Alternative Investing Report - September 5, 2024

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As was discussed in our event on investing into sports teams, private equity firms have increasingly been investing into sports teams, and are now looking more and more to women’s sports. For the first time ever, women’s sports are on pace to generate over $1 billion in revenue, and the Paris Olympics spotlighted a number of athletes and different sports. Viewership records for women’s sports keep getting set, and leagues like the WNBA and NWSL continue to grow in popularity, and in franchise value.

➨ TAKEAWAY: Women’s sports have historically been an underserved market, but that is changing rapidly. In July, Disney CEO Bob Iger bought Angel City FC for $250 million, nearly double the highest previous sale, and well above the $180 million it was valued at in 2023. The market for women’s sports is developing, and indications are that we are at the beginning of the growth curve.

Auction sales at Sotheby’s fell by 25% in the first half of 2024, and the company’s net earnings dropped by 88%. Sales to Chinese buyers dropped significantly, as the once-emerging market has pulled back. This business slowdown may be what caused the auction house to sell a stake in their business to Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund for $1 billion last month.

➨ TAKEAWAY: The slowdown in the art market is hitting auction houses hard, and this echoes last month’s news that Christie’s saw a 22% drop in sales in the first half of the year. It remains to be seen how the major auction houses will adjust, but there is hope that a cut in interest rates could jumpstart the art market.

🚀 Emerging tech startups: CB Insights released its list, based on their proprietary data and metrics, of 52 tech startups that are the most likely to have successful exits in the next 5-10 years.

👔 Small business surge: The U.S. is averaging 430,000 small business applications per month, a 50% jump since 2019, and small businesses are providing 70% of net new jobs, as optimism for the economy continues to rise.

🪙 Bitcoin to $45K?: Bitfinex analysts are projecting that the price of Bitcoin could drop to the mid-$40,000s if the Fed cuts interest rates, as the cryptocurrency saw a 50% decline in 2019 during the last set of rate cuts.

🏡 Gahanna, Ohio?: The suburb of Columbus topped a ranking of the hottest zip code in America for the second straight year, as its low cost of living and affordable housing market has led to the average home selling in just 11 days.

🚀 Founder universities: Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Penn and MIT are the top 5 universities when ranked by the number of alumni who have raised venture capital in the last decade, with Stanford #1 by total amount raised.

🪙 North Korean hackers: The FBI released a warning that North Korea is targeting employees of crypto companies and ETFs in an effort to compromise their accounts and steal crypto assets.

How to build and utilize AI without causing a threat to humanity has been a major issue as the industry advances. OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever left the company over his concerns and a conflict with CEO Sam Altman. Now, the startup he just co-founded, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), has raised a $1 billion funding round that values the startup at $5 billion. The round is being led by major VC firms like a16z and Sequoia Capital, and shows that there is a high interest in making sure AI doesn’t turn into Skynet.