Long Live Sport: Stay at Home Content Week 7 — The Growth of Athletes as Technology Investors
Video conferencing service Zoom has been lauded as one of the big ‘winners’ of the uncertain situation the world has encountered for the past few months. Social distancing has resulted in people turning to technology to provide solutions to stay in touch with friends, family and colleagues. If you were to look at Zoom’s investors, NBA player Andre Igoudala is among them.
If you were unaware of Igoudala’s prolific investment portfolio, you might be surprised. But this is just one example of the growing trend in elite athletes investing in the technology industry. Back in 2018, former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal appeared on the Ellen Degeneres show and revealed that he’d made a “really big return” on an early investment he made into Google.
Known as a shrewd investor even during his playing career, O’Neal’s admission turned the spotlight on to this growing trend. With many of today’s fastest growing companies driven by the disruption and innovation of technology, athletes are becoming increasingly sophisticated in learning how to maximise the income they earn from their sporting endeavours.
Brand Ambassadors
Not all investors are created equally. With the key role sport plays in society and the powerful attachment fans have to their teams and favourite players, the companies typically also gain powerful brand ambassadors as part of the deal.
Speaking with Front Office Sport, former NBA player Michael Redd explained “Really the last five to seven years, athletes are thinking of themselves in a different light,” Redd said. “They’re recognizing their brand even more and that they can influence companies, not just from an endorsement standpoint, but with equity. That has changed the game.”
If we focus on esports, a significant growth sector and look at some of the early and most publicised investors, there’s a very clear trend. Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Alex Rodriguez, Rick Fox, Magic Johnson, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and more. Traditional sport and its electronic equivalent are now fundamentally linked through capital investment from one to the other.
Spanning all sports
The examples so far have been basketball heavy, but this is not only a trend among basketball players. Lance Armstrong was an early investor in Uber before it became a true global disruptor of the transportation sector. Serena Williams has launched her own Venture Capital firm and former England soccer star Michael Owen even made an early foray into cryptocurrency. Across all major sports, you can find countless examples of the tie between sports and technology.
So paradoxically, while sport continues to be missed for its live games and sense of competition, in many indirect ways like the digital entertainment and digital products we continue to use during this period of uncertainty, the capital earned from sport is one of the things actually still running.
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