Institutional Investors Consider Plays in Sports Investing
Cal Stein was quoted in the December 5, 2023 FundFire article, " Institutional Investors Consider Plays in Sports Investing."
Unlike professional sports investing, however, endowments haven't been able to take a swing in the college domain, said Troutman Pepper partner Callan Stein.
The National Collegiate Athletics Association, or NCAA, bars any endowments or affiliated foundations from giving money to their players, directly or passively through collectives established to sponsor student athletes.
"Anything that's going to be perceived as the school, or an entity acting on behalf of the school, giving money… the NCAA, and possibly a state attorney general… would view that as not permissible," he said.
NIL collectives have been lucrative for investors and are paving the way for more investment opportunities in the business around college sports, said Stein. "With NIL, we've all come to a conclusion as a culture, as a society that college sports is a business, and that has brought with it a multitude of opportunities from an investment perspective."
As direct opportunities such as stakes in media rights emerge, however, universities would not be barred from these types of investments legally. These new opportunities would fall likely fall out of the NCAA's jurisdiction and would not violate rules about paying athletes, Stein said.