🏌🏾‍♂️ Inside Rory McIlroy's £225m Empire

Happy New Year everyone

2024 was a wild ride. This platform went from:

• 71 YouTube Subscribers —> 18,704 YouTube Subscribers

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If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter before you’ll know that I say this alot but I am going to say it again… THANK YOU!

I have ambitious plans and ideas for 2025, some that I will be revealing very soon. My goal is to add another digit to every one of those numbers by Christmas this year!

Today, we dive into one of my favourite athletes Rory McIlroy. I don’t think it will be long before the wider populous is forced to pay attention to what this man is building.

This email is being sent to you one day before the launch of The Golf League!

TGL is a new golf tournament from TMRW Sports, a company owned by Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Mike McCarley, their business partner.

The game will be played indoors in a massive purpose-built arena in Florida and has fantastic backing and broadcasting already.

ESPN will broadcast the League at 8pm EST in the US. Sky will broadcast the League in the UK (albeit at 2am UK time).

Sofi, a large banking company in the US is the leagues title sponsor too.

TMRW Sports is one of the many companies Rory McIlroy has equity stakes in as he builds a rather impressive investment portfolio through his venture fund Symphony Ventures. I’ve put together a timeline of some of those investments:

• July 2021: Puttery ~ Venture Round

Rory invested £7.2m in Drive Shack’s latest venture Puttery (a Top Golf alternative in the US). Rory will receive 10% ownership in each Puttery venue as they are opened in the United States. They are on pace to open 50 Puttery stores by the end of 2025.

• June 2021: LetsGetChecked ~ Series D

LetsGetChecked offers at-home tests including screenings for sexual health, cholesterol, diabetes, thyroid and COVID-19, as well as follow-up care through its telehealth and pharmacy app. Rory’s investment was undisclosed.

• May 2021: Kin Insurance ~ Series C

• April 2021: Kaia Health ~ Series C

• Feb 2021: PatientsLikeMe ~ Venture Round

• June 2020: Kaia Health ~ Series B

• May 2020: Golf Genius Software ~ Series A raising $5m

Rory’s first foray as a lead investor was in Golf Genius. Their flagship product GGTMS is the most widely used and fully featured golf tournament management system in the world.

Since this run of investments a few years ago, Symphony Ventures has invested in TickPick (the ticketing platform, think Ticketmaster but far less predatory), Future (think working out at the cutting edge of tech) and Soothe Healthcare (think a 1-stop-shop for women’s health).

The venture roster he is building is impressive and soon I cannot imagine the prominence he will have in the sporting zeitgeist.

The Sunday Times Rich List listed his “net worth” at £225m in 2024. He is just 35 years old.

It truly is a phenomenal effort at such a young age for the man from Northern Ireland and TGL just kicking off, we might just be at the beginning of the journey…

This tournament was meant to begin a year ago but an incredible accident at their host site saw this be delayed by an entire year. See below:

The thing that is most innovative about this league however, is the ownership structure. The cap table is broken down as follows:

• 54%: TMRW Sports (Rory, Tiger and Mike McCarley)

• 18%: The PGA Tour

• 18%: Franchise Owners

• 10%: Player Pool

I’ve highlighted the franchise owners in bold because they truly are a star-studded affair:

Team San Francisco (The Bay Golf Club)
- Majority Owners: Marc Lasry (Co-Owner of the Milwaukee Bucks) and Steph Curry
- Minority Owners: Klay Thompson, Draymond Green

Team Atlanta (Atlanta Drive GC)
- Majority Owners: Arthur Blank (Co-Founder of Home Depot)

Team New York (New York Golf Club)
- Majority Owners: Steve Cohen (owner of NY Mets)

Team Florida (Jupiter Links Golf Club)
- Majority Owners: David Blitzer (Co-Managing Partner of NBA 76ers) and Tiger Woods

Team LA (Los Angeles Golf Club)
- Majority Owners: Alexis O’Hanion (Co-Founder of Reddit)
- Minority Owners: Serena Williams, Venus Williams

Team Boston (Boston Common Golf)
- Majority Owners: Fenway Sports Group (Owners of Liverpool Football Club)

Innovative new sports leagues are sprouting up all the time and this might be the most innovative of the lot.

For a deeper dive into Rory’s massive empire, watch my video below.

Happy New Year!