Wayne Kimmel‘s new group will focus on sports betting, esports and social responsibility. SeventySix Capital
Over the past month, the Denver Broncos signed separate deals with FanDuel, Betfred USA and BetMGM — becoming the first NFL team to sign any kind of sports betting deal.
Those moves would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but now, sports betting is a new sponsorship category, and teams, leagues and media companies are trying to figure out how to cut these deals.
“The problem is that there is not a lot of expertise across the teams, the leagues, media organizations,” said Wayne Kimmel, managing partner of the sports venture capital company SeventySix Capital. “For them to have the deep relationships across this new category is something that we’re looking to fill.”
Kimmel’s company is launching a sports advisory group to fill that role. The SeventySix Capital Sports Advisory venture will target media, esports, sports betting and social responsibility areas of the business.
Sports business veteran Dan Bravato will run the group, with former NBC, Comcast and Altice executive Michael Schreiber heading up the media practice, former Rivers Philadelphia Casino executive Evan Davis leading the sports betting practice and esports veteran Chris Yortsos leading the esports practice.
The group will partner with business veterans to advise clients, including Turnkey’s Len Perna and Rick Alessandri, Cirquare’s Aljit Joy, Harrisburg University’s Eric Darr, Onward’s Lovell Walker and Pivot Sports Group’s Ari Roitman.
“We are at the forefront of some of these main pillars here, so we really can go anywhere in terms of who our client base can be,” said Bravato, who has had stints at Van Wagner Sports, Quicken Loans and Manchester City. “We will initially start in the traditional sports world with ownership groups, teams, leagues, individual influencers and athletes. Those will be our focus areas for now.”
The advisory group is not launching with any clients yet, but Bravato said that it is negotiating with some of the clients its segment leaders already had.
“The conversations that we’ve had with top traditional team owners and executives and the questions and help that they’re looking for, convinced us to launch this group,” Kimmel said. “Most of the traditional agencies and consulting firms that work with teams are not close enough to sports betting. They are not thinking about next level media. This is our focus.”
The speed with which some of these market segments has exploded during the pandemic convinced Kimmel and Bravato that they were on the right path.
Bravato pointed to esports, which he says has seen an increase in sales and viewership over the past four months, particularly with iRacing, the NBA 2K League and F1.
“That area is poised for more growth than it previously was,” he said. “Esports is one of those buzzwords. Now I know teams and leagues that are using esports as a make-good for large sponsorship deals. That’s something you never could have imagined.”
Bravato also pointed to sports betting as another example of a niche business that is poised to grow.
“This pandemic has expedited some of these exotic areas in sports,” he said. “We were in this space prior to this and have experts who can lend their expertise to teams and leagues that are looking to leverage these areas post pandemic.”
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ and read his twice-weekly newsletter.
