In our most recent piece, "Playing the Long Game: Breaking Down the Blind Spot in the Sports Economy," we examine where value in the sports economy is being overlooked, and the structural shift that's reshaping the entire system.

The conventional playbook of buying into a professional franchise works, but it misses where value is actually being created. The participation and development layers, youth and college, are where athletes are developed, opportunity is created, and lifelong relationships are formed. Yet they remain fragmented, underinstitutionalized, and largely overlooked, sitting at sub-1% institutional penetration.

What's reshaping the economy is that these layers no longer behave as separate markets. They're stages of a single athlete's lifecycle: youth participation builds the pipeline, college develops and filters it, and the professional ranks are where that journey culminates.

The investors who build the most durable positions in sports will not be the ones who simply bought the right franchise at the right time. They will be the ones who understand that a franchise is the visible endpoint of a system that develops athletes, creates opportunity, and helps shape future leaders.