Danny Menken, the former managing director of Eurosport and co-founder of Eleven Sports, and Karim Ben Rejeb, a former JP Morgan investment banker, teamed up to launch Athvance Capital, a new European sports investment platform.
The firm will focus on emerging and under-commercialised sports IP, and on technology and service providers.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
This fund is backed by a senior team of entrepreneurs and investors with experience in sports, media, technology, and finance, and is looking to raise as much as €500 million ($585 million).
Co-founders Menken and Ben Rejeb will serve as the company's managing partners.
As well as stints at pay-TV sports broadcasters Eurosport and Eleven Sports, Menken was previously chief executive at Infostrada Sports Group. Since then, he has been doing advisory work for major private equity funds on sports and entertainment-related matters and co-founded multiple sports ventures.
Athvance has already deployed capital across a portfolio of majority investments with an existing presence in Spain, the Netherlands, France, the UK, and Portugal.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataThese include tech and sports venture studio ve2.ventures, Estrella Football Group – a multi-club owner of lower league soccer clubs, including Clube Sportivo de Cascais in Portugal – the Queen & King of the Court professional beach volleyball leagues, and a professional padel tournament.
Athvance is also currently in the process of closing additional acquisitions.
Menken and Ben Rejeb spoke to GlobalData Sport (Sportcal) about their plans for the fund and where it can sit within the sports investment industry.
Why did you launch Athvance Capital, and what was your vision behind it?
Menken: “We see a big opportunity in European sports. Firstly, sport in general has a massive uplift and potential due to some mega trends. One of them is that people, and especially youngsters, are much more aware of their health. So, they eat healthier and exercise more, which also has an impact on sports. Secondly, there is the rise of AI, and because of that, people get more spare time. Live entertainment will see a massive growth in the next couple of years, and especially in sports, which is not negatively impacted by AI.
“Young people also have a different way of consuming sports. Several new formats have risen fast in recent years, such as Kings League and Baller League. We believe there's a massive market out there if you do it right.
“Why Europe? There are big brands, a global fan base, a lot of heritage, knowledge, and know-how. But at the same time, there is a very fragmented landscape, which is significantly underinvested and undervalued. We also believe that the management in Europe is poor compared to outside of Europe, and especially the US. So there are a lot of things here that can be improved.
“This is why we started with our strategy and rolling out the fund. What we focus on is sport IP, emerging sports, new formats, undercapitalized sports, and the whole ecosystem to monetize it. This includes ticketing platforms, fan engagement tools, data analytics, centralized sponsorship sales, and social media management, as well as apparel, nutrition, and sleep tech. All the companies we have are part of that ecosystem.”
How will you stand out in a crowded investment market in sports?
Menken: “The US is super crowded, but in Europe, who are there? If you look at mid-market tickets from €1 million to €50 million, which is our aim, there's no one. There are big firms like CVC, Apollo, and KKR (who just bought Arctos), but they are multibillion-dollar funds, and they prefer ticket sizes of a billion. Maybe the real smaller size is a couple of hundred million. Everything below, there's no one, hardly. So, we believe we have a full blue ocean there.
“The big firms focus on the tier one sports and assets, like the big soccer clubs and Formula 1, etc., but we focus on tier two and three because we believe that we can add much more value there. Over the last couple of years you've seen a lot of capital flowing into European sports, from American private equity and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, but they all invest in tier one because they don't really know the markets well, and it's difficult for them to understand where they can add value at tier two and three levels, or it's too small for them. For us, it's perfect.”
Why have you targeted lower league soccer?
Menken: “If you look at tier one clubs, we think it's very difficult to significantly add value. Arctos invested in Paris Saint-Germain at a valuation of around €5 billion. How are they going to make three, four, or five times the money in the next five years? The club is not going to be worth €15-€25 billion in five years. So, it's a different investment strategy. In terms of lower league clubs, we have Estrella Football Group, where we want to have ownership of 40 to 50 lower league clubs – second, third, fourth, fifth, and even sixth tier in the next couple of years.
“By combining the reach and fan base of these clubs, we have a significant seat at the table with a Nike or an Adidas or other big sponsors, that's the first thing. Secondly, we already showed with Cascais that with the right storytelling around it, we can significantly grow the fanbase and reach, and therefore make it very interesting for sponsors to come on board and sell more tickets, etc. So, we are increasing the revenue streams.
“We can roll out our ecosystem across all these clubs. For example, Cascais uses Flyfut, which is one of our companies, based in Spain. It combines drone technology with computer vision to deliver real-time tactical intelligence in soccer, and many tier one clubs use it. Normally, a lower division club would never have access to that because they don't have the knowledge, network, or money. We can easily give it to our clubs and therefore create “unfair advantages”.
“What we don't want to do is put a bag of money on the table and say, let's buy some better players or some more players. We don't believe in that. That's a broken model. We believe in building the fan base and creating a healthy P&L (profit and loss). With that, we will improve the game and P&L, and then be able to invest more in new players. We’re doing it the other way around.”
Now that you've developed that model in Portugal, which other countries are you looking at in terms of lower league clubs?
Menken: “We already have a couple of MoUs signed with clubs in various European markets. We look everywhere. We use specific AI tools we developed to really scout for which is the right club for us, which really ticks all the boxes. We have 500 clubs in the database, and in the end, we will just choose a few that really fit us well.”
In the UK, many American investors have bought lower league clubs in recent years, with Wrexham being the most famous example. Is that something that inspired you?
Menken: “No, I would say clubs like Venezia and Como inspired us more. That is real storytelling. Wrexham is also obviously storytelling, but it's a different model; they invested a lot of money in the club. Obviously, the valuation has gone to significant heights. They are an example for us, but not the only one.”
You’re involved in soccer, padel, boxing, and beach volleyball – are these the sports where you see the most potential?
Menken: “Padel is the fastest-growing sport on earth. In beach volleyball, we invested in the Queen & King of the Court, which is a new format developed in 2017, with the first event in 2018, and has now grown to a global tour, which is very attractive for the federations, players, sponsors, fans, and cities where we organize it. It ticks all the boxes. Boxing is also a good one, we believe it is undervalued and undermanaged, and there is a massive opportunity there.”
Danny, your background for many years was in sports media. What made you change and move into the investment world?
Menken: “I see the sports industry as a whole ecosystem. Also, at Eurosport, we had the Eurosport Events arm and co-owned several big properties, including WTCC and the Global Champions Tour. I’ve always been very much interested in the events side.
“As a broadcaster, you deal a lot with events and attend many of them and get to understand everything. At Infostrada, we were a big shareholder in the Euro Hockey League, where I was on the board. I’ve been involved in events almost my whole career.”
What is the long-term ambition for Athvance Capital? Where do you hope to be in the next five years?
Ben Rejeb: “We’re building a coherent, industrial group dedicated to the sports industry, and when that platform scales, it is expected to have a strategic fit and interest from larger institutional investors who are not playing in the zip code where we are operating on a usual basis.
“We are scaling our platform and will have the option to either do portfolio management or monetise some of our assets but also have the strategic optionality to monetise the entirety of the platform. It will be a coherent group and not individual assets that happen to be owned by the same shareholder. That’s the difference with a traditional private equity model.”
Where do you see the sports investment industry going in the next 5-10 years?
Menken: “In the US, it’s already quite crowded, but Europe is lagging. We are one of the first, but we will definitely not be the last. We’ll see more sports investment funds coming up in Europe, and I think the market is big enough.”
Ben Rejeb: “If you think about the investment industry, it’s very polarized now with the largest players. Either you are among the top players, like Blackstone or Apollo, or you have a niche positioning where value creation is driven by industrial expertise and ecosystem planning, and that’s what we are building with Athvance.
“We’re a small player vis-à-vis the largest groups, but we’ve earned the right to exist in this industry, where the positioning is very polarized. I would expect more industrially focused firms to materialize in the next five to 10 years. As we’ve seen with some of the big players, CVC is spinning off its sports group into a different entity, Apollo is raising a fund dedicated to sport, and KKR bought Arctos, so that’s the state of play. The asset class is very attractive, institutional capital is flowing into it.”
