{"id":242067,"date":"2025-10-21T22:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T22:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/242067\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T22:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T22:43:07","slug":"private-equity-and-college-sports-everyones-talking-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/242067\/","title":{"rendered":"Private equity and college sports? Everyone\u2019s talking about it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Private equity (capital, investment, etc.) is all the rage in college sports these days.<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, I spoke with more than a dozen sources around the Big Ten\u2019s private capital play<\/a> for this week\u2019s magazine. <\/p>\n

That conversation persisted into Monday\u2019s Big East roundtable as the trio of Playfly\u2019s Michael Schreiber, Elevate College\u2019s Jonathan Marks and KKR\u2019s Ted Oberwager took the stage to discuss the possibility of private capital in college sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we think rights are going to continue to rise as much as we all think, how do you align all those?\u201d queried Marks. \u201cThat\u2019s a big problem with this Big Ten deal on the table — extending [the grant of rights] 10 years out until 2046. If I was a Big Ten university, I would say \u2018Absolutely not. Let\u2019s hold those rights knowing that they\u2019re probably going to rise.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That private equity groups are circling college sports shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise. The Big Ten deal that would include a $2 billion cash infusion from UC Investments and the creation of Big Ten Enterprises, a new commercial business arm, has been discussed as far back as last fall. Other leagues like the SEC, ACC and American have done cursory work on the subject, if not explored it more fully.<\/p>\n

The Big 12, which announced in June that it was pausing forays into PE<\/a>, twice went down the path toward a deal over the last 18 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, we went through the exercise — as we should — doing our due diligence, and it was very appropriate,\u201d Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said at the time. \u201cAt this point in time, we\u2019re putting it on pause. We understand what\u2019s out there, the capital markets.<\/p>\n

\u201c… Our model was, though, very different [than a cash influx]. It was more of a bespoke model, custom-tailored to the potential needs of the conference, getting some strategic expertise and areas to grow the conference, but at the same time potentially having a capital resource.\u201d<\/p>\n

How and to what degree PE might actually be able to enter the college space remains complicated. USC and Michigan\u2019s boards remain at an impasse over the deal, while the schools contend with whether interim presidents on both campuses are equipped to make determinations that could have two decades of ramifications.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going to take money, which is also going to require return on investment, and you spend that money, you should probably spend it in a way that there\u2019s a return on investment,\u201d Oberwager said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of different ways to look at that and think about that. If you take the view that that player is going to drive the attendance, which is going to drive the alumni participation, which is going to drive the enrollments … you better have the loop that says, \u2018This actually makes sense.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s just, \u2018I\u2019ve got to keep up with the Joneses and they\u2019ve got that person, so I\u2019ve got to get this person. I need the money,\u2019 that is going to be a recipe for disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Private equity (capital, investment, etc.) is all the rage in college sports these days. In case you missed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,9594,4044,1607,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-242067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-big-ten-conference","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}