Gareth Bale has launched the Juggernaut Diversified Sports Fund, rumored to be targeting more than $500 million. He has partnered with Juggernaut Capital Partners, a private equity firm with a 20-year track record and roughly $1.2 billion in assets under management.

The fund is targeting majority stakes in teams and leagues, international football clubs, women's sports franchises, youth sports platforms, and golf and experiential assets.

Juggernaut has the operating history to back the thesis, having owned KemperSports, 3STEP Sports in the youth space, and Mitchell & Ness, which it sold to Fanatics in 2022. The sports fund formalizes a strategy it has already run in pieces, with a top-level retired athlete on board.

Managing Partner at Juggernaut John Shulman told Front Office Sports that they would rather buy control positions in growing businesses than write minority checks into billion-dollar franchises that are already fully priced. The first investment in a professional women's sports team is expected within the next few months.

When asked why this deal is more than just having an athlete at the face of the investment group, Shulman, using the example of buying a pro soccer team, said about Bale, "He doesn't want to run a team. He wants to be somebody who can assess key positions we should fill. He's got a very impressive opinion about how you recruit and retain players." (FOS)

Shulman says he looks for partners who can add unusual value, and he pointed to Bale's expertise on the performance side and a network that has already surfaced deal flow (SBJ). Rather than attaching his name and stepping back, Bale is being positioned to source and evaluate assets inside the fund.

The World Cup is the most powerful audience-building machine in sports, and 40-year-old goalkeeper Josimar “Vozinha” Dias is the clearest proof of it this tournament.

Monday morning, Vozinha sat around 56,000 followers. By Tuesday, he was past 9 million, putting him ahead of Victor Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson, two of the biggest and most relevant names in sports.

Vozinha did not turn professional until 25, starting with the Angolan club Progresso before bouncing around Europe. He has earned one trophy in a 19-year career, and most stats databases do not even hold his full match history.

Then, Cabo Verde played Spain at the Atlanta Stadium in the nation's first ever World Cup match. Vozinha faced 27 shots and saved seven, holding the European Champions to zero goals and helping Cabo Verde gain their first ever World Cup point.

He now sits at roughly 25 times the population of Cabo Verde itself, a country of about 500,000 people.

The performance was the catalyst. But it did not travel alone. Brazilian streamer CazéTV holds rights to World Cup matches and has more than 31 million YouTube subscribers. After noticing Vozinha’s small following mid-broadcast, they told their audience to follow him. The saves earned the attention and a massive distribution platform converted it into numbers.

A single World Cup match can manufacture an audience that takes most athletes a decade to build. With a channel to move through, Vozinha showed how having both can create a major impact.

Our very own Casey Toohill came through with a blind ranking of some of the biggest athlete investments. Watch the full video here.

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TIVA is a French performance cosmetics brand offering athlete-engineered grip formulas (a sweat-neutralizing gel and a friction-barrier wax), with sunscreen and muscle-recovery lines launching in 2026.

Elina Svitolina, the former WTA World No. 3 and Olympic medalist, joined as both ambassador and investor, taking a position on the cap table as part of TIVA’s (roughly) $600K pre-seed round led by Apex at a €3.5M post-money valuation.

The partnership started without a pitch. Svitolina ordered the gel off TIVA’s website during her 2025 off-season, used it across practices and matches, then invested months later. TIVA closed its first year with about 20,000 users and distribution across 60 French retail outlets, and is targeting 200,000 users as it expands internationally behind its new PROTECT and RECOVER lines. Svitolina is the first athlete on its cap table.