A total announced deal value of $10.1B across 317 deals – our Sports Tech Market Update outlines another very strong quarter for Sports Tech as it continues to outperform broader markets in terms of both deal activity and consolidation.
Download the full report below for detailed facts and figures on top M&A transactions, private placements, as well as public market valuations and a detailed market map including sub-sector overviews, such as esports and fantasy sports, wearables, digital sports agencies, and others.
“Sports Tech continues to outperform the broader markets in terms of deal activities and consolidation”, says Mohit Pareek, Principal at Drake Star, and adds: “With an active deal-making market, abundant dry powder and increasingly converging price expectations between buyers and sellers, Sports Tech is poised for another strong year in 2024.”
Our key takeaways for Q3 2023 are:
- With over $6.3B in disclosed value through 90 deals, Q3 was another strong quarter for Sports Tech M&A. Notable deals of the quarter include CAA/Artemis, QuintEvents/Liberty Media, MaxBet/Flutter, Playmaker/Better Collective and LiveBarn/Ares Management.
- The number of private financings surpassed the 200 mark for the first time in the last five quarters, raising $1.4B in disclosed funding value, a tad bit lower than the $1.6B raised in Q2.
- Early-stage financings continue to make most of the rounds, while we saw an uptick in mid to late-stage financings. Some of the prominent raises for the quarter were EGYM ($225M), Monumental Sports ($200), Hyperice ($100M) and Gympass ($85M).
- Most active investors focused on early to late stage were Will Ventures, Verance Capital and Play Ventures, while seed stage investment activity was led by Elysian Park, Eberg Capital and Courtside VC.
- With IPO market starting to come back, Amer Sports, the Helsinki-based parent company of Salomon, Wilson and Arc’teryx, filed for an IPO valuing the group over $10B and Keep Inc., China’s most popular fitness app, backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Tencent Holdings, went public at a valuation of over $1.9B.
- 2024 is expected to be another year of strong consolidation and bring a significant flow of investment into sports tech companies. As the IPO markets are gradually picking up, several IPO-ready sports tech companies are exploring IPOs again.
- We believe 2024 will see acceleration of financing activities with fan engagement, AI, ticketing and venue management being some of the hot segments, and with mid to late-stage activity picking up.
Download the full report below and reach out to our Sports Tech team, Mohit Pareek, Gregory Bedrosian, Eric Ward and Michael Metzger, if you want to learn more: