How to Invest in the Next Steph Curry: Athlete Investment Platforms Explained.

In the previous post I explored the opportunities for fans to invest in the athlete career business stakeholders (cards, merchandising, fantasy, teams and companies), but today I will focus on athlete investment platforms. This means investors earn according to athlete's futures.

Direct Investing in Athletes:
Globatalent calls itself the world’s first “Sports Neobank”. It’s a mobile app that lets you directly invest in young athletes from across the globe, using blockchain to distribute tokens. Each one represents a single share of an athlete.

Finlete is a new Comcast NBC-backed crowdfunding platform for fans to purchase shares in promising athletes, and get a small cut of their future on-field earnings.

Carry facilitates funding for talented up-and-coming pro golfers - so they can stay in the game and realize their full potential - by connecting them with private investors who seek experiential and financial returns on their investments.

Nordensa, fans can fund and bring talented young players to major European football clubs and own a share of their earnings. Created by world-class experts in technology, marketing and Premier League-level scouts.

EVO, a sports management company - invested by IndyCar driver Alexander Rossi - will provide young professional athletes with money to pay for their travel, entrances fees, food, training and other expenses. In turn, EVO will receive a percentage of the athletes’ future earnings and endorsements.

Chisos Capital is like a VC firm with a twist. They invest directly in people at a very early stage. Chisos is a fascinating company. They seek out people with something unique - a unique talent, a great idea, or just a ton of promise - and invest $15k – $50k toward their careers, through something called a Convertible Income Share Agreement.

Athlete Stock Exchanges:
Mojo, a startup backed by billionaire Mark Lore, former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez, and Tiger Global Management, allows investors to buy shares of stock in professional athletes with future statistics driving potential price appreciation.

PredictionStrike, a New York-based provider of a marketplace on which users can trade shares of their favorite athletes, raised $3M in Seed funding. The company intends to use the funds to add product features that will be housed under its premium membership offering.

Athlete investment platforms allow fans and investors to invest in the future potential of athletes. They use innovative technology and financial structures to provide new ways to engage with sports and athletes. As with any investment, caution and research are important.