While money is tight in other sectors, investors are pouring dollars into sports and the businesses that support teams and players.

Sports technology provider Nomadar is going so far as to bet on the next-generation of growth for soccer in America by buying Fox Soccer Academy, which trains young players hoping for college and professional careers.

The theory is that the growing popularity of soccer will get more youngsters to play the game. Better young players will make the American teams stronger and make the game even more popular potentially minting future stars.

But the big story in finance was Paramount settling the antitrust lawsuit that had stalled its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, with many in Hollywood shocked that California Attorney General Rob Bonta struck an agreement that didn’t include any significant divestitures. The deal is now set to clear in the next few weeks but the drama is unlikely to end as the company deals with debt and cuts staff.

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P.S. Hollywood’s latest round of consolidation is still playing out, and there are plenty of questions about what comes after it. The people who price, finance and navigate these deals take the stage at TheGrill on Sept. 30. Subscribers get 30% off with code WRAPPROVIP

THE DEEP DIVE

Investing in Soccer by Betting on Youth Sports

The World Cup raised U.S. interest in soccer, and many investors looked for ways to cash in.

Nomadar last week made a bet on more youngsters playing the game, agreeing to acquire Fox Soccer Academy, which started its training business in New York 11 years ago, and now has facilities in North Carolina, the United Kingdom and Australia.

NASDAQ-traded Nomadar is now majority owned by the Cadiz soccer team, which plays in the second division of Spain’s professional La Liga. Nomadar has been billed as the team’s sports-technology business. To give you a sense of its imporance, Cadiz Club de Futbol shareholders will vote on Sept. 30 on a reverse spinoff that will make Nomadar the majority shareholder of the team.

• Nomadar is buying Fox Soccer Academy for an upfront payment of $2 million. Fox has facilities in the U.S., the U.K. and Austria that have 2,100 boys and girls enrolled.
• The Spanish soccer team Cadiz FC controls Nomadar, but the companies have approved a reverse-spin transaction that will make Nomadar the majority owner of the team. 
• Nomadar is building a multi-use facility in Cadiz that will host the team and other businesses. 

Nomadar’s CEO of Americas & Executive Vice Chairman Joaquin Martin told The Ledger that the company’s tech-oriented sports platform is built around the team, with businesses in training young players, real estate development and digital products. “We are building a very unique model,” Martin said. “It’s a global connected ecosystem. The center of the ecosystem is the professional soccer club.”

Since going public last year, Nomadar hasn’t posted a profitable quarter. In the second quarter, the company reported a net loss of $459,941, or 3 cents per share, as revenue doubled to $669,571.

Martin said its early days have been spent readying the company to set its operating units up and running while preparing for the reverse spin. 

“It has been an intense 10 months because we have been achieving different milestones,” Martin said.

Those milestones include acquiring land in Spain for the multi-purpose event center it is developing and preparing for the reverse spinoff. The next step is building its training division by acquiring Fox Soccer Academy.

“At the end of the day, we will have all the standards of a publicly traded company, access and possibilities to grow,” he said.

Nomadar is paying $2 million upfront for Fox plus a delayed payment of $2.6 million and up to a $1.5 million earnout. Fox was founded by Raluca Gold-Fuchs, a Goldman Sachs veteran, and her husband, Christian Fuchs, who played for Leicester City when it won the Premier League in 2016 and is now the assistant coach for Charlotte FC of the MLS. Nomadar has an option to buy the remaining interest in Fox for $4.4 million.

Fox has produced players that have been called for national teams. The Fuchs’ sons graduated from the program and have played in the professional in the MLS and in the U.K. Its revenue comes from tuition paid by their young players’ families.

Gold-Fuchs said they got to know Nomadar through a friend. Fuchs said the combination of the science-based techniques Fox uses at its academy, plus the high-performance training program Cardiz employees in Europe will help young players advance to college and professional teams. Being connected to an historic professional team will also give Fox a boost, particularly in international markets.

Gold-Fuchs said Fox has expanded carefully so far and now has 2,100 players in its multiple locations. “We want to continue what we’ve been doing well so far. Nomadar is adding this international aspect that we can provide to our players that other academies cannot,” she said. “We will grow the same careful way we’ve been growing until now. We definitely want to grow, but not in an aggressive way.”

Fox has seen interest in soccer grow in the U.S. with Lionel Messi joining the MLS and the World Cup showing America’s enthusiasm for the game, that growth is bound to continue, Gold-Fuchs said.

“The popularity will pick up, and the more money that goes into the sport, and the more good players you get into the sport, the more it’s going to grow,” she said. 

Sports investors are looking at modern multi-use facilities as an opportunity for teams to generate revenues beyond ticket sales and media rights. 

The complex Nomadar is building in Cadiz will include a 35,000-seat venue for sports, cultural and music events, plus a convention center, hotel and shopping. It is expected to be completed at the end of 2030.

At the same time, Nomadar is getting set to launch several products that combine the in-person experience it offers with digital experiences, Martin said. It has a subscription product for people who want to work for professional soccer teams, and it plans to launch a program for people who want to get some of the benefits of the Cadiz training regime without attending facilities in person.

Nomadar is also looking at additional facilities it can build and, in the future, could expand by buying other professional teams.

“Connectivity  inside the ecosystem is a natural trigger for growth. Martin said.

Nomadar, which traded at $21 after it went public in a direct offering last October,  closed Thursday at $1.53.

FINANCIAL ROUNDUP

The Paramount-WBD Saga (Concluded?) 

The billionaire Ellison family got its way and CEO David Ellison expects Paramount Skydance will close the $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in two weeks after reaching a settlement with a dozen state attorneys general, avoid a costly delays which were riddled with potential fees. The judge overseeing the case wants Paramout to address “certain outstanding questions” and concerns raised by Sen. Corey Booker by Mondoay. 

Before the close, Paramount was still looking for financing and considered asking one-time trillionaire Elon Musk to be an equity investor, according to Semafor. On Thursday, it launched a syndication to raise $7.5 billion in debt to help fund the deal.

The legal settlement came after Paramount was seemingly ready to make good on its threat to move out of California, applying tremendous pressure on Attorney General Rob Bonta. After the deal was reached, Ellison said the company’s headquarters would remain in Los Angeles.

What shocked many in Hollywood was not just the speed of the proceedings but how Paramount came out of this unscathed. The settlement did not require any significant “structural remedies,” such as the sale of cable channels, that Bonta contended were needed to address competitive concerns.

In the 32-page consent decree, Paramount agreed to produce 30 films a year for two years, and 32 films the following three years. The company agreed to spend $1.5 billion over three years on domestic production and keep its studio lots open, and treat its cable channels as different entities when negotiating with distributors.

To answer concerns that the Trump-friendly Ellisons would now control CBS News and CNN, Paramount agreed to form an independent oversight board for the news operations, although press advocate groups expressed doubt the entity would have any influence on operations. Connecticut AG William Tong had demanded that Paramount divest CNN and CBS and The Freedom of the Press Foundation already slammed the agreement as worthless. 

The settlement was also denounced by the Block the Merger coalition. It got a better review from theater owners, which had already thrown their support behind a settlement a few weeks ago. The Writers Guild of America also settled its suit against Paramount, largely because it lacked the financial footing to mount a long-term battle. 

Barclay’s analyst Kannan Venkateshwar called the terms of the settlement “relatively benign” for the company, although it limits its ability to make some near-term asset sales. The pledge not to sell studio lots “could be seen as an additional constraint limiting synergies but given the commitment to make 30 movies, the company will likely need this capacity in any case,” Venkateshwar said. “The focus will now turn to integration.”

Venkateshwar also pointed out that as part of the WBD deal, the company would issue warrants attached to Class B shares. The warrants will be separately traded.

“While the warrants don’t necessarily change the equity value today, they will result in incremental dilution when exercised but will also bring in cash when exercised of about $5.7 billion,” he said. “However, the warrants have a long duration and will trade independently which means that this part of the capital structure will be valued on factors beyond just the immediate stock price.”

Worth reading:

DEAL SHEET

• Barry Diller’s People Inc. withdrew its bid for MGM Resorts that valued the company at $18 billion. People Inc. owns 27% of MGM shares and offered to buy enough to give it a controlling interest. “We didn’t feel the mix was coming together in the way we had hoped and have decided not to pursue taking the company private at this time,” Diller said. On Thursday, reports surfaced that MGM was considering  a bid for People.
• A24 and The New York Times joined the list of companies reportedly interested in acquiring Letterboxd for more than $300 million. Sony, Netflix, Paramount and private-equity firms RedBird and TPG had previously been listed as potential bidders for the company, controlled by Tiny since 2023.
• Podium Entertainment, a publisher focused on independent authors and audiobooks, was acquired by private-equity firms Shamrock Capital and Flexpoint Ford. No price was disclosed, but sources familiar with the situation valued the deal at $400 million. Podium, which has been controlled by Presidio Investors since 2019, was advised by LionTree. Podium’s existing management will stay in place.
• Unit1 Studio, which produces avatar concerts, raised $20 million in a round of financing led by Balderton. An avatar concert is a production that features a digitally constructed replica of a music artist performing live on a stage inside a real venue. Unit1 plans to offer young fans a concert experience featuring bands from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. 
• Sister Group, the entertainment company run by Elisabeth Murdoch and Jane Featherstone, bought a minority stake in Common Interest, an advertising company founded by Anthony Freedman. The two companies are working together on projects backed by brands as part of a strategic partnership. 

WRAP 20 INDEX

Here’s how the companies in our Wrap 20 Index performed this week. 

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