The Financial Times Scoreboard team caught up with Gian Piero Sammartano, global co-head of sports investment banking at JPMorgan. Sammartano gave the Pink ‘Un folks his take on the trends shaping the industry.
JPMorgan worked on Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s acquisition of a
stake in Manchester United and is currently running a sale process for the
Bolton Celtics. The bank was also sole
placement agent on Porto FC’s recent €115m private placement financing, and
lead arranger on a $425m construction term loan for New York City Football
Club’s new stadium in Queens.
Sports M&A boomed following the pandemic. What’s
happening now?
On a global level, interest towards sport investments
remains strong. US franchises are in high demand, buoyed by healthy media
rights trends, caps on player spending and ongoing relaxation of ownership
rules to allow institutional investment. Motorsports have likewise seen
increased interest, especially Formula One teams on the back of the sport’s
continued success.
What about football?
The area where we have seen slower deal making more recently
is football, due to a combination of fewer buyers (after many landed on an
asset during the wave of deals in 2021-23), a more challenging media rights
renewal cycle, and in some cases, high value expectations. This slowdown is
likely to prove temporary, as football continues to occupy a prime position in
the global sport grid and a number of growth drivers remain in place. However,
a new generation of buyers and investors needs to be educated on the
opportunity and large clubs need to facilitate broader equity participation to
solve for ever-larger deal sizes. The increase in minority equity transactions
is partly a reflection of that.
There’s a lot of excitement about women’s sports. Can the
underlying business keep up with valuations?
The excitement is commensurate with the growth potential. It
will take time, investment in the product and infrastructure, good governance
and financial support from different market participants. The recent building
of the Kansas City Current stadium, the world’s first purpose-built stadium for
women’s professional soccer thanks to a $80mn financing provided by JPMorgan,
is an example of the required steps.
Besides leagues and teams/franchises, where do you expect
to see institutional capital exposure in sports?
There is a broad array of businesses — streaming platforms,
content, agencies, video production, collectibles, betting, data, advertising,
travel — that operate either as service providers to sports or in adjacent
offerings, and as such can benefit from the same long term growth trends. Among
those, the sports technology plays are most in demand and likely to see
increased institutional capital backing.
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