Jefferson Davydd on Why Growth Sports Properties Are the Next Great Asset Class

For decades, the playbook for investing in sports was straightforward:

Buy scarcity. An NBA franchise.

An NFL team.

A top European football club.

Limited supply. Proven demand. Long-term appreciation.

But as valuations have surged and access has tightened, that strategy has become increasingly difficult to execute—and even harder to outperform.

According to sports business advisor Jefferson Dafydd, the next wave of value in sports won’t come from buying at the top.

It will come from building earlier. Before the valuations peak. Before the structure is fully formed. Before the market agrees on what the asset is worth.

Jefferson Dafydd refers to this emerging category as “Growth Sports Properties”—a new class of leagues, challenger formats, and global tours that are building the commercial infrastructure required to become scalable, investable sports businesses.

It’s a subtle shift in language, but a meaningful one.

Because these are no longer just “emerging sports.”

They are assets in formation.

From Buying Teams to Building Them

Dafydd, who leads Growth Sports at Team Advisory Group (TAG), has spent his career inside major leagues and now works with emerging properties, trying to scale into sustainable businesses.

His view is simple:

“The most compelling opportunities in sports today aren’t fully formed assets. They’re the ones still being built.”

That shift—from acquisition to creation—is redefining how investors, athletes, and operators approach the industry.

A New Layer of Investable Sports Assets

Historically, sports investing was defined by access. If you could secure a stake in a league or team, you were already operating inside a proven system.

Today, that system is expanding.

New leagues are launching.

New formats are being designed for digital-first audiences.

New ecosystems are forming around participation, community, and content.

What’s emerging is a new category of sports assets—positioned between grassroots participation and major league scale.

Jefferson Dafydd refers to this as the industry’s middle layer—a space where properties are still early enough to offer upside, but structured enough to become investable.

The Valuation Arbitrage Opportunity

In any emerging asset class, value is created in the gap between current state and future potential.

Sports is no different.

Early-stage leagues and participation-driven ecosystems are beginning to attract institutional

capital. Teams and properties that once carried modest valuations are now seeing significant appreciation as their models mature.

The pattern is familiar.

• Early Major League Soccer teams entered at low valuations and are now worth multiples
• of their original cost
• The UFC evolved from a niche combat property into a global media powerhouse
• Formula 1 transformed under new ownership into a culturally relevant, commercially optimized platform

At one point, each of these assets sat outside the traditional hierarchy.

Today, they are among the most valuable properties in sports.

A Modern Case Study in Real Time

More recently, the rapid rise of pickleball has offered a clear example of valuation arbitrage in motion.

What began as a participation-driven activity has quickly evolved into a structured, investable ecosystem. Professional leagues have formed. Teams have been sold. Media and sponsorship have followed.

The key insight isn’t just growth.

It’s timing.

Early investors weren’t buying established properties.

They were investing in the infrastructure required to build them.

Infrastructure as the Differentiator

This is where Dafydd’s work through TAG is focused.

While many Growth Sports Properties generate early momentum through format innovation or cultural relevance, most struggle to translate that into sustained commercial success.

“The gap isn’t attention,” Dafydd explains. “It’s infrastructure.” Through TAG, he works with leagues and global sports properties to build the underlying systems that allow them to scale, including:

• Sponsorship architecture designed for long-term revenue growth
• Ticketing and pricing strategies that convert interest into repeatable demand
• Media and distribution models that extend beyond exposure into monetization
• Fan development pipelines that connect participation to professional engagement

In Dafydd’s view, these systems are what separate promising concepts from investable businesses.

The Participation Economy as a Growth Engine

One of the defining characteristics of this emerging asset class is its connection to the participation economy.

More than 30 million children participate in organized sports in the United States, with millions more engaged at the high school, collegiate, and adult levels. For emerging properties, this represents more than an audience.

It’s a built-in growth engine.

“The most scalable sports businesses today aren’t creating fans from scratch,” says Dafydd. “They’re activating existing participants and converting them into lifelong consumers.” A clear example of this model in action is League One Volleyball.

Rather than launching solely as a professional league and attempting to build an audience from the top down, LOVB took a different approach. The organization began by acquiring and aggregating youth volleyball clubs across the country—creating a national grassroots infrastructure that now includes tens of thousands of athletes.

Only after establishing that foundation did it introduce a professional league.

The result is a vertically integrated system:

Participation feeds fandom.

Fandom feeds media and sponsorship value.

And the entire ecosystem reinforces itself over time.

For investors, this model offers something rare in emerging sports: predictability.

Instead of relying on speculative audience growth, properties built on participation ecosystems can scale with a degree of built-in demand—turning fragmented grassroots activity into a structured, monetizable platform.

It’s a fundamentally different approach to building a sports business.

And increasingly, it’s the one that works.

Media Fragmentation as an Advantage

Unlike previous generations of emerging sports, today’s properties are not constrained by access to traditional broadcast distribution.

Streaming platforms, social media, and direct-to-consumer channels have fundamentally changed how leagues can reach and grow audiences.

For operators—and investors—this creates new flexibility:

• Audiences can be built before large-scale media deals are secured
• Revenue can be diversified across multiple channels early
• Brand identity can be controlled from inception

In this environment, distribution is no longer the primary barrier.

Execution is.

A Different Investment Profile

Growth Sports Properties do not behave like legacy assets.

They more closely resemble early-stage companies:

Higher risk.

Higher potential return.

Longer timelines to maturity.

As a result, Dafydd believes investors must approach the space differently.

“This isn’t passive capital,” he says. “The investors who succeed here are the ones who

understand they’re helping build the business—not just buying into it.”

That includes aligning with operators, supporting infrastructure development, and committing to long-term growth strategies.

The Window of Opportunity

Every asset class has a moment when opportunity is visible—but not yet saturated.

Growth Sports Properties appear to be in that phase.

Valuations are still forming.

Business models are still evolving.

Market leaders are still being established.

Over time, that will change.

The strongest properties will separate.

Capital will consolidate.

Access will become more competitive.

The Bottom Line

The next generation of premium sports assets will not be acquired at peak valuation.

They will be built on the way up.

For private equity firms, family offices, and athlete investors, the opportunity lies in identifying which properties have the potential to scale, and ensuring they have the infrastructure to do so.

Because in today’s sports economy, value is no longer defined by what already exists.

It is defined by what can be built—and who has the systems to build it.