Collaborative Fund takes a stake in D.C. United
Collaborative Fund, a 15-year-old New York VC with around $1B under management, takes a stake in soccer club D.C. United and Audi Field.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Collaborative Fund takes a stake in soccer club D.C. United and Audi Field
- The fund invests from its early-stage vehicle, unlike Thrive Capital's permanent capital
- The firm views the stadium as a distribution channel and live showcase for its portfolio
Collaborative Fund, the 15-year-old, New York-based generalist venture firm that has roughly $1 billion under management and which made early bets on Lyft, Reddit, Sweetgreen, and Olipop, among others, is taking a stake in the soccer club D.C. United and its stadium, Audi Field.
It is the latest and smallest firm to try something that Thrive Capital opened the door to just months ago: turning venture money into pro sports ownership.
Historically, money has poured into pro sports through two other ways: individual tech fortunes, and private equity. For example, Vinod Khosla and his family agreed this summer to buy the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion soon after the Khosla family also took a stake in the San Francisco 49ers alongside OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor. That was a personal-wealth play, the kind we have seen over and over.
The shift of venture capital funds toward professional sports franchises marks a strategic departure from traditional software investments, leveraging physical fan engagement and live stadium traffic to unlock new distribution channels for portfolio companies.
Thrive and Collaborative are doing neither of those things. At the same time, the two firms’ approaches to sports ownership look very different. Thrive built a standalone, permanent-capital vehicle specifically to hold trophy assets. Collaborative is investing out of the same early-stage fund it uses to write seed and Series A checks, and treating the deal less like something to buy and hold and almost more like infrastructure.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
He pointed to the tailwinds around American soccer specifically, including a World Cup just behind the sport, the LA Olympics ahead of it, soaring youth participation numbers in the U.S., as well as D.C.’s ownership of Audi Field in Washington, D.C., plus a talent-development pipeline through Loudoun County, Virginia, and rights to a future Baltimore expansion team.
Indeed, the thesis laid out at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event Thursday night in New York is less about owning a piece of an appreciating asset, the sports team itself, and more about what the team makes possible. Collaborative wants to turn Audi Field into what he describes as a living showcase for its own portfolio.
"the ultimate consumer product"
Shapiro
As a backer of both fitness band maker Whoop and the beverage brand Olipop, for example, Collaborative Fund is imagining a WHOOP wearables activation for fans, or Olipop drinks woven into game-day concessions. He is thinking about the stadium's foot traffic, tens of thousands of people showing up on a predictable schedule, as a distribution channel at a time when, because AI is making more of daily life feel synthetic, live experiences are becoming more valuable.
If Shapiro is right that a franchise is also "the ultimate consumer product," it could be a pretty good place to park money. Time will tell.
Source: TechCrunch
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