#199 💰 Marc Lasry Raising Up to $3B for New Sports Fund

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Billionaire Marc Lasry is back for more. The Avenue Capital founder and former Bucks co-owner is raising up to $3 billion for a second sports investment fund after his first vehicle topped $1 billion across stakes in golf, NASCAR, MLB, women's soccer and bull-riding. When sports is on the menu, the appetite for institutional investment is strong.

This week's feature is a different kind of story. Several Olympic-style competitions have emerged in the last 18 months, most built by organisations outside traditional sport. We look at these new formats to examine what happens when performance medicine, robotics and sovereign capital start renting the Olympic format as a showroom.

Is This the Next Generation of the Olympics?

Article by our Head of Tech & Infrastructure Vishnu Dixit

Several Olympic-style projects have emerged or been planned in the last 18-or-so months. Most are being built by organisations outside traditional sport. From humanoid robots and enhanced athletes to drone racing and esports, the Olympic model is being reused in very different ways: multiple disciplines, medals, records, opening ceremonies and global competition.

The common thread is more interesting. These events are also being used to demonstrate technology, medicine, investment and national ambition. Here is how it is playing out.

Robots: The World Humanoid Robot Games

• The second World Humanoid Robot Games took place in Beijing from 22 to 26 August, bringing together 666 teams, 2,056 robots and 16 countries across 51 events.

• Events included football, table tennis, martial arts, tug of war, dance and Free Combat, alongside practical dexterity contests such as bottle-opening and bean-picking. The 2026 rules required most competitive events to be fully autonomous, without any human involvement, with exceptions including the 100m and 400m obstacle races.

• One humanoid robot ran 100 meters in 8.64 seconds, a fair bit quicker than Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record, although the robots do seem to struggle with stopping.

• The event also showed the technology's limitations, with robots falling over during football matches and requiring human assistance.

• For China's robotics sector, the Games provide a public testing ground for perception, balance, coordination, movement and autonomy. Morgan Stanley estimates China's humanoid robot market at roughly $2 billion in 2026, potentially reaching $15 billion by 2030.

A football match can test several robotic capabilities at once, in public, with a scoreboard attached. A white paper simply cannot compete.

Enhanced Games: Sport As A Performance Business

• Three months earlier, 42 athletes from 24 countries gathered in Las Vegas for the Enhanced Games, where competitors could use performance-enhancing substances under medical supervision. The company was backed by Peter Thiel and 1789 Capital and debuted publicly in May at an enterprise valuation of around $1.2 billion.

• Among athletes participating in Enhanced's clinical study, 91% used testosterone, 79% human growth hormone and 29% anabolic steroids. The sporting results were mixed. Across 79 individual performances, only 22 were personal bests.

• Out of 22 events, only one world record was “broken”. Kristian Gkolomeev beat the existing 50m freestyle world-record time wearing a futuristic super suit.

• Fred Kerley won the men's 100m in 9.97 seconds, slower than his own 9.76 personal best and slower than every runner in the 2024 Olympic final. And he was ‘clean’.

• The bigger story is financial. The inaugural event reportedly cost around $60 million and produced $17.7 million in revenue, largely from sponsorship. The company reported a $61.9 million second-quarter net loss, while its stock fell around 77% from debut.

• Its CEO has described the longer-term business as personalised performance medicine, with opportunities around areas including peptides.

In total, three ‘clean’ athletes won their events. Clearly hard work still has its place. In the end the Games were less competition and more product showcase. The stadium was the ad.

Olympic Esports Games: The IOC's attempt

• After unaimous approval in the 142nd IOC Session in Paris, by February 2025, the IOC had confirmed plans for the first Olympic Esports Games in Riyadh in 2027 following a 12-year agreement with the Saudi-backed Esports World Cup Foundation.

• By October 2025, the partnership was ended and the planned Riyadh event cancelled. The IOC entered what it called a "Pause and Reflect" period while reconsidering its approach.

• Reporting around the split pointed to disagreements around Olympic Charter requirements, including governance, non-discrimination, women in leadership and participation rights for National Olympic Committees.

• Meanwhile, experiments combining gaming and sport are continuing outside the Olympic structure. The Games of the Future, held in Kazan in 2024, Abu Dhabi in 2025 and Astana in 2026, mixes physical and digital competition through "phygital" formats alongside drone racing, VR competition and robot fighting.

• In August 2025, another nations-based alternative, the Esports Nations Cup was announced by the Esports World Cup Foundation. Originally scheduled for November 2026, the event has since been postponed to November 2027. Organisers explicitly cited uncertainty around the "wider regional situation" as the cause.

Those constraints slow experimentation, while also protecting the standards that give the Olympic brand its legitimacy. At the same time, the continued experimentation outside the Olympic structure shows that the convergence of gaming and sport is not waiting for the IOC to figure out its model.

And the back-and-forth after very public announcements highlights something else: the growing impact of shifting global geopolitics on sport.

Why The Olympic Format Keeps Getting Copied: Our Take

• The Olympic format works because sport turns complicated claims into simple numbers. Robotics becomes a race. Performance medicine becomes a world-record attempt. Gaming becomes national competition. Faster. Stronger. A winner, a loser and a record to chase.

• The business sitting behind the event often matters as much as the competition itself. The Enhanced Games supports a performance-medicine business, the Robot Games showcase China's robotics industry, and the Olympic Esports Games, Esports Nations Cup and Games of the Future provide a platform for gaming and technology investment.

• But these new competitions still depend heavily on the benchmarks created by traditional sport. The robot's 8.64 seconds means something because Bolt ran 9.58. The Enhanced Games offered a $1 million bonus for beating established world records.

The Olympic-style format can be copied. The benchmark is much harder to replace. Traditional sport still owns the scoreboard everyone else wants to beat.

At least that’s the status quo. Ask us again after the 12th Robot Games.

Top News From The World Of Sports Tech & Biz

• ⚙️ Genius Sports-owned Legend launched Prediction.com, a consumer platform combining live sports data with prediction-market volumes and event-contract data to let users compare equivalent contracts and multi-leg combinations across multiple platforms.

• 📊 Deutsche Bank hosted its inaugural Sports Investment Conference in London, bringing together more than 350 investors, owners, operators, advisers and policymakers to discuss ownership trends, valuations, capital flows and the future of sports investing.

• ⚾ Major League Baseball raised the maximum stake that private equity firms could hold in an individual franchise to 20%.

• 🏈 The NFL and TMRW Sports announced an annual Pro Flag Showcase featuring leading players from their developing professional flag football league during Super Bowl LXI week in Los Angeles.

• 🏎️ McLaren unveiled a unified brand identity across McLaren Automotive and McLaren Racing that connected the marque’s heritage with its future ambitions and supported greater personalization, experiences and community engagement.

• 🏀 Stephen Curry announced that his first signature shoe with Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning would debut in early 2027 following their long-term partnership.

• 🏈 Datavault AI and Cutting-Edge Sports Management announced Dream Bowl XV for January 17, 2027, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, alongside a new Bowl Combine that awarded two roster places and playing time to eligible student-athletes, with the game planned for national broadcast on ESPN.

• 🏅 The 2028 European Athletics Championships established a record $3.96 million (£3 million) prize fund for the event in Silesia, Poland, with athletes finishing in the top eight across all 50 events receiving prize money.

• 🏀 Athletes First launched a basketball representation division led by David Mulugheta, with former Octagon executive John Noonan and former San Antonio Spurs executive Brandon James overseeing its day-to-day operations.

• ⚽ Manchester United’s overall debt remained above $1.32 billion (£1 billion) despite Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s cost-cutting measures, while the club spent $83.92 million (£63.5 million) acquiring land for its proposed new stadium.

• 💸 Bessemer Venture Partners, investors in Unrivaled Basketball, TMRW Sports, Sorare and other sports businesses, closed $5.75 billion in new capital in a single close, comprising $1.75 billion for seed and early-stage investments and $4 billion for growth investments.

• 💸 Billionaire Marc Lasry is raising a new sports investment fund of up to $3 billion to capitalize on growing investor interest in leagues worldwide.

• 💸 Amplify ETFs filed to launch the Amplify Pro Sports Private & Public Ownership ETF, an actively managed fund combining public holdings linked to the VettaFi Sports Index with up to 15% exposure to private investments in professional sports teams, venues and leagues.

• 💰 Fever, a global technology platform for culture and live entertainment, raised $250 million in primary equity financing led by EQT, with significant participation from Point72 Private Investments, Baillie Gifford and other existing investors.

• 💰 Nex, the active-play company behind Nex Playground, raised more than $150 million in equity and debt financing, including a Series E led by Baillie Gifford and BAI Capital with participation from NBA Investments, Logitech, Medici Capital Partners and the Raine Group, alongside a new JPMorgan credit facility.

• 💰 MAGIC AI, the company behind the AI-powered MAGIC AI Mirror, raised $11 million (£8 million) in a Series B co-led by Beringea and IW Capital, with participation from Active Partners, PXN Group, Accelerate Ventures, Doorway and Ventures Together, bringing its total funding to approximately $20 million.

• 💰 Bruin Capital-backed FairPlay Sports Media invested an undisclosed amount in WagerWire and formed a strategic partnership to promote and integrate its Wire Markets prediction platform across FairPlay’s international sports media network.

• 💰 pMotion, a mobile movement assessment platform founded by longtime MLB practitioner Keith Pyne, is raising a Series A round led by Cobalt Capital to expand its smartphone-based movement and injury-risk assessment technology from elite athletes into youth and consumer markets.

• 🤝 Fortescue Zero acquired Team Penske’s Formula E operation for an undisclosed amount ahead of the Gen4 era and planned to field two Jaguar-powered cars in the 2026/27 season, bringing Jaguar’s presence on the grid to six cars.

• 💸 Communities Minister Gordon Lyons announced a $2.64 million (£2 million) funding package for sports clubs through the Olympic Legacy Fund for 2026/27.

• 💰 Salsano Group, the private investment company founded by Sandro Salsano, acquired a minority stake in Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., owner of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, for an undisclosed amount.

• 💸 FC Barcelona approved a $580.35 million (€510 million) financing package, comprising $341.39 million (€300 million) to complete Spotify Camp Nou and $238.97 million (€210 million) through two Media Notes backed by audiovisual revenue to cover the project’s delays and economic impact.

• 💸 Paramount Skydance is raising $7.5 billion through a proposed senior secured term loan as part of a broader financing package to fund its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and repay existing debt.

• 💸 Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross reportedly neared a deal to sell a 20% stake in Formula One’s Miami Grand Prix to private equity firm Otro Capital for an undisclosed amount.

• 💸 The Steinbrenner family reportedly planned to sell a 16% stake in the New York Yankees to Apollo Sports Capital through a $2.6 billion financing agreement while retaining control of the franchise.

• 💸 BC Partners reportedly planned to provide LIV Golf with a bankruptcy loan of up to $10 million to demonstrate its commitment to a preliminary rescue deal that included a further $300 million investment to finance a relaunched LIV circuit in 2027.