant, there’s a lot of praise for how they’ve built this ecosystem around investments that they know and can contribute to. We received a lot of feedback,” Vogtman said. “Given its leading heritage in sport, sport development and health, it is the perfect crucible to bring athletes into its system and help them continue to learn, as well as formalize investment on a more institutional basis.” I thought it was something like.”
While Locker Room can be opportunistic about where it invests, Voigtman said the sweet spot is a Series A round, and that Locker Room typically expects to write checks in the $500,000 to $1 million range. Ta. The fund aims to hold investments for three to five years, roughly half the period that VC funds typically hold investments. Vogtman expects about 75% of Locker Room’s investment to be raised through the fund’s athlete shareholders.
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Locker Room has made four investments to date. That includes a stake in TMRW Sports, the technology-focused sports platform founded by Woods, Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley and behind the upcoming golf league TGL, and lifestyle brand Eastside Golf. are. Access to both deals came through golfers who invested in Locker Room’s debut fund. The fund’s leadership declined to comment on the other two investments.
Athletes must invest a minimum of $250,000, and Thompson said the largest athlete check to date was $1.5 million. He added that the locker room is only taking 30% of the upfront funds and will request the rest as needed for future transactions. Ten athletes have invested so far.
In addition to athletes, about a quarter of Locker Room’s investors will be key financial executives. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Voigtman did not identify themselves, but said they expected the financial expertise of these individuals to add value. Fund leadership also provides advisory services to athlete investors.
“There have been some instances where athletes have been exposed to sponsorship funding deals, but because these are private companies, we don’t know how to evaluate them,” Vogtmann said. “That’s what we do every day. So we can go back and say not only what we believe in the value of the stock today, but what value we believe in during the contract and sponsorship period. Masu.”
Longer term, Folkman envisions Locker Room as a series of funds, with a second vehicle launched in late 2025 after the debut fund is fully deployed. But for now, the focus will be on closing the initial fund, which is expected to eventually include about 20 investors.
Perhaps even more pressing is Thompson’s budding acting career. He will play Koepka’s caddy in “Happy Gilmore 2,” which was recently filmed at several golf courses in New Jersey.
Contact Chris Smith at crsmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
