With $34B in announced deal value in H1, sports tech continues to be a highly active dealmaking sector. The half featured six $1B+ acquisitions and four private financings that were $100M or more. The public markets were highly active with several debt financings around $1B. The numerous high-profile deals of H1 2024 signal a greater appetite in the sports tech market for large transformative acquisitions.
Our Global Sports Tech Market H1 2024 Update dives into deal and fundraising activity, buyers and investors to watch, key headlines in the sector, public market valuations and our outlook going forward.
Key findings include:
- With $27B in disclosed value through 225 M&A deals, H1 2024 represented the strongest ever first half of a year (# of deals) with more than triple the disclosed deal value of H2 2023.
- Notable M&A deals included Silver Lake’s $13B acquisition of the remainder of Endeavor, Liberty Media’s $4.6B acquisition of Dorna Sports, the merger of Disney India and Reliance Media assets, Canal+’s $1.9B offer for MultiChoice, and DraftKings’ $750M acquisition of Jackpocket.
- Private financings remained flat compared to H2’23 (360 deals) with 342 deals raising $1.9B in new capital. Early-stage financings continue to make up the majority of total financings (over 80%) while there were fewer mid to late-stage financings.
- Equinox’s 1.8B in debt raise was the highlight of the first half and some of the notable equity raises included Riddell ($400M), Minute Media ($100M), Dude Perfect ($100M) and LiveMode ($85M).
- Top investors focused on early-to-late-stage financings include Ryan Sports Ventures, Will Ventures, and Phoenix Capital Partners, while seed stage investment activity was led by Eberg Capital, Antler, and Elevate Ventures.
- Public market saw multiple debt financings signaling strengthening investor confidence including Peloton’s $1.35B debt refinancing that provides increased liquidity to further scale its subscription business. Other large debt raised were Flutter Entertainment ($1.1B), Lottomatica ($964M), and Entain ($751M).
- M&A activity is anticipated to continue being strong as both strategics and PE firms are very active in the market. With valuation expectations converging and a large influx of capital, we expect to see several large deals as well as a continued uptick in small to mid-size M&A deals.
- While early-stage financings continue to make up a major portion of total fundraisings in the market, we expect to see the number of mid to late-stage deals grow as investor sentiments are further improving and mid to late-stage companies‘ valuation expectations are rationalizing. COSM and Two Circles have already raised large late-stage rounds in Q3’24 and we expect to see many more deals of this size going forward.
- The large pool of capital raised in 2023 in still largely undeployed and with growing investor interest in the sports tech ecosystem, we expect this pool to be put to good use in the coming year.
- As the public markets are gradually coming back and interest rates are started to come down, the broader IPO markets are expected to continue improving, several IPO-ready sports tech companies are exploring IPOs again and we expect some of them to list in 2025.
- AI, Fan engagement and experience, performance analytics, ticketing and venue management continue to be the hot segments from M&A and financings standpoint.
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