🔊 $30 Million Bet On The Future Of Pickleball

This week, Bluestone Equity Partners, a global private equity firm focused on sports, media, and entertainment, announced a $30 million investment in Selkirk Sport, a premium manufacturer of pickleball paddles and accessories.

Founded in 2014 by brothers Rob and Mike Barnes and their father Jim, Selkirk is expected to generate nearly $100 million in revenue in fiscal 2026.

The deal reportedly values the company at $200 million, with the new capital slated to help the company expand into Asian markets, accelerate next-generation paddle development, and strengthen its content and media strategy.

Why This Matters?

This isn’t just a bet on pickleball.

It’s a bet on the infrastructure behind one of the world’s fastest-growing sports.

Every gold rush creates two types of winners:

Bluestone isn’t trying to guess which athlete, league, or event will dominate the pickleball space.

They’re backing the picks and shovels that every player, club, and organizer will need regardless.

Selkirk represents a foundational layer in any sport: equipment.

Their business scales with participation and aligns perfectly with Bluestone’s broader strategy.

The firm has consistently focused on infrastructure-like companies in sports since its inception:

For pickleball or any emerging sport, that means investing in things such as:

The Asia expansion also reinforces this strategy.

Bluestone is underwriting pickleball as a global category, and Selkirk as one of the brands positioned to define it internationally.

And this deal fits a much larger pattern we’re seeing in sports investing, one that firms like Bruin Capital are also adopting.

Capital isn’t just flowing into teams and leagues, but also into the companies that make the entire ecosystem function.

And this is a thesis I believe more firms will be betting on as well.

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• TeamFeePay Raises £9M. TeamFeePay, a UK-based sports tech company, has raised £9 million in equity funding. YFM Equity Partners led the round with participation from the Investment Fund for Northern Ireland, Techstart, and private investors. The company will use the funds to support expansion, drive product development, and create new roles (more here).

• Scoreline Raises $6M. Scoreline, the sports tech company behind UK-based Fantasy Football Hub, has raised a $6 million in funding. Nickleby Capital led the round with Dopamine Sports Ventures and Winforton Investments participating. The capital enables the company to double down on Fantasy Football Hub and Wickets (its new Indian Premier League product), expand into new sports, and grow the team (more here).

• StepOut Raises $1.5M. StepOut, a sports performance analysis and ecosystem technology startup, has raised $1.5 million in Pre-Series A funding. Rainmatter led the round, with participation from SucSEED Ventures, Misfits Capital, and Marwah Sports Pvt. Ltd. The new capital will be used to accelerate international expansion, deepen investments in agentic AI and computer vision, and enhance product capabilities (more here).

• Professional Fighters League Raises Funding. Professional Fighters League (PFL), a global MMA league, has announced a new funding round, coinciding with existing investors Knighthead Capital and 885 Capital taking control of the organization. Donn Davis, founder and chair of the PFL, has also departed from his role. Funding will be utilized to pay off existing debt and fund ongoing growth and operations. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• PlayersTV Acquires Expectant Media. PlayersTV, the first media network owned by athletes and fans, has formalized its expansion into experiential content with the acquisition of Expectant Media, a women-owned agency founded by veteran executive Michele Ghee. Ghee has also been appointed president of PlayersTV, a transition from her previous role as the network’s first chairwoman of the board. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• GTCR Acquires LiveBarn. GTCR, a Chicago-based private equity firm, has acquired LiveBarn, a youth sports streaming service. The deal is valued at approximately $400 million. LiveBarn currently operates streaming services across 1,900+ facilities in 49 US states and 10 Canadian provinces. They primarily serve hockey venues and allow users to stream live games, watch replays, and download clips (more here).

• AO Ventures Invests In Padel Haus. AO Ventures, the investment arm of the Australian Open and Tennis Australia, has made a significant investment in Padel Haus, the US-based padel club upstart. Padel Haus operates six clubs nationwide and has reported plans for continued growth in tandem with the number of US players, which is forecast to double by 2030. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• Seattle Orcas Co-Owners Invest In Southern Brave. Seattle Orcas co-owners S. Somasegar and Sanjay Parthasarathy announced an investment in Southern Brave, the English cricket franchise of The Hundred. This strategic investment marks a significant deepening of their commitment to franchise cricket excellence on a global scale. It comes as GMR Group completed its acquisition of a 49% stake in Southern Brave. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• GameAbove Sports Invests In CHIP'd. GameAbove Sports, a private global investment company backed by CapStone Holdings focused on sports, entertainment, and giving, has announced its investment in CHIP’d Golf, a sports technology company pioneering smart golf balls with embedded electronics designed to provide real-time performance data. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• DAZN & Polymarket Announce Partnership. DAZN, an international sports streaming service, has partnered with Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction market platform, to offer prediction trading to its users. Through the agreement, Polymarket data will be integrated into live sports broadcasts on DAZN. DAZN said this will give sports fans “instant visibility into shifting probabilities, helping them understand momentum, potential outcomes, and key moments in sporting fixtures in a brand new, dynamic, and data‑driven way” (more here).

• Mercedes F1 & Microsoft Announce Partnership. The Mercedes Formula 1 (F1) motor racing team has unveiled two major new partnerships ahead of the 2026 season. The UK-based team has agreed multi-year deals with technology giant Microsoft and digital financial services platform Nu. As part of the Microsoft deal, the company’s logo will be displayed on the airbox and the front wing endplates of the newly revealed Mercedes W17 F1 car, as well as the drivers’ overalls (more here).

• Kapfenberger SV 1919 & Vestible Announce Partnership. Kapfenberger SV 1919, an Austrian football club, has announced an investment partnership with Vestible, a sports investment platform that lets the public invest in a club’s potential future sale. Through the partnership, Vestible will develop a structured investment offering tied to a potential future sale outcome, giving institutional and individual investors a new way to buy, hold, and sell a sports investment over time (more here).

• Disguise & ASB GlassFloor Announce Partnership. Disguise, a global technology company, and ASB GlassFloor, a sports flooring company, have announced a partnership to elevate sports courts globally. Disguise will power the backbone of ASB GlassFloor’s LumiFlex interactive LED floor platform, ensuring frame-accurate UHD playback, low latency, and stability across floor surfaces of any scale. This will enable coaches and fans alike to visualise ball-tracking data, players’ live positions, movement speed, and performance metrics (more here).

• Celebrities & Investors Back New Sport Typti. According to Front Office Sports, an 80-person investor group, including Steve Bellamy, Drew Brees, Nick Kyrgios, Tony Robbins, Chris Pine, JJ Abrams, Tiffany Haddish, and Bert Kreischer, announced they are unveiling Typti. This new sport is a cross between pickleball and tennis. Bellamy will serve as CEO of Typti Inc., the company overseeing the sport’s rollout (more here).

• Athvance Capital Officially Announces Launch. Athvance Capital, a new European sports investment platform, was announced this week. The platform, founded by Danny Menken and Karim Ben Rejeb, is focused on investing in emerging sports IP with global reach, as well as the technology and service providers that support the industry’s long-term growth (more here).

• NBA Launchpad Announces Fifth Cohort. The NBA has announced five new startups for the fifth cohort of its sports technology incubator. Companies include Cred, Atlas, Diddo, Swish Basket, and Perhiperal Labs. They will participate in a six-month pilot, which will give them access to hands-on collaboration and support from the NBA and the WNBA to scale and refine their technologies (more here).

• How The Australian Open Became A Tech Incubator. Tennis Australia has built a tech innovation machine that is changing how sports properties work with startups. There’s an in-house R&D lab that’s been developing analytics, broadcast, and fan engagement advancements, alongside a startup accelerator that’s piloted 40 companies, and a $40 million VC fund to capitalize those startups (more here).

• Several Athletes Invest In Ammortal. Ammortal, a human optimization company focused on elevating potential through advanced technology and transcendent experience, announced seven athletes, including Freddie Freeman, Mike Trout, Alex Bregman, Garrett Stubbs, George Kittle, Matt Chapman, and Bode Miller, have partnered with the company as Athlete Ambassadors and Investors (more here).

• Sports Illustrated Launches SI TV FAST Channel. Sports Illustrated (SI) has launched a new, 24/7 free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel, which will be distributed across multiple platforms. SI TV will feature original programming, live events, sports, lifestyle, and archival content. It will be available on Amazon FireTV, DirecTV, Sling Freestream, Anoki LiveTVx, Plex, LocalNow, Sports.TV, Tablo TV, DistroTV, Free Live Sports, and will launch soon on The Roku Channel (more here).

This week’s guest on the Vetted Sports podcast is Zhen Ren Teo & Miles Chamley-Watson.

Zhen Ren Teo & Miles Chamley-Watson are the CEO and Founder of the World Fencing League (WFL), respectively.

The WFL is a new professional fencing league set to debut in Los Angeles in April 2026, aiming to modernize the sport with simplified rules, faster matches, and AI-driven visuals to attract new fans and create viable professional careers for fencing athletes.

The league is incubated by Chiron Sports Group, a global family office-backed investment group dedicated to transforming sports for the future through value creation in operational excellence, community building, and technology enhancement.

In this episode, we discuss:
‣ The inception behind WFL and why no one has tried to build this before
‣ Why athlete storytelling is a priority for the league
‣ How technology will change the future of fencing

Check out the full episode here: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

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