The SPMI Explained: Inside the Champion Fund’s Index Strategy
The information herein is not complete and is subject to change. We may not sell securities of the Champion Fund until the Fund's registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This website is not an offer to sell these securities and is not soliciting an offer to buy these securities in any state where the offer or sale is not permitted.
When investors think of index strategies, they usually picture public markets—passive exposure to equities through ETFs or mutual funds. But in the private markets, indexing is still an emerging concept.
At Champion Fund, we intend to build our portfolio around a proprietary methodology called the CVP Sports Private Market Index—or SPMI. It’s not a product. It’s a rules-based framework designed to allocate capital across the full value chain of the private sports economy.
In a sector dominated by one-off deals, intermediaries, and access gaps, the SPMI offers something different: structure, repeatability, and investor alignment.
Here’s how it works—and why it matters.
Why an Index Model for Sports?
The private sports economy is vast. It spans real estate, infrastructure, operating companies, private equity roll-ups, minority ownership in teams and leagues, athlete-led ventures, media assets, and more.
Historically, access has been fragmented—reserved for billionaires, insiders, or well-networked GPs with narrow mandates. That created a problem: most investors only saw isolated slivers of the asset class, not the full picture.
The SPMI solves for that by organizing the space into five sub-asset classes, each with distinct risk-return profiles and strategic roles in the portfolio.
It’s not about chasing the latest sports tech startup or betting on team multiples. It’s about creating diversified, NAV-aligned exposure to the most compelling opportunities across the entire ecosystem.
The Five Sub-Asset Classes of the SPMI
Champion Fund uses the SPMI to seek to allocate across five private market verticals:
Sports Real Estate & Infrastructure: Anchored by assets like stadiums, training facilities, media studios, or mixed-use development tied to franchises and sports tourism. These are expected to provide long-duration, often cash-flowing exposure.
Mid-Cap Sports Private Equity: Platform roll-ups, lower-middle market operating companies, and sponsor-backed businesses in areas like fitness, youth sports, merchandising, and venue tech.
Sports Venture: Early-stage exposure to startups building the next generation of athlete performance tools, fan engagement platforms, betting infrastructure, NIL enablement, and sports healthtech.
Minority Ownership in Teams/Leagues: Passive, structured investments in franchises across pro and semi-pro leagues, often via co-investment or rights-based vehicles. Scarce assets with brand equity and media revenue exposure.
Strategic Fund-of-Fund Allocations: Targeted participation in best-in-class managers with domain expertise across select verticals or regions—where Champion cannot directly lead but still wants exposure.
This approach is intended to enable capital to be spread across different investment stages, liquidity profiles, and return timelines—without overconcentration in any single theme.
From Fragmented Access to a Cohesive Portfolio
Most investors in sports are limited to binary options: own a team or invest in a brand. But that excludes large segments of the value chain—where the most compelling opportunities often lie.
The SPMI shifts the conversation from access to allocation. It gives investors a framework to think about how different types of exposure complement each other:
Real estate and team equity for asset stability
PE and venture for upside and innovation
FoF for reach and diversification
This isn’t passive indexing—it’s rules-based allocation built on operational edge.
Methodology That Reflects the Market
The SPMI isn’t a marketing label—it’s a living strategy framework built to mirror real capital flows and market segmentation. Its design reflects:
The maturation of sports as an institutional asset class
The range of private market deal types entering the space
The performance characteristics that LPs expect from private alternatives
Each deal Champion Fund evaluates is scored against the SPMI verticals. Portfolio weighting adjusts based on opportunity flow, macro conditions, and sector outlooks. But the underlying logic stays the same: diversified exposure to the investable sports economy.
Why This Matters to Investors
Sports is often misunderstood as an emotional asset. The SPMI reframes it as a professional, strategically allocated investment category.
For investors, that means:
Clarity: You know where your capital is going, and why.
Balance: Exposure isn’t overconcentrated in a single trend or asset type.
Discipline: Allocation decisions are tied to a framework, not hype cycles.
It also aligns with best practices in other mature alts—mirroring what you’d expect in real estate funds, infrastructure strategies, or sector-specific PE.
Champion Fund’s Execution of the Index
Champion Fund is not a passive vehicle. We actively manage a portfolio informed by the SPMI. That includes:
Proprietary sourcing networks within each vertical
Diligence processes led by former athletes, operators, and industry insiders
Quarterly allocation reviews to align with macroeconomic shifts
Portfolio reporting tied to index categories, helping investors understand performance by segment
In short: the SPMI provides the roadmap, but Champion Fund brings the vehicle—and the driver.
Closing Thought
The private sports economy is no longer a collection of random deals. It’s an investable universe—one that demands structure, strategy, and clarity. The SPMI is how we make sense of it. Champion Fund is how we plan to make it investable.
