YouSaid · the spoken record

Ian Charles

lines on the record: 90
first: 2025-02-10
most recent: 2025-02-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Triumphs, tragedies, all of it, and like any great content has superstars and celebrities and great brands and probably most importantly they have incredibly passionate customers. They're called fans, fanatics. You're talking about people that have this passionate and engaged connection that exists through generations and have massive LTV. My father was a New York Giants fan. I am a New York Giants fan. My son, even though he grew up in Los Angeles, California, is a New York Giants fan. Being a sports fan is part of identity. On top of all of these performance characteristics, you have an asset class that has an unusual connection to human beings.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would just add to that aside from all of the performance aspects that Ian just talked about, the protected and defensible moats, the long-term recurring visible, predictable revenue streams, the scarcity of the assets, because in the big five leagues there's only 150 of them or so. Underlying all of that, and I apologize in advance for getting on my soapbox, but underlying all of it is the fact that sports matter in our culture, in our world. As content, it's the most important and valuable content across all of media. Sports is simply great storytelling, great narratives, hundreds of unique stories that go out three hundred sixty five days a year, winners, losers.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's just a normal investment underwriting. It's a ton of diligence time with ownership and management, third-party consultants. It's a lot of math. It's a lot of contract review. But there's nothing that complicated about it once you have access to the information and the people and the decision makers to do your work. You just got to do the work. Getting access to those deals and that information is really, really difficult. It's one of the moats around this strategy. This is not an easy sector to get approved to invest in.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“50 years from now, there will be a World Series in October. The leagues have that kind of longevity and importance. Sort of universal appeal globally, nationally, and locally. When you go into the underwrite and you try to understand these businesses, go back to those three layers that I talked about. Once you feel like you understand the league economics and league level assets, that's a beta factor that is shared by all of the teams in that league. And so you really only have to do that underwrite quarterly. At the local level, you're underwriting the ownership group, the management team, the local assets, the local contracts, sponsorship, ticketing, local media rights, all of the related assets that are part of the platform”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question. One of the most powerful statistics that I've come across in this market Is that over the last, I think it's 115 years US inflation has run on an annualized rate of around, I think it's 3.1%. U.S. public equities have compounded at around a 5.9%. And equity in the New York Yankees has compounded at 9.7% per year for $115 years. There is an unusual predictability and durability to these assets. That is unlike anything I've ever been a part of underwriting across alternatives. I used to have a portfolio that comprised over 20,000 private companies, properties and projects. I don't know. What SaaS businesses are going to be around in five years, 10 years, 15 years, which airports are going to be critical pieces of infrastructure 20, 30 years from now. But I do know.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And these businesses have an opportunity to go through a step function in growth if they have access to capital. So each of the leagues is getting in their own way on their own timeline. But all of the leagues identified the need for more capital to support control owner transactions, the need for more capital to provide liquidity, and the need for more capital to fund growth potential. And that's why the leagues are creating these very unique definitions of approved funds.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And 95% of these businesses have positive operating income. But any business, whether you make widgets, software, or professional sports experience, Any business's actual growth can be a lot lower than its potential growth if it doesn't have access to the capital it needs to achieve its full potential. But in professional sports, you're not allowed to tap into debt. You're not allowed to take on institutional capital directly. And so if you have a high ROI pipeline of opportunities in your business, historically, the only way you could fund that potential growth was through operating cash flow. Or buy new equity injections from your shareholders. But right now there's about a dozen really high growth changes happening across the sports and live entertainment industries.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the impact that the secondary market has had on institutional capital narrowing its view of the ill liquidity premium that's required because of the depth and complexity and sophistication of the secondary market that has emerged over the last 20 years? That has allowed private equity to tap into more and more investors with larger and larger allocations to drive AUM growth over the last 20 years. The same thing is starting to become a need in professional sports equity. You need a little bit of liquidity in the system to allow more people to want to participate in ownership and write bigger checks in ownership if they feel more comfortable. There are multiple ways that they can eventually get the liquidity if they need it. That's number two. The third is these assets are not allowed to have a lot of leverage.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really a multifaceted answer. The first part of that answer is, I think the average evaluation for one of the teams in Major League Baseball National Basketball Association NFL NHL, I think it's about $2 billion, 2.2 billion dollars, something like that. There aren't a lot of people Can pay 2.2, 2.53 four billion dollars to buy one of these teams when they come up for control. There certainly are people, David Tepper bought the Carolina Panthers. Baumer bought the LA Clippers. And so providing the opportunity for a control owner to partner with a fund. To tap into that capital as effectively a co investor is one reason. The second is it's hard to find minority partners in these deals. There's not a source of liquidity you can point to. One of the things that doesn't get talked about enough in private equity”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're an NFL club, you might have just put your hand up to expand your geographic ring fence to international markets where you can start to build local assets. We call that third-prong the platform or the platformization, which is typically at the local level, but it can include multiple local markets for some of the bigger platforms. And when you buy into one of these businesses, you are buying into the IP and the content to Docs Point, but you're buying into so much more in each of those three layers. It really is an unbelievable asset because you get this portfolio effect, which is one investment.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you get your pro rider share. It doesn't matter what city you're in, you've got the same share as everybody else. That's piece number one. The second piece is you have a protected geographic monopoly to operate in one of the thirty best markets in North America. This live entertainment business. The third prong is all of the assets at the local level that you've been able to build around that brand. You might own the arena. You might own all the real estate around the arena, the parking lots, you might have gone vertical with an office complex and hotels and apartments. You might have an esports team. You might have invested in another franchise in your town or in another town.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're buying a portfolio of assets, right? But I bring my lens, Mr. Content Guy from CAA, representing actors and all this kind of stuff, right? I'm an asset underwriter. I'm an illiquid asset investor, right? So I look at this as a basket of assets. So when you buy a stake in a pro sports team in North America, you're actually buying a piece of three different things. The first is each team, depending on the league, each team owns one thirtieth, one thirty first, one thirty second of the league business. The league generated revenue, sponsorship, the assets that the league builds. These leagues by themselves Should be valued anywhere between $25 and $150 billion by themselves, just as standalone IP content live entertainment juggernauts.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ultimately, I believe this is all a content business. We are investing in the content that is generated by these teams and leagues, franchises, and all that derives from that content, including hard assets like venues, like marks and logos, media content, et cetera. So I think this is more than anything else a very sophisticated content play.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess the simplest answer is to say we're investing in the platform. It's not simply the sports franchise because in most cases these franchises own a number of ancillary businesses. These are legal monopolies that exist inside and have geographic exclusivity in most cases except those cities where there's more than one franchise in a given league. But they're given very clear geographic parameters within which to operate and it gives an owner essentially a call option on a host of ancillary businesses from media to real estate to hospitality and so forth. So consequently you're investing in the entire platform. The question of what is the actual asset is more of a philosophical conversation and an argument that Ian and I...”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Doc, when you go in to look at acquiring a minority interest, what is it that you are owning? There's an interest in a team mentioned there's a bunch of other assets around it. What is the lump sum of what you're purchasing?”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Increasing profitability, increasing revenue, and tons of opportunity for operational improvement is driving sophisticated capital into the control positions of these assets when they become available. That's really exciting.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just want to piggyback one thing on Doc's comment. He talked about the increasing sophistication of the controlling owners in this space. But I want to double click on that and provide data around it. So if you look at control ownership transactions over the last decade, I think something like 60, 65% of the new control owners in North American pro sports have either come from the technology sector Finance, names like Qualtrics, Microsoft, Tibco, Blackstone, Appaloosa, Apollo, Fortress, Aries, Bane, really sophisticated people. Who see the historical return that these assets have provided and the opportunity to play about eight to twelve very strong growth trends in an uncorrelated way?”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“by their own governance were forced to sell, and as for sellers, the leagues perceived those values to be diminished in the marketplace. So they disallowed institutional ownership for the better part of a decade or more. And it became, as the NFL says, the two-legged rule, which is all owners had to have two legs. But there's been this steady transformation in the business over time towards more and more professionalized and sophisticated ownership, which has grown asset value tremendously, and at the same time it's been driven largely by revenue growth and by the fact that more rational collective bargaining agreements have brought the general cost of talent, which is the single Largest cost center for any sports enterprise down over time.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going way back, these were largely sole owners. It was more of a hobby or a side hustle. Many of these were family-owned assets. They were rarely full-time pursuits by any of these owners. But again, as popularity grew, as value grew, these became more syndicates. There's more multiple ownership stakes in each of these individual franchises, but it was mostly still driven by local affinity, by civic duty and leadership and whatnot. Over time, actually, and one thing that's important to note is that these were assets that at one point in time institutional ownership was allowed. So if you recall newspapers owned these assets, Disney owned the Angels and the Ducks, and Fox owned the Dodgers.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That these assets represent for marketing and advertising, that that value has grown as well. And then off of that foundation a number of other ancillary businesses have grown to create this massive TAM.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From its earliest days, I think Major League Baseball is probably the oldest league followed, if I'm not mistaken by the NHL, NFL, and NBA, but I might have my history screwed up there. And going back to the early days of European football, it was solely a live event business. And all the revenue was spun off from that live event. They were basically ticketing revenue and hospitality businesses back in the day. But over time, media as these sports gained in popularity, media became more and more important first radio and then television. Media both locally and nationally is the single largest revenue stream in sports today. Ticketing, game day revenue, the second most important revenue stream of all. And as media has grown in value, so has the platform.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bunch to unpack in that. Let's start with the asset itself. And maybe you think of owning a professional sports team as a vanity buy in the past. I'd love to hear more about the history of the underlying business.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Helping these platforms acquire more assets and become platforms, helping them acquire other franchises to capture revenue and cost synergies, or helping a new control owner acquire their first platform asset. Those are the three kinds of transactions that we are implementing across that TAM. Our fund is the very first fund designed to provide institutional investors with diversified exposure to each of those leagues. Diversified exposure across markets, ownership groups, Deliver an uncorrelated low leverage private equity return in an asset class that today has very little, if any, institutional competition, which is very, very hard to find.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to take a while to unpack, but the market opportunity that our firm and our fund is focused on. Are minority stakes in professional sports franchises and all of their related assets In the big five North American sports leagues. So those are Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, National Football League, Major League Soccer, National Hockey League plus the premier global sports platforms in rest of world. That is a total addressable market today of about $400 billion. There are really three kinds of transactions that we're pursuing. One is liquidity. To both minority owners and control owners of these assets. Growth capital or operating capital to help these businesses achieve their growth targets and operate in objectives. And then the third category is acquisition financing.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think Aside from whatever specifics we talked about with respect to this new initiative that we were contemplating, the thing I remember most clearly was connecting with Ian as a human being and connecting to his story of growing up in Alaska and what life looked like from his vantage point and the values that he espoused. I just really connected to him as a human and I wanted him to be part of my life.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We both had the same reaction about going to our first dinner, which was in New York. I'm walking to dinner and I'm talking to my wife on the phone and I'm saying to her, I really don't like a lot of private equity guys. I have no idea why I'm meeting with this private equity asshole right now. And similarly, Ian just probably at the exact same moment was talking to his wife saying Why am I meeting with this Ari Gold ass? It's like, what am I doing here? But we met in this first dinner.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Sam said, You got to meet in. There's this incredible idea that is floating around Major League Baseball and other leagues in terms of creating funds to invest in minority stakes as a new asset class. I don't have a lot of marketable skills, but one of my skills is two things. Number one, when I hear a good idea seizing on it, and the second is surrounding myself with people that are a lot more talented than I am and a lot smarter. And I was introduced to Ian, funny enough, we both...”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Despite our appearances, I look so much younger than he does. But the fact is I'm older. And when I left MSG, I certainly had the opportunity to do anything I wanted to including retire. And I refer to it as my gap year, but I was bouncing around the house and my wife said, you know, you're driving yourself crazy and you're driving me crazy. You got to get the hell out of the house. Do something. So I realized that I very much missed the engagement of work and I missed the community of work. I enjoy being part of the game. And so I began exploring various opportunities in the entertainment business, in the sports business. I just happened to be up in Boston and seeing my old friend Sam.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wasn't going to work unless our founding team included well known senior members of this community because it really is a community. It's a closed walled garden. They're really not into the Wall Street private equity mentality. They kind of put their arms around each other. And I knew that To be accepted and have a shot here, I needed to find someone who had a background that was equivalent to mine but focused in the sector. And Doc and I have a mutual friend in Sam Kennedy, who's the CEO of the Boston Red Sox, senior member of the Fenway Sports Group team. And I was talking to Sam about how I really needed a partner to try to pursue this. And he said, there's one guy. There's one guy you got to meet as my friend Doc. Doc, I don't know if you want to share your history with Sam and the guys there, but that's the history.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had an LP come to me and say, Hey, I don't know if you know this, but that sports thing that you told us about a long time ago, did you know the leagues are starting to change their rules and make this investable asset class for funds? It would take a really unique kind of fund, and we don't really know what that looks like, but they knew I had a history of entrepreneurship in private markets that I had built a lot of really successful products in private markets. The opportunity to be the first at anything in alternatives today is really rare, increasingly rare. And so a small group of us started to hone a hypothesis and And try to test that hypothesis with different market participants. And one of the things that was obvious to me was”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because institutional ownership has been prohibited by the North American Sports Leagues for a long time. I'm sure we'll talk more later about why that is. But if we couldn't build a scale business around it, it just kind of wasn't worth our time. So we just went on our way and looked for other assets You would share good ideas with other investors in basically eight years later.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, our origin story actually starts in 2011. During my time at Landmark, I looked at a lot of really exotic strategies and really unique assets. We were approached by a number of different sellers of minority stakes and sports teams. And a small group of us looked at those opportunities to try to figure out, is this an asset that could fit our mandate? And if not, is this an asset that we could build a business around? So we spend a lot of time with the data science team at Landmark evaluating the sector. And I personally fell in love with the attributes of the asset. It had a lack of correlation. It was really hard to find. It had attributes that looked a little bit like a blend of core infrastructure, core real estate, but also growth equity. That's a really strange mix. What we couldn't figure out is would the leagues let us do it?”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it also put me in a position to help the firm evaluate new business opportunities and start new businesses. So I helped create the real assets and infrastructure secondaries business at Landmark, the preferred equity business that kind of spans across all of the investment products there. We did some minority stakes investing, and I spent the bulk of my time helping lead the private equity practice and helping lead the firm. I was there for 15 years and I left landmark to start Arctos with Doc and the rest of the founding group.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about how to react to the growing competition and commoditization that was happening in the secondary's business. The very first thing that I did was start to build tools and systems to help LPs understand their portfolio better. We hired a legitimate rocket scientist to help me with that and the two of us really built in hindsight it was the first data science business in private equity. And we just built software and tools and outputs to help LPs and GPs understand their programs better. And that became an origination engine for the firm. It allowed the firm to avoid the very competitive auction channel in secondaries.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that business, we grew it from four founders to almost 40 people when I left offices in London, New York, Dallas, Tokyo. We had some of the most sophisticated limited partners as clients on both our cell side advisory practice and on our research business that helped limit our partners monitor and understand the assets they didn't sell better. When I left that firm to join landmark partners, I picked up my young family, moved across the country to Connecticut. And really my job when I joined Landmark was to help that firm.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Started my career at a fundafuntz, just doing primary, secondary, and co-investment grunt work. I was the analyst, youngest member of the team. After only about 12 to 18 months on the job. Having worked on a few secondary opportunities, it just didn't. Seem like you should be able to Assets from limited partners The prices we were able to do it. Seemed like an inefficiency that shouldn't exist. Pretty naive. Boss and I wrote a business plan for The very first cell side advisor, the two of us worked with a couple of other colleagues, and four of us left that fundafunds platform to start the world's first secondary advisory platform. It was called Cogent Partners. It's now most LPs know it as Greenhills, Secondary Advisory Practice.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most profitable division in the company, the biggest division in the company, and really was the growth engine for CAA, which attracted the interest of outside investors like TPG, who ultimately bought control. In about twenty fifteen, after twenty years of being a managing partner there and running and building the business, I felt like I had done just about everything I could possibly do in the agency business, and I really began to thirst for getting my hands on real hard assets. And about that time, Jim Dolan came calling. MSG was a big client of CAA in the sports side, and he came calling with the role of CEO, public company CEO, real autonomy in the business, and it came at a point in time when I was really looking for a change and looking for a new challenge. So I jumped at it, moved my family across countries.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I began my career as a creative artist agency. I was there for 32 years, the last twenty of which I was one of the managing partners and owners of the business. I started out in the movie and television businesses representing talent. When we took over the company, we really saw a lot of headwinds coming in the entertainment business. And we realized pretty quickly that we needed to diversify our business, strengthen our platform. So we started to think about adjacencies. And the most logical and biggest adjacency clearly to us was sports. So I was instrumental in building the sports business from ground zero, starting around 2005. And we started in the representation business and we built out a real diversified sports platform, which very quickly became”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Personal investor in Arctosis Fund, and I'm a fan of their strategy and team Pun intended. I hope you'll enjoy this conversation with Doc O'Connor and Ian Charles as much as I did. All right, Doc, Ian, great to see you guys.”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guests on today's show are Ian Charles and Doc O'Connor, the co founders and managing partners of Arctos Sports Partners, a private equity firm dedicated to buying minority stakes in professional sports franchises. From its founding just two years ago, Arctos quickly has become the market leader in this space, raising a $2.1 billion first-time fund, a SPAC alongside executive and residence Theo Epstein, and buying stakes in Major League Baseball teams, including the Boston Red Sox, the Golden State Warriors in Sacramento Kings in the NBA, and a complement of other sports assets. Our conversation covers their backgrounds and the formation of Arctos, the investment opportunity in sports franchises, and the underlying business and ownership structure. We then turn to the unique characteristics of the asset, investment process, and growth strategy. Full disclosure,”
2025-02-10 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Ian Charles & Doc O'Connor – Investing in Sports Teams at Arctos Sports Partners (Capital Allocators, EP.225) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source