Ripken BaseballUnrivaled Sports
Prolific sports investors Josh Harris and David Blitzer and have been joined by strategic investor The Chernin Group in launching Unrivaled Sports, a new youth sports holding and operating company. Unrivaled will operate companies in Harris and Blitzer's existing youth sports portfolio, including Ripken Baseball, Cooperstown All Star Village, We Are Camp and the ForeverLawn Sports Complex, which will host this year’s NFL FLAG Championships. The holding company will be led by board chair Andy Campion, who joins after 17 years at Nike, the last four as its chief operating officer.
“It’s a huge opportunity. There’s extraordinary demand for youth sports experiences,” Campion said. “We’ve got this group of people who are passionate about it, connected to it and have the capacity and desire to invest in it and make the pipeline more broadly accessible and inclusive to the next generation of young athletes on a broad scale. It’s all about inspiring them, educating them, uplifting them and giving them those lifelong memory-making experiences.”
Campion said Unrivaled will debut with three sports-specific verticals covering baseball, action sports and football. Baseball will be led by former Bouldering Project CEO and POWDR co-President Wade Martin, while action sports will be helmed by We Are Camp CEO Kevin English. While Unrivaled’s football division doesn’t have singular leadership, Campion said the sport will be a key focus of the company’s near-term investments. He added that early conversations about potential expansion into additional sports have thus far highlighted opportunities in basketball, lacrosse, soccer and volleyball.
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Unrivaled has plans to grow through both expansions of its current holdings as well as further acquisitions of operators and facilities throughout youth sports. Future investments will be funded by both cash on Unrivaled’s balance sheet as well as incremental capital from the company’s investors. Debt financing for the newly formed company was provided by funds affiliated with BDT & MSD Partners.
Unrivaled’s 12 current youth sports facilities welcome some 550,000 athletes and 1.1 million attendees each year. Campion said Unrivaled is in the process of expanding its staff, which will include elevating some members of the Ripken Baseball executive team to positions overseeing Unrivaled’s broader portfolio. Campion leads a three-member board, with seats controlled by Harris, Blitzer and Chernin, whose involvement with Unrivaled has been spearheaded by Chernin partner Greg Bettinelli.
Campion, who is based out of L.A., said he was first approached by Blitzer late last year (Campion is also a minority investor in Blitzer and Ryan Smith’s ownership group for Real Salt Lake). Prior to Nike, Campion, a member of the SBJ Forty Under 40 Class of 2011, spent over a decade with Disney. Looking ahead, he sees an opportunity to not just expand Unrivaled’s current holdings and acquire new assets in the U.S., but to also begin deploying capital beyond the nation’s borders.
“We have a huge opportunity internationally,” Campion said. “[Blitzer and Harris] have already invested at the professional level internationally. ... And as you start to think about emerging growth opportunities internationally, there are a range of different sports with varying levels of popularity, whether it’s rugby or cricket or other sports. Across the country, across sports and internationally, there’s a huge opportunity to expand access to these types of experiences.”
For further discussion of the business of youth sports, Unrivaled EVP/Business Development & Brand Strategy Amanda Shank will be a guest on SBJ Live on April 10.
Unrivaled Sports
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ForeverLawn Sports
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Josh Harris (r)
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Allison and David Blitzer
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Aberdeen facility
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Sports Force Parks at Cedar Point Sports Center
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We Are Camp
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Ripken Baseball
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