Private equity and venture capital funds searching for the next big thing in sport have turned to one of the most popular summer Olympic events: volleyball. A new women’s league in the US backed by investors including Ares Management and Blackstone executive David Blitzer, whose sports investments span basketball, baseball and football, was due to make its debut in a 3,500 capacity arena in Atlanta on Wednesday.
League One Volleyball co-founder Katlyn Gao said the venture would create the “NBA of volleyball” and break the cycle of top US players moving to more established leagues in Europe or Asia. It would also seek to tap a “huge addressable market” of amateur players and fans. “The entire ecosystem has been underserved and under-commercialised and we’re building essentially the premier brand in the sport,” said Gao, a former executive at sportswear maker Lululemon. LOVB — pronounced “love” — was set up in 2020 as a network of clubs for girls and young women looking to play the sport that would eventually provide a talent production line for its planned professional league. It now has 1,500 junior teams playing at 58 clubs nationwide, operating a similar business model to a network of gyms with customers paying membership fees, which can run into thousands of dollars a year. The company secured $100mn in November through a funding round led by Atwater Capital, a private equity firm focused on media and entertainment. Existing investors including Ares and Left Lane Capital, a New York-based VC-firm, also took part in the C-series fundraising. The sale of LOVB’s six team franchises is likely to be the next step. LOVB is not the only volleyball project to lure global capital. In early 2021, CVC Capital Partners invested in Volleyball World, a joint venture with governing body FIVB, at a $300mn valuation to exploit what the firm called a “huge untapped fan base and commercial potential”.