Why Manager Selection Is the Most Important Decision in Sports Investing

In sports investing, manager selection is a fundamentally different decision. The spread between top managers and average managers is wide — and the reason is structural, not analytical.

The Access Asymmetry

The best sports assets do not trade on open markets. They are allocated within networks. A manager inside those networks operates from a materially different investment universe than one outside them. This is not a subtle difference in deal quality. It is the difference between seeing institutional-grade deals at all and seeing what remains after those deals have been allocated.

The manager evaluation question is less "does this manager have a good analytical framework?" and more "does this manager have the access to see the deals where a good analytical framework matters?"

What Genuine Expertise Looks Like

Sports investing requires domain knowledge that most alternative investment managers do not have. Understanding how league governance affects minority investor protections. Knowing what revenue optimization is realistically achievable versus aspirational. Evaluating commercial trajectory requires knowing how sports organizations actually work — not just how to model them.

Marques Colston's career as a professional athlete, Super Bowl champion, franchise co-owner, and licensed financial professional (Series 7 and 66) spans the exact intersection of operating knowledge and investment discipline that sports investing requires. He does not evaluate sports organizations as an outside observer. He evaluates them from a perspective built over a career inside them.

Nick Edwards brings a different but equally important dimension. His decade-plus serving as performance director and physiologist to five professional franchises gave him direct insight into how sports organizations manage their most valuable assets — their athletes — and the operational infrastructure surrounding them. That experience, combined with his subsequent work building and investing in companies through venture capital and venture studio environments, gives him a specific analytical lens: the ability to evaluate early-stage sports and sports-adjacent businesses through both the operational reality of how sports works and the investment framework of how private companies are built and scaled. The leap from one private industry to another is not large — especially for someone who spent formative years inside professional sports organizations at the highest level.

Together, these backgrounds produce a founding team that can evaluate what most managers cannot: not just whether the financial model works, but whether the organization behind it is capable of executing it.

This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Please read The Champion Fund's prospectus carefully before investing.