The NFL wants to own the toll gates

On 20 October, NFL owners approved a partnership between 32 Equity, the league's investment arm, and General Atlantic, a growth investor that manages about $130 billion. Axios reported that the two plan to raise a fund for companies in sports, media, fan engagement, ticketing, hospitality, consumer products and technology, with both serving as general partners, and that formal marketing is likely to start early next year. The fund's size hasn't been disclosed. Axios also reported that the carry is a new revenue stream for owners that "needn't be shared with players."

32 Equity started in 2013 with $1 million from each club and has grown to about $250 million across 42 companies. What's really happening is that the owners are taking equity in the parts of the business they've always rented from vendors, and owning more of the toll gates. The partnership lets the NFL supply the operating expertise and use outside capital to scale, while keeping its GP stakes and carried interest.

The additional revenue stream is just the starting point. The ownership stakes in the companies that produce, distribute and monetize sport get the NFL closer and closer to end-to-end monetization of the attention it creates.

Every one of those companies grows on attention the league creates, and the league is built on its players. A decade ago, the players' union tried to run its own version of this playbook—I was part of it.

The version I saw first

The NFL Players Association launched One Team Collective in 2016. It was created by a licensing entity, NFL Players Inc., leasing out its players' name, image and likeness rights to startups and taking equity in lieu of an upfront payment. The currency was the group license: anytime more than five players are involved in a deal, it automatically invokes the group license. The vision was for NFL Players Inc. to own stakes in companies that leveraged its player members as a catalyst to scale.

The best example is Whoop. In 2018 it became the officially licensed recovery wearable of the players association, and every current and incoming player was to get a strap. In March this year, Whoop raised $575 million at a $10.1 billion valuation, with 2.5 million members.

I was part of the athlete advisory group, helping drive evaluation, positioning and marketing outreach. Before I joined, one of my first questions was who benefits from the equity appreciation, and the creators didn't have a solid answer. The equity stayed with the union. Individual players served as the primary business development levers for these companies, yet there was no clear mechanism for them to capture the value of their contributions. And the time horizon of the investment outlived most player careers, so the people responsible for creating the leverage never saw any financial benefit from it.

Where the mechanics are different

The owners don't have the same duration problem. One Team tried to create a new spin on a shorter-term licensing business. This 32 Equity x General Atlantic partnership was built for long-term growth, and the owners own the investment platform as GPs. There are really four differences.

Who holds the stake. At One Team, the stake sat with the licensing arm, on behalf of a membership that turns over every few years. Here it sits with the clubs, as general partners, and the clubs aren't going anywhere.

What gets traded. One Team gave up licensing revenue to get equity; the equity replaced the payment. The league keeps both. When Genius Sports took over the league's betting data rights in 2021, the league got equity in the company alongside the license fees, and a 2025 extension added more warrants.

Whose money scales it. One Team's currency was the players' rights. This fund scales on outside capital, while the owners keep the GP economics.

What the time horizon is tied to. A licensing deal and a playing career run on short clocks. A GP's horizon runs with the fund, and the next one after it.

The owners have already piloted the model and proved it out. Many of 32 Equity's companies do business with the league: Genius Sports, NOBULL as the official training partner of the Scouting Combine, On Location for Super Bowl hospitality, and Fanatics, which the league put a reported $320 million into in 2022.

The infrastructure other sports run on

Those stakes also reach past football. Other sports run on infrastructure the NFL owns a piece of, so part of the value their audiences create flows back to the NFL.

Distribution: this year the league sent NFL Network and the rights to distribute RedZone to ESPN in exchange for 10% of ESPN. ESPN carries the NBA and the College Football Playoff. When another league's games build ESPN's audience, part of that value lands in a company the NFL owns.

Merchandise and collectibles: Fanatics became the NHL's on-ice uniform outfitter in 2024, and its Topps business holds exclusive trading card deals with the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball.

Data: Genius Sports, where the league is on track to become the largest shareholder at about 8.7%, runs official data for the Premier League.

Hospitality: On Location, which 32 Equity backed, runs hospitality for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and has a three-Games deal with the IOC that runs through Los Angeles 2028.

The more of that value chain the NFL owns, the better placed it is to take those technologies to other leagues, and the harder it becomes for any league to work around it. A commissioner negotiating a media, uniform or data deal may already be sitting across from a company NFL owners hold a piece of.

Where it goes from here

This looks and feels like much more of a value chain play than anything I've seen in sports. I expect the companies the fund backs to take one of two shapes.

The first augments or replaces a core piece of the NFL's business that it pays a vendor for today, something the league can own outright or hold a controlling interest in.

The second has reach beyond the NFL's own games: flag football and youth football, recruiting, player tracking and player ID, and technology that can be repurposed for other leagues as distribution and direct-to-consumer keep changing.

Both shapes speed up the same things: the league's move direct to consumer, its global expansion, especially in emerging markets, and the downstream businesses that eventually lead back to the NFL. The companies it backs become linchpins in how sports gets distributed from here.

Who feels it first

The players and the union that represents them. About halfway through my career, I started to realize that I wasn't just a football player trying to maximize my own opportunity. I was the product. I was the name, image and likeness that builds the licensing model. I was the performance on the field driving the betting markets and fantasy football. I was the jersey sales that represent the licensing arm.

That hasn't changed. The mechanics are different, and the revenue comes in through a new door, but the platform was built on leveraging the players as the product, and their likeness as the entertainment people show up for.

What's new is where the money lands. The carry the owners earn as general partners looks like an outside business on paper, so it seems to sit outside the revenue the players collectively bargain over. It's a dynamic we haven't seen yet, and at some point it reaches the bargaining table, where it will probably set a new precedent.

The founders. If you're the second-best data, ticketing or wearables company, your biggest potential customer now owns your competitor. The data business has already seen how that goes. Sportradar was the league's betting data partner from 2019, with the NFL as an investor in its business. In 2021 the exclusive rights moved to Genius Sports, and the league took equity in Genius.

That hits the independent sports-tech founders and the investors behind them, whose likeliest buyer now favors its own holdings. These organizations already have significant pricing power and a lot of control over the relationship even after you close it. It also tangles the clubs, who buy merchandise, hospitality and data from companies they collectively own.

For growth-stage companies, this fund is a buyer and follow-on investor that sports hasn't had at this scale; most of the activity until now has been early stage. Earlier-stage companies will probably get terms that don't work as well and take them anyway, because they won't find better-aligned capital. They'll pay a premium for it.

The founders who make it work put themselves in position to be inevitable in the flow of traffic, aligning with the league's push for global distribution and, more than likely, direct to consumer.

The question I'd leave on the table

The owners have built the mechanics One Team didn't have. So the question I'd leave on the table is the one I asked before I joined One Team, pointed at what's coming: when this model reaches your league, your players or your company, who will own the upside, and will you have recognized it early enough to have a say?

—MC

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Sources: General Atlantic, partnership announcement (20 Oct 2026) · Axios, NFL owners and General Atlantic plan private equity fund (21 Oct 2026) · Sports Business Journal via Dealroom (20 Oct 2026) · Black Enterprise, OneTeam Collective launch (22 Dec 2016) · License Global, NFLPA and WHOOP (6 Apr 2018) · Yahoo Finance, WHOOP raises $575M (31 Mar 2026) · Action Network, NFL partnership with Genius Sports (1 Apr 2021) · Front Office Sports, NFL adds Genius Sports warrants (11 Jun 2025) · Front Office Sports, NFL invests in NOBULL (20 Dec 2022) · NBC News, ESPN closes NFL Network deal (2026) · Fanatics, NHL on-ice uniform outfitter release · Fox Sports, Topps becomes NFL's exclusive trading card licensee (2 Apr 2026) · Sportico, Premier League extends Genius Sports (2024) · ABC News/AP, FIFA awards 2026 World Cup hospitality to On Location (2024).