Family Offices Pour $225 Million Into Pickleball and Back Smart Soccer Ball Startup in May Sports Spree

Investment firms of the ultra-wealthy directed tens of millions of dollars toward sports-related companies in May, ranging from a nine-figure bet on pickleball's parent organization to a seed-stage round for a GPS-enabled athletic gear startup.

Billionaire Tom Dundon's family office partnered with Apollo's sports fund to invest $225 million in Pickleball Inc., the parent company of Major League Pickleball and the PPA Tour, at the start of the month. Dundon already holds ownership stakes in the Portland Trail Blazers and the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes.

The broader family office community matched that pace. Investment firms of the wealthy completed 51 direct investments in companies during May, holding steady from April's total, according to data provided by Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform.

On the professional football front, Michael Dell joined an investor group led by Silver Lake's Egon Durban to acquire a 25% stake in the Las Vegas Raiders. Dell also holds minority positions in the NBA's San Antonio Spurs and the Austin Gamblers, a professional bull riding team.

A Goldman Sachs survey released last fall found that 25% of family offices have already invested in sports or related assets — such as ticketing or arenas — and another quarter expressed interest in doing so. Analysts point to the sector's perceived value as an inflation hedge as a key draw alongside owners' personal affinity for the games.

Student housing entrepreneur David Adelman has used his family office, Darco Capital, to build a broad sports portfolio. He holds partial ownership in the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, English Premier League club Crystal Palace, and the New Jersey Devils, and is an investor in sports merchandise company Fanatics.

In May, Darco Capital co-led a $12 million Series A round for PlayerData alongside David Blitzer's family office Bolt Ventures and venture capital firm Pentland Ventures. The UK-based startup manufactures GPS-enabled vests and soccer balls designed to help athletes monitor their performance.

Adelman told CNBC that teams within his portfolio already rely on PlayerData's technology. Crystal Palace, for instance, uses the vests and smart soccer balls when training its academy players.

The product's applicability beyond elite sport — including youth athletics — factored into the investment thesis, Adelman said. "What stood out to me was the ability to take something complex and make it simple, practical, and accessible," he told CNBC.

The May activity underscores how family offices are treating professional and recreational sports not as a luxury allocation but as a diversified asset class in its own right — one with consumer engagement, media rights, and hardware components all folding into a single investment thesis.

With pickleball's infrastructure now capitalized at the nine-figure level and wearable sports technology drawing institutional-style family office backing, the sector is drawing capital from multiple tiers of the private wealth market simultaneously. Whether deal volume sustains through the second half of 2026 will depend in part on how existing positions perform as sports media rights negotiations intensify across multiple leagues.

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