Creds: Enhanced Games.
A Science Experiment: Olympics with Athletes on PEDs
Forget the NBA All Star game or 4 Nation Face-Off—this week’s real sports story is the Enhanced Games, a startup quietly raising millions from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and Donald Trump Jr.
Enhanced Games is an extremely unique human-performance company that is building Olympic-style games with Performance-Enhanced Athletes. Through a safe, responsible, and clinically supervised use of enhancements, the goal is to create a platform to showcase the physical capabilities of our human race.
The Opportunity At Hand:
A Game of Cat-and-Mouse: Nearly 44% of world-class athletes admit to using banned substances, yet only ~1% get caught. Some athletes resort to high-risk, unresearched, and undetectable practices with little to no medical supervision.
Olympians Aren’t Celebrated (Financially): In 2024, US Gold Medalists were paid $37.5K. Despite generating billions in viewership, 59% of US Olympians earn < $25K in an Olympic Year.
The Law Says It’s Legal: On Dec.10, 2024, The Declaration on Human Enhancement was ratified at the Second Conference on Human Enhancement at University of Oxford, establishing ten key principles to integrate human enhancement tech in sports + science.
How This Works:
The first Enhanced Games are set to debut in late 2025 or early 2026, with host cities currently in the bidding process.
Athletes who break current world records will receive a $250K bonus.
A $1M prize is up for grabs for breaking the 50m Freestyle Swimming or 100m Sprint world records.
Athletes will receive state-of-the-art medical oversight, including:
Heart & brain profiling
Full-body imaging
Blood and urine biomarker analysis
Musculoskeletal assessments
Is This A Winner?
Yes - we think it will be a hit. The team is loaded with seasoned founders, former Olympic Committee Executives, and leading performance scientists.
We can already envision it… clips going viral on social media of juiced-up athletes breaking world records.
However, there are a decent amount of logistical hurdles the team needs to surpass:
Amplifying The Wrong Message: To younger athletes and children, this might leave the impression that hard work can only take them so far and ‘performance enhancers’ are necessary to compete in sports. This is definitely not the message we want to spread.
Who Will Say Yes?: Will government regulators even support hosting an event like this in their city? Unlike hosting the Olympics being an honor, the stigma of athletes using performance drugs will deter sponsors and local governments from supporting this event.
Media Rights Will Be Hard: It’ll be hard to imagine a world where NBC or CNBC airs this because it glorifies athletes using drugs. It’s very possible that alternative platforms like Twitch or Kick live-streaming will be the go-to viewership platform therefore reducing the total potential eyeballs.
From Norse Vikings, in 1000 AD, tripping on bufotenine to today’s 21st-century lab-tuned athletes, the Enhanced Games could be humanity’s next leap—or a cautionary tale.
Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals
New Fund
Velocity Capital, a sports-focused private equity fund targets $500M debut fund, following Texas PSF investment (Feb. 17th)
Firm is now managing $256M, targeting $500M by late 2025
Planning to invest $50M-$100M across life of each investment
Has deployed $125M across firms, including Elevate, X Games, and Parella Motorsports among others [SBJ]
Venture Capital
Ochy, an athlete performance app that assesses and analyzes running form via computer vision, raised €1.7M in Pre-Seed funding (Feb. 19th)
Clients include W. Virginia University and over 100 rehab centers and schools in the U.S.
Investment led by Redstone’s Social Impact Fund; others include Look AI Ventures, BPI France, and Berkeley SkyDeck among others [SBJ]
M&A and Investments
Point72 Asset Management increases Sphere Entertainment stake to 7.3% amid MSG Networks’ debt issues (Feb. 17th)
The hedge fund added over 400K shares, raising stake to 2.1M shares
Previously acquired 1.56M shares in Q2 2024, + 110K more in fall, 2024
MSG Networks (subsidiary) is negotiating terms on $829M in unpaid debt, with latest deadline set for March 26th [Sportico]
Blueprint Sports, a NIL SaaS company acquires Student Athlete NIL (SANIL), forming an NIL collective powerhouse (Feb. 19th)
Merging NIL activities of 70 D1 schools, overseeing nine figures in annual NIL deals
Amid major NCAA changes, with schools soon able to engage directly in NIL deals [BlueprintSports]
Galaxy Universal, a N.Y.-based shoe wholesaler takes over Reebok’s U.S. and European operations (Feb. 20th)
Authentic Brands transfers U.S. and European businesses to Galaxy Universal
Authentic Brands retains ownership of Reebok’s brand and IP [SBJ]
Saudi Arabia’s PIF subsidiary, SURJ, invests $1B in DAZN, forming joint venture ‘DAZN MENA’ (Feb. 17th)
MENA (Middle East and North Africa) to expand Saudi Arabia’s sports broadcasting
Following key moments in Saudi Arabia’s global sports influence including 2034 World Cup, PFL investment, Saudi-funded boxing bouts among others [SportsPro]
Tether Investments, the investment arm of stablecoin issuer Tether acquires minority stake in Italian Serie A club Juventus (Feb. 17th)
Juventus' stock surged as much as 4.7% after the announcement, closing at €2.53 ($2.65), up 1.56% on the day
Planning to expand its investments in sports franchises globally, integrating digital assets, AI, and biotech into the industry [SportsPro]
Cleveland to revive ‘Cleveland Rockers’ as it reportedly expects to be awarded the WNBA’s 16th franchise with record $250M Bid (Feb. 17th)
Cleveland’s $250M expansion fee marks the highest in league history
Bid led by Rock Entertainment Group, controlled by Cavs’ Dan Gilbert
WNBA considering adding up to two more franchises by 2030, with Houston as a frontrunner, according to SBJ [SportsPro]
Real Madrid star Vinicius Jr joins consortium in acquiring majority stake in Portuguese second division club FC Alverca (Feb. 18th)
Group of Spanish and Brazilian investors to purchase a 70–80% stake
Alverca confirmed the sale of Ricardo Vicintin’s shares, with CEO Matheus Ornelas remaining in role [BeSoccer]
Photo Creds: TWC - Kim Kardashian’s SKIMs partners with Nike to launch NikeSkims, a female-focused activewear brand.
Strategic Ventures
Nike partners with Skims to launch NikeSkims line, featuring training apparel, footwear, and accessories (Feb. 18th)
Marking Nike’s first partnership with external company for a new brand
Skims, valued at $4B in 2023, previously partnered with luxury brands and sporting events like the Olympics and WNBA [Sportico]
Overtime partners with NWSL for its first professional women’s league partnership, geared towards Gen Z audiences (Feb. 18th)
OT gains exclusive access to NWSL content, including regular season, playoffs, and Challenge Cup
OT is backed by top VC funds including a16z, Counterpoint Global, and Sapphire Sport among others [NWSL]
Harlem Globetrotters partner with short-form media platform, Greenfly, for multi-year deal to enhance social media strategy (Feb. 18th)
Modernizing the team’s social media presence ahead of their 100th anniversary
Greenfly, currently works with over 500 teams and 40 leagues in professional and collegiate sports [SBJ]
Esports World Cup Foundation partners with multinational tech conglomerate, Tencent, to expand presence in China (Feb. 17th)
Forming an EWC China Development Team to integrate Chinese esports into the global scene [eSportsInsider]
USL to launch top-tier, new D1 league to compete with MLS, set to debut in 2027-28 season (Feb. 14th)
Requiring at least 12 teams, stadiums with 15K+ capacity, and financially stable ownership groups; new investors to meet min net worth of $40M [Sportcal]
Xonar Technology, a security screening solutions company, enters sports security with LAFC’s BMO Stadium partnership (Feb. 19th)
Xonar, said to be in talks with major U.S. leagues for future deployments
TruePort’s biometric tech integrates with Ticketmaster for simultaneous ID verification and ticket scanning [SBJ]
ShotTracker, a basketball-focused performance analytics platform, expands to 50+ NCAA programs with new deals (Feb. 19th)
Now partnered with over 50 NCAA teams, along league-wide deal with the Big 12
Early investors include Magic Johnson and former NBA Commissioner David Stern [SBJ]
Job Board & Opportunities: Week of Feb 22nd
Here are some cool roles we found and personally curated this week - enjoy!