🏆 Since June, Athletes on the Cap Table has tracked 49 athlete deals across startups, funds and ownership groups. Over 80 individual athletes were named with hundreds more undisclosed, across 7 unique deal structures.

Here are the biggest observations and trends we’re seeing…

Scroll for the full breakdown, with data visuals.

Before you go, we’d love to know:

If you’re interested in speaking with us about working with elite athletes around events, education or deal flow, email me at [email protected].

Track the capital. Back the athletes. Grow the game.

Christie

After 10 weeks of tracking athlete deals, it’s clear that adding up the disclosed round sizes does not provide an accurate picture of what’s really happening.

Here’s a visual snapshot of what we’ve tracked:

Half of the checks written by athletes are undisclosed. Several are LP positions inside a fund, not direct investments. What's worth tracking instead is participation and control. So I’m paying more attention to where athletes are sitting at the table: Are they a direct investor? An LP? A board member? An advisor? An owner helping drive distribution?

Examples:

Terra-Invest x Sania Mirza | The six-time Grand Slam champion joined Terra-Invest in an investment leadership role focused on longevity, preventive health, and sport performance. ➡️ not a check, a seat at the investment table

Rule42 Sports Group x Renée James | James made an undisclosed investment in Athletes Unlimited Softball League with Angela Ruggiero as equity investor. James also joined the AUSL board. ➡️ governance, not just capital

More organizations are being built specifically to help athletes access deals, pool capital, develop investing experience and build beyond their post-playing careers.

Examples:

The Players Fund x LPs Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Allyson Felix, Eniola Aluko | 850+ athlete network with athletes as LPs connecting capital to deal flow across B2B software, healthtech, and fintech.

Free Agent x Kirsten Toth | Toth built a career network platform for elite athletes with a 97% athlete-owned cap table.

The Champion Fund (Marques Colston, Nick Edwards) | Accepts investors on an ongoing basis, with a $500 minimum that lowers the barrier to sports investing.

Hockey Stick Ventures | Raising a $3M fund exclusively from past and present NHL players, organizing the hockey-community capital into one vehicle.

Founders are assembling athlete-owners who bring credibility, customers, and distribution. The athlete isn't the marketing budget, he or she is the channel.

Examples:

NORTH Performance | The performance supplement brand launched with 30 athletes as equity co-owners — including Alana Blanchard, Torah Bright, and Julia Mancuso — collectively reaching 100M+ followers, with zero traditional sponsorship spend.

Free Agent | The invite-only athlete career network’s cap table is made up of 97% current and former professional, college, and Olympic athletes.

Alma Matter | The golf footwear brand built its raise around a roster of athlete equity investors, including Natasha Oon and Victoria Arlan, ahead of a new fundraising round.

Sequel | WNBA star Aliyah Boston joined as equity co-owner after reaching out to her own team to connect with the brand. She was already a user before the deal existed, not the other way around.

Athlete capital used to mean angel-stage checks in consumer startups. Now it's showing up at every point on the curve all at once.

Examples:

TIVA | The performance cosmetics brand closed a $600K pre-seed round with Elina Svitolina as its first athlete on the cap table, her check size wasn't disclosed.

Neko Health | The healthcare tech company raised a $700M Series C including Maria Sharapova and Thierry Henry.

Base Power | The Texas energy company raised a $1B Series D with JJ Watt as an investor, pushing athlete capital well beyond the consumer and sports categories where it has traditionally been most visible.

World Labs | Fei-Fei Li's frontier AI research company raised $5B, including participation from Lionel Messi's VC firm Play Time, landing in the same 10-week window as TIVA's pre-seed.

The next 10 weeks will tell us whether this is a moment or a market.

Athlete capital isn't confined to the celebrity-angel slot in consumer brands anymore, it's showing up from six-figure seed checks to multi-billion-dollar frontier tech rounds, sometimes in the same week.

Watch for more formal athlete-partner roles—like Sania's at Terra-Invest— and look for founders who are building their cap tables as distribution plans from day one instead of bolting an athlete on after the raise—the way NORTH did.

Thanks for reading.

— Christie

Christie Lenox is Author of Athletes on the Cap Table and Head of Community for WINS. She brings over a decade of experience in sports, venture, and fundraising.