Investment Firm APEX Is Raising $350 Million To Target European Sports Assets
December 10, 2025
When APEX founder António Caçorino looks back at the private equity deals his sports-focused investment firm has done over the past few years, like buying stakes in Formula 1 team Alpine and Italian soccer club Venezia FC, one regret comes to mind. “We kind of felt that with the added value that we’ve brought, we should have a bit more ownership and a bit more governance,” the 34-year-old CEO says.
Those are the limitations of an outfit managing only around $60 million in assets, most of which is concentrated in a venture capital fund focused on sports tech investments. In the handful of private equity moves the firm has consummated, it has picked up stakes of less than 20%.
Now, however, APEX is positioning itself to take bigger swings.
On Wednesday, the firm will announce the launch of a high-growth private equity fund with plans to raise 300 million euros, or about $350 million at the current exchange rate. APEX, which is based just west of Lisbon in Oeiras, Portugal, intends to use that newfound scale to pursue minority stakes ranging from 20% to 49% in teams, leagues and other sports assets. Over the life of the ten-year fund, Caçorino expects to strike 10 to 20 deals, with ticket sizes falling between $15 million and $50 million.
In an industry oozing with opportunity, he sees that as just the beginning.
“We feel that we can deploy even more,” Caçorino says. “But I think it’s always good to have your target a little bit below where your realistic pipeline is so you make sure that you’re really investing in the best deals.”
Those, he believes, will come from small and mid-size targets mostly in Europe—an area of the sports world that has mostly been overlooked by large institutional investors because of its miniscule scale and obstacles to commercialization. But the reality, Caçorino argues, is that these assets, with valuations of $60 million to $600 million, generally have a lower risk profile and fewer regulatory hurdles.
APEX also contends that its connections and the industry knowledge of its limited partners can aid the growth of its portfolio companies. For instance, the firm’s venture capital fund, which debuted three years after the firm was founded in 2020, has attracted more than 100 professional athlete investors from 17 sports, including McLaren’s Lando Norris, Williams’ Carlos Sainz and many of the drivers on the Formula 1 grid. (Red Bull’s newly formed investment arm also invested in the venture fund in September.)
One other benefit of APEX’s existing relationships in the sports industry is the opportunity for cross-pollination with the sports tech companies that are part of its venture fund, which include Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports, the organizer of the TGL golf league; Output, an analytics firm that helps strength coaches measure athletes’ workouts; and ScorePlay, an AI-powered platform that manages and distributes media content on behalf of sports organizations.
That is not to say that turning around, say, a small soccer club in Europe will be an easy task, notes Andy Appleby, the founder and CEO of General Sports Worldwide, an investment bank, player agency, sports consultancy and executive search firm operating in the U.S. and Europe. Increasing a team’s revenue usually involves raising ticket prices, finding new sponsors or bolstering an academy to sell players.
“There’s nothing simple about it,” says Appleby, who is familiar with APEX but has not worked with the firm. “There’s no easy way to success other than to risk a lot of money.”
But the reward can be worth that risk. Caçorino is aiming for the new fund to achieve annual returns exceeding 20% because of the high-upside nature of its intended investments. By comparison, private equity has generally averaged about 14% over the past 20 years, as measured by the Cambridge Associates U.S. Private Equity Index.
APEX’s goal is to create a clear path to exits by cultivating assets into targets for large institutional investors and their rapidly growing war chests.
Apollo Global Management, which has $908 billion in assets under management, announced the launch of a $5 billion sports fund in September and, two months later, took control of Spanish soccer club Atlético Madrid at a $2.55 billion valuation. Fellow private equity giants Ares Management, CVC Capital Partners and Sixth Street have also written checks in the space, alongside smaller, sports-focused firms such as Arctos Sports Partners.
“There’s still a big disparity between people that will potentially sell and the bigger investors,” Caçorino says. “So that puts us in a beautiful sweet spot.”
Even with that perceived advantage, APEX is diversifying its approach. While the firm intends to allocate 70% of the new fund toward minority stakes in small and mid-size assets, 15% is expected to go to more established properties in the U.S., such as an NBA team, Caçorino says. The other 15% is earmarked for buyouts, the next frontier for APEX.
While the firm to this point has never held a controlling stake, Caçorino expects the new fund to have one or two such deals as long as the circumstances are right. It would likely have to be a European asset with an enterprise value of, at most, 50 million euros and in an area where the firm is more comfortable, such as motorsports or soccer.
Caçorino is in no rush to change what is working—“I do think there’s a lot of opportunities in assets, teams and leagues that don’t want to give up control,” he says—but if the buyout experiment is successful, it could lead to another fund with a greater emphasis on majority stakes. Caçorino is also considering potential future investment opportunities in Asia and South America and already eyeing another venture fund next year.
“I think with sports generally, whoever’s been reading the news and just been in the sector and looking at the opportunities in the pipeline, the time is now,” he says. “We’re a five-year-old business, and the last five years have been critical for sports.”
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