Meet the Secret Weapon Behind Elite Athlete Investments

Over the last six to eight years, one of sports’ most seismic, transformational changes has been professional athletes’ evolution into a class of impactful entrepreneurial investors.

While nearly every pro athlete has an agency to take care of their contracts, marketing, and endorsement deals, Patricof Co was founded in 2018 by a group of veteran investment bankers and finance dealmakers to provide initial clients like Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, and CC Sabathia with a suite of investment advisory services they couldn’t easily find anywhere else. P/Co now has nearly 250 clients who trust the firm with their hard-earned money and their most cherished business ideas to bring their pitches, dreams, and ideas to life. And while financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan offer a similar product, Patricof specializes in sports in a bespoke manner that others can’t match.

Earlier this year, Patricof Co introduced P/Co +, an added invite-only service that provides inbound deal consulting, personalized networking, deal sourcing, business incubation and acceleration, board recruitment and placement, and even consulting and services in art and real estate. If you saw JJ Watt‘s investment into Burnley FC, Mike Trout‘s purchase and development of a Tiger Woods-designed golf course, Travis Kelce‘s development into a car wash magnate, or DK Metcalf leading a large group of athletes invested in the Bazooka candy company, those were all deals facilitated by Patricof Co, athlete’s investment secret weapon.

“We do right by athletes by consistently demonstrating an exceptional level of value,” Daniel Magliocco, a Patricof Co partner who leads its growth and private equity investment practice, told Boardroom. “We take this militant view of client service. The DNA of our firm is this maniacal view of client service. If we can be that first call and do right by our clients continuously and have an exceptionally deep expertise as it relates to entrepreneurship, private investing, equity, and ownership, athletes will consistently trust us.”

Magliocco has worked with founder and CEO Mark Patricof for 13 years, helping broker and facilitate massive deals like the sale of Gawker Media and New York City’s iconic Webster Hall. Fast forward to 2016 and 2017, when athletes were starting to delve into venture capital, and they realized that for every LeBron James and Kevin Durant, millions of athletes didn’t have anyone to navigate private markets, build out networks, get into the right rooms or advise on the technical details and structure of an investment deal to help them gradually learn about the business world.

Needing someone well-connected in sports to help build out a network of athletes, the duo tapped Matt Siegel — who was a senior director in strategic partnerships at Roc Nation, advising high-profile athletes, musicians, and entertainers — to run the athlete relations side of the business.

“Matt’s great gift is being able to subtly navigate the topography of sports,” Magliocco said. “It’s difficult to have all these relationships and understand how all the pieces fit, and he gets it.”

Everyone at Patricof Co has a finance background and is trained in investment banking, and Siegel started the ball rolling on bringing athletes deals they wouldn’t be able to access on their own. P/Co has made 24 investment deals to date, mainly in consumer brands like Bombas socks and Cholula Hot Sauce, and executed five exits.

Siegel and P/Co want to ensure they’re not stepping on anyone’s toes. They work with players’ agents, marketing managers, wealth managers, and family members to be complementary on a non-exclusive basis. The athletes can get cut into major business deals and receive other specialized services from P/Co. In turn, Patricof Co can not only recruit other athletes but raise funds and get access to other deals and ventures because they boast such a distinguished list of former athletes like Anthony and Sabathia and current and future superstars like Joe Burrow, Dak Prescott, and Cameron Brink.

After several years of relationship building and dealmaking, the company began slowly rolling out its P/Co + service to provide additional custom benefits to its clients. Many of the athletes involved have already seen immediate dividends after accepting this exclusive invitation, utilizing the service in a variety of different ways and applications:

• Travis Kelce provided Patricof Co with a few different industries in which he was interested in investing. The firm then put together a networking event where billionaire David Bonderman’s family office, Wildcat Capital, brokered an exclusive equity investment deal with Kansas City-based company Club Car Wash. “The company has taken off, and he’s crushing it right now,” Siegel told Boardroom of Kelce. “The service isn’t for everyone, but it’s really for the more entrepreneurial athlete who wants to dig deeper.”
• Watt wanted to buy a soccer team, and Magliocco did due diligence on numerous English teams to find the right mix of a big name and the opportunity to have managerial influence. Patricof Co compiled a number of family and private equity investors to form an ownership group under Watt to buy into Championship side Burnley. Now, Siegel said, Watt leads quarterly calls, has influence in the club, and the group may replicate this model with other teams.
• Michelle Wie West is already an accomplished entrepreneur with a bunch of startup ideas in golf and food and beverage. P/Co was able to provide market research, build out business plans, and bring in the right investors to bring her projects to life. It put her in touch with Kewsong Lee, a Patricof Co investor and former Carlyle Group CEO, who introduced her to other players in the space. “That type of introduction and value add is part of this holistic, comprehensive set of services,” Magliocco said.
• Metcalf loves candy, and he wanted to invest in the industry. Patricof Co put together a private room of investors and leaders, and the Seattle Seahawks star hit it off with Apax Partners, which was buying the Bazooka candy brand. The next day at a meeting in New York with Bazooka executives, Siegel said, Metcalf pulled out his own PowerPoint presentation on new product lines and marketing initiatives that blew the company away. Patricof Co ended up putting together a group of 60 athletes that participated in the Bazooka acquisition, including Flau’jae Johnson and Deja Kelly.
• Jason Kelce is someone Siegel called “a big 3 a.m. ideas guy.” So when he asked P/Co what needed to be done to buy a brewery or that he really liked Homage Clothing Company and asked how he could own a piece of the company, the firm was ready to go with a plan because Kelce was and is actively engaged. He’s constantly discussing the flood of opportunities coming his way, Siegel continued, and could always use another set of eyes on an opportunity thanks to his recent popularity.

“The service is fully customizable,” Siegel said. “Everyone uses P/Co + differently. It’s figuring out how to customize each person to the specific service they’re interested in.”

For Kyle Kuzma, that’s business incubation and acceleration. Venus Williams wanted to be on more corporate boards. Mike Trout built a members-only golf course and got Tiger Woods to design it, but needed help shoring up the backend of the business to make sure the details were properly executed. George Kittle is developing an idea in the home entertainment space in Nashville, and Patricof Co is helping him grow a two-person finance team to 10, with assistance in financial modeling, budgeting, and a comprehensive business plan while networking to build his team out even further.

P/Co + clients also receive custom-tailored educational material each week, ranging from an interesting article or podcast, vocabulary words, or information on an external deal relevant to their interests or ambitions.

Magliocco and Siegel are very proud of what they can do for their young female clients, who need to build up their net worths from investment and endorsement opportunities until the day their professional playing contracts rise to the level of their market value.

“The cultural relevance has way outpaced the economics,” Magliocco continued. “And maybe you want to own your own business. We can be the on-ramp for things like that and help our women athletes reach their full potential. We can activate that in a really powerful way.”

Whether they’re already Patricof Co clients or not, Siegel and Magliocco believe more top players will be interested in a service like + moving forward, including NIL athletes, as they become more business-minded these days at younger ages. But whether you’re a future top NFL draft pick or DWade, P/Co will still be able to customize its offerings to whatever the client needs. Because what Watt is looking for will vastly differ from Brink, Kelly, or Livvy Dunne.

“It’s all about knowing your client,” Magliocco said. “So with increased specialization, it’ll allow us to serve every demographic better and better.”

We’re not yet a decade into the athlete entrepreneur era, and the potential for growth appears staggering. By getting in on the ground floor, Patricof Co is ideally positioned to be a major player in a growing and lucrative space for many years to come.

‍