LeBron James is one of a number of NBA stars who have come together to purchase a new US sports franchise.
James, a one per cent stakeholder in Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group, and business partner and fellow FSG partner Maverick Carter, joined forces with basketball stars Draymond Green and Kevin Love to purchase an as yet unnamed Major League Pickleball team.
James and Carter, through their LRMR Ventures company, are purchasing a stake in a team alongside Green, Love, investment firm SC Holdings, Relevent Sports Group co-owner and CEO Daniel Sillman, and CMO of James and Carter's SpringHill Entertainment Company, Paul Rivera.
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The franchise that the star-studded consortium have is part of a four-team expansion to the MLP which will take the competition to 16 teams.
"Having LRMR Ventures, SC Holdings, and their incredible group as owners and investors in Major League Pickleball is not just great for MLP, but it’s a watershed moment for pickleball in general," said MLP founder Steve Kuhn.
The investment of Los Angeles Lakers star James and friend and business partner Carter in a pickleball team comes on the back of its huge rise in popularity in the US, with a Sports and Fitness Industry Association survey from earlier this year finding that 4.8m Americans played pickleball in 2021, representing average annual growth of 11.5 per cent over five years.
The sport, which resembles tennis and played by two or four players on a badminton-sized court using wooden paddles and a perforated ball, has demonstrated impressive age diversity, with all of the five main age brackets representing at least 12% of all players, the most popular demographic being the 18 to 34 year-olds which make up 28.8 per cent of all US players, according to Front Office Sports.
More than 60 new places to play the sport are reported to be sprouting up on average in the US each month, with the MLP targeting 40m players by 2030.
James, who first invested in Liverpool with a two per cent stake back in 2011 before converting it into one per cent of FSG's overall empire last year, became the first active professional basketball player to become a billionaire earlier this year thanks to his on and off court earnings. FSG were one of the investors in his SpringHill Entertainment Company in October 2021.
Last month Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk became an investor alongside tennis player Andy Murray in Game4Padel, a firm that claims to be the fastest growing business in the padel industry, a sport that has some similarities with pickleball but played in an enclosed space like squash.
Like pickleball in the US, Padel has become a popular fitness pastime for professional footballers and has seen a boom in popularity to become one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK.
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