Early-stage venture capital firm Courtside Ventures has announced its third fund to raise $100 million across the gaming, sports and lifestyle sectors.
A backer of startups like Fello, WinZo and FanCraze, the firm said the majority of the third fund's investors have returned from prior Courtside funds. With the current fund, Courtside Ventures’ total committed capital amounts to over $200 million in assets under management.
According to a statement, the third fund counts several professional sports team owners, athletes, and industry executives as its limited partners, including team owners like Tony Ressler (co-founder and executive chairman of Ares Management and majority owner of the Atlanta Hawks), Dan Gilbert (founder and chairman of Rocket Mortgage and chairman of the Cleveland Cavaliers), David Blitzer (co-owner of Philadelphia 76ers, NJ Devils, Cleveland Guardians and Crystal Palace), Dee and Jimmy Haslam (Haslam Sports Group)
Other investors in the fund include Dicks Sporting Goods, Superbet, Arctos Partners, Wellness Holding (the family office of TechnoGym founder), and Gametime Capital (the family office of Richard Fairbank, Founder and CEO of Capital One, which specializes in sports and sports technology investments).
Athletes like Larry Fitzgerald, Shaquille O’Neal, and Jacob Trouba also participated.
With the third fund, we will continue to invest with conviction in founders and disruptive ideas in our key verticals of sports, fitness, collectibles, and gaming,” said Deepen Parikh, partner at Courtside Ventures.
Courtside Ventures has begun deploying capital from the third fund. The company also counts startups like Hypothetic, Matchday, Mojo, Xpoint, Jackpot.com, Venly, Planet Mojo, Bezel, Fliff, Fermat, on its portfolio.
Parikh added, “We will also continue to put an emphasis on global investment opportunities as our vertical focus and learnings from the US market apply to larger and higher growth regions. We remain committed to our portfolio companies, all of which are well positioned to maintain resilience in a market where calculated execution is key.”
Courtside said it will continue its thematic investment strategy with investments in more than 80 thematically focused companies across 8 countries. The first fund returned 1.61X in net DPI (distributed to paid-in) proceeds to LPs.
Since its launch in 2016, Courtside Ventures’ notable investments include The Athletic (acquired by The New York Times), WinZO, Beam (acquired by Microsoft), StockX, 100Thieves, VEO, Religion of Sports, Rei do Pitaco, Freeletics, FanCraze, and Paceline, among others.
The current fund has also raised capital from Whitney Haslam Johnson and JW Johnson (partners at Haslam Sports Group), Tisch Family (Lowes Corporation and co-owners of New York Giants), Lerner Family (Lerner Enterprises and majority Owners of Washington Nationals), Idan Ofer (principal of Quantum Pacific Group and co-owner of Atletico Madrid), Alec Litowitz (founder of Magnetar Capital and Minority owner of D.C. United) participated in the third fundraise.