League One Volleyball Funding, Investors & Competitors

Suning Sports is the sports arm of Chinese retail and property conglomerate Suning Holdings Group, headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and incorporated as Jiangsu Suning Sports Industry Co., a joint venture of Suning Holdings, which owned 90% at the end of 2016, and Suning Appliance Group. It built a business spanning sports media, over-the-top streaming, sports retail and youth training. Its digital platform PP Sports bought Chinese broadcast rights to major football competitions, including the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, the Chinese Super League and, from 2018-19, exclusive television and online rights to the Bundesliga for five seasons, along with AFC competitions and WWE, earning revenue from subscriptions and advertising. It opened its first flagship fan store in Nanjing in 2017, planning 152 stores by 2020, and developed grassroots training programmes. Through its Hong Kong subsidiary Suning Sports International, it sits above Great Horizon, the vehicle through which Suning bought a majority stake in Inter Milan in 2016, and the group also owned Chinese Super League club Jiangsu Suning. In July 2018 Suning Sports raised a $600 million Series A led by Goldman Sachs and Alibaba, with Evergrande, Yunfeng Capital, SenseTime, CCB International and others, valuing it at about $2.6 billion. Under financial strain, Suning halted operations at its Chinese football clubs, including champions Jiangsu, in February 2021.

TWG Global is an American holding company headquartered in New York City and Chicago, led by Guggenheim Partners co-founder and chief executive Mark Walter and investor Thomas Tull. Walter founded it as the vehicle for his investments across financial services, insurance, artificial intelligence, sports and entertainment, energy and merchant banking, and owned 21% of it as of November 2024; Tull joined as co-chairman in 2025 after running the AI-focused holding group Tulco. Its financial-services arm, Delaware Life Holdings, includes Group 1001 Insurance and Guggenheim Partners, and in April 2025 TWG bought a 5% stake in Mubadala Capital while Mubadala committed a $10 billion syndicated investment to TWG. In AI it partnered with Palantir Technologies in March 2025 to build commercial tools for financial-services companies, and xAI joined that partnership in May 2025. In November 2024 it took full ownership of Andretti Global, and its TWG Motorsports unit now runs the Cadillac Formula 1 team with General Motors along with NASCAR's Spire Motorsports and IMSA's Wayne Taylor Racing. Walter's sports holdings also include the Los Angeles Dodgers, bought in 2012 for $2.15 billion, and a majority of the Los Angeles Lakers, acquired in 2025 at a $10 billion valuation.

LaLiga is the Spanish professional football league association, legally the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, headquartered in Madrid, which runs Spain's two professional divisions. Formed on 27 July 1984, it groups 42 member clubs: 20 in the Primera División, branded LALIGA EA SPORTS, and 22 in the Segunda División, branded LALIGA HYPERMOTION. It centrally sells the competitions' audiovisual rights, with Movistar+ and DAZN holding broadcasting rights until 2032, and sells title and commercial sponsorship on behalf of its member clubs. Javier Tebas has chaired the organisation since 2013, and the league changed its title sponsor from Banco Santander to EA Sports from the 2023-24 season. In August 2021 its executive committee approved Boost LaLiga, a deal with CVC Capital Partners to fund technology, international growth and club investment. In December 2021, after 37 of 42 clubs approved it, LaLiga and CVC Fund VIII signed the agreement under which the league and clubs receive a total of €1.994 billion, with LaLiga valued at €24.25 billion by Rothschild & Co and Duff & Phelps.

Liberty Media is an American media and motorsport holding company headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, whose shares trade on Nasdaq as Formula One Group tracking stocks. Its main assets are Formula One, which it acquired in January 2017, and MotoGP organiser Dorna Sports, in which it took an 84% stake in July 2025. Both series earn revenue from race promotion fees paid by circuit hosts, media rights sold to broadcasters and streamers, and sponsorship, hospitality and licensing. In 2025 Formula One revenue rose 14% to $3.9 billion with operating income of $632 million, and MotoGP revenue rose 14% to $573 million. The original Liberty Media was spun off from Tele-Communications Inc. in 1991 under John Malone, who is now chairman emeritus; Robert Bennett is chairman and Derek Chang chief executive. The group has repeatedly reshaped itself through tracking stocks and spin-offs, splitting off the Atlanta Braves in 2023, combining its SiriusXM interest into a separate listed company in September 2024 and separating Liberty Live, holder of its Live Nation stake, in December 2025.

Rogers Communications is the largest wireless service provider in Canada with more than 11 million subscribers, equating to one-third of the total Canadian market. Rogers' wireless business accounts for more than half of total revenue and has been growing at a higher rate than other segments. The cable segment, which provides about 38% of total revenue after acquiring Shaw, offers home internet, television, and landline phone service to consumers and businesses. Remaining sales come from Rogers' media unit, which owns and operates various television and radio stations and major Toronto sports franchises, including the Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, and Argonauts.

Yuanfudao is China's leading platform for live online courses targeting primary and secondary school students. It delivers comprehensive curricula covering English, Mathematical Olympiad, and full-subject secondary programs through sessions led by nationally recognized teachers. Founded in 2012, the service enables home-based tutoring with interactive online features for students across the country.

TKO Group Holdings Inc is a sports and sports entertainment company that operates combat sports and sports entertainment companies. It owns and manages valuable sports and entertainment intellectual property. The company distributes content and monetizes its intellectual property through four activities: Media rights, production, and content, Live events and hospitality, Partnerships and marketing and Consumer products licensing, The company has two reportable segments, UFC and WWE. The company generates majority of revenue from the UFC segment. The UFC segment revenue consists of media rights fees associated with the distribution of its programming content, ticket sales, and site fees associated with the business's international live events.

LFP Media is the commercial subsidiary of France's Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), based in Paris, which holds and exploits the media and marketing rights of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. It sells domestic and international broadcasting rights, sponsorship and licensing for the two professional divisions and passes the proceeds to the member clubs through the league. After DAZN ended its five-year domestic Ligue 1 rights contract after a single season in 2025, LFP Media launched its own direct-to-consumer streaming channel, Ligue 1+, in August 2025 at EUR 14.99 a month with a 12-month commitment, and the service passed one million subscribers. The company was created in 2022, when CVC Capital Partners' Fund VIII invested EUR 1.5 billion for a 13% stake, valuing its share capital at EUR 11.5 billion, while the LFP kept the remaining 87%. Former M6 chief Nicolas de Tavernost led LFP Media through the Ligue 1+ launch and resigned in February 2026. CVC funded about half of its commitment with debt and in February 2026 cut the value of its EUR 750 million equity contribution to about EUR 200 million, while the French Football Federation has proposed a new club-owned company, with CVC as a shareholder, to take over the running and marketing of the professional competitions.

PGA TOUR Enterprises is a for-profit commercial company created by the PGA TOUR to hold and develop the tour's commercial businesses. It was launched in January 2024 and is controlled by the PGA TOUR, the non-profit membership organisation that runs the main professional men's golf tour in the United States, with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of American sports team owners led by Fenway Sports Group, as a minority investor. The company is responsible for the tour's commercial activities, including media rights, sponsorship, tournament and fan-engagement businesses, and new media and commercial opportunities. It earns revenue mainly from the sale of television and streaming rights and from sponsorship and licensing tied to PGA TOUR events. A player equity program gives nearly 200 PGA TOUR members equity grants in the business. Its 13-member board combines PGA TOUR player directors, PGA TOUR executives and four directors appointed by Strategic Sports Group. The company is based at the PGA TOUR's headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Yankee Global Enterprises is a New York holding company, controlled by the family of George Steinbrenner, that owns the New York Yankees baseball team through the New York Yankees Partnership. It was formed in 1999 as YankeeNets through a combination of the Yankees and the New Jersey Nets, and took its present name in 2004. The company holds a plurality stake in the YES Network, which broadcasts the Yankees, a stake in the stadium hospitality group Legends, and minority stakes in the soccer clubs New York City FC and AC Milan. It also operates Yankee Stadium. Hal Steinbrenner is chairman and chief executive.

Pearson is a British education and assessment company headquartered in London, listed on the London Stock Exchange as a FTSE 100 constituent with a secondary New York Stock Exchange listing through American depositary receipts. It is organised into five business units: Assessment & Qualifications, Virtual Learning, English Language Learning, Higher Education, and Enterprise Learning and Skills. It owns Edexcel, one of the main GCSE and A-level examination boards in England, and sells learning materials, assessments, qualifications, virtual schooling and digital learning products to schools, universities, governments, employers and individual learners. In 2025 it reported revenue of £3,577 million, operating income of £507 million and an average workforce of 17,062. The company traces its origins to 1844, when Samuel Pearson set up the business that became S. Pearson & Son; in the twentieth century it built a publishing and media portfolio that included the Financial Times, a 50% stake in The Economist and Penguin Books. Under Marjorie Scardino it refocused on education, forming Pearson Education in 1998, and between 2015 and 2020 it sold the Financial Times, its Economist stake and its remaining stake in Penguin Random House. Omar Abbosh, formerly of Microsoft, has been chief executive since January 2024.

Fanatics Collectibles is a trading card and collectibles company owned by Fanatics, the sports merchandise and commerce group. It was launched in 2021 as Fanatics Trading Cards after winning long-term licences for trading cards from Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League Players Association and other players' associations. In January 2022 it acquired the trading card business of Topps, which gave it an established brand and production base, and it has since operated under the Fanatics Collectibles name. The company designs, produces and sells physical and digital trading cards, memorabilia and other collectibles to hobby collectors and retailers. Revenue comes mainly from product sales through retail, hobby shops and its own direct-to-consumer channels. Leagues and players' associations were given equity in the company as part of the licensing arrangements.

New York Giants is a National Football League franchise founded in 1925 by Tim Mara, one of the oldest clubs in the league. The team plays its home games at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which it shares with the New York Jets. The Mara family has owned the club since its founding, and since 1991 control has been shared equally with the Tisch family, which bought half of the team that year. The Giants have won eight league championships, including four Super Bowls. Like other NFL clubs, the team earns most of its revenue from the league's shared national media and licensing income, supplemented by ticket and premium seating sales, sponsorship and merchandise. In 2025 the owners sold a 10% limited partnership stake to Julia Koch and her family.

Las Vegas Raiders is a professional American football team in the National Football League, based in the Las Vegas area of Nevada. The franchise was founded on January 30, 1960 in Oakland as a charter member of the American Football League, played in Los Angeles from 1982 to 1994, returned to Oakland in 1995 and moved to Las Vegas in 2020. It plays at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, a 65,000-seat venue that opened in 2020 at a cost of about $1.9 billion, including $750 million of public funding, and has its headquarters and training facility in Henderson. The Raiders won the 1967 AFL championship and Super Bowls XI, XV and XVIII. Al Davis controlled the team from 1972 until his death in 2011, and his son Mark Davis is the principal owner; in 2024 NFL owners approved the sale of minority stakes to investors including Tom Wagner of Knighthead Capital and Tom Brady. The team earns revenue from the NFL's shared national media contracts, ticketing, premium seating, sponsorship and merchandise; Forbes estimated its 2025-season revenue at $887 million and operating income at $191 million.

Chicago Bears is a professional American football team based in Chicago, Illinois, that plays in the North Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League. The club was organised by the A. E. Staley starch company as the Decatur Staleys, became a charter member of the league in 1920 under George Halas, moved to Chicago in 1921 and adopted the Bears name in 1922. It has won eight pre-merger NFL championships, most recently in 1963, and Super Bowl XX after the 1985 season. The team has played at Soldier Field since 1971, and its headquarters and training facility are at Halas Hall in Lake Forest, Illinois. The Halas-McCaskey family has controlled the franchise for more than a century; Virginia Halas McCaskey was principal owner from 1983 until her death in February 2025, when her son George McCaskey took over. The Bears earn revenue from NFL national media and sponsorship distributions, ticketing, local sponsorship and merchandise. A sale of a minority stake held by the McKenna family in September 2025 valued the team at $8.9 billion.

New Oriental Education & Technology is a prominent private education provider in China, offering a wide array of educational services. These include overseas test preparation and consulting services, high school academic tutoring, nonacademic tutoring, and intelligent learning systems and devices. Additionally, the company holds a 57% ownership stake in East Buy, a leading player in the livestreaming e-commerce market.

Dapper Labs is a Vancouver-based consumer technology company and self-described venture studio that builds digital collectibles, games and finance products on the Flow blockchain, which it created. Its best-known product is NBA Top Shot, a marketplace for officially licensed NBA video highlights sold as digital collectibles, which has more than 1.6 million collectors and over US$1.2 billion in cumulative sales. Other products include NFL ALL DAY, Disney Pinnacle, a digital pin collecting and trading app featuring Star Wars, Pixar and Disney characters, CryptoKitties, the 2017 blockchain game from which the company grew, Peak Money, an automated-yield and prize-linked savings app, and the virtual influencer studio Miquela. Dapper Labs earns revenue mainly from primary sales of digital collectibles and fees on marketplace trades, working with sports leagues, players' associations and entertainment brands as licensors. The company was spun out of the design studio Axiom Zen in 2018 under chief executive Roham Gharegozlou. It has raised more than US$600 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, GV, Samsung NEXT, Coatue, BOND and GIC, and its September 2021 round valued it at US$7.6 billion.

Duolingo Inc is a technology company that develops a mobile learning platform to learn languages and is the top-grossing app in the Education category on both Google Play and the Apple App Store. Its products are powered by sophisticated data analytics and artificial intelligence and delivered with class art, animation, and design to make it easier for learners to stay motivated master new material, and achieve their learning goals. Its solutions include the Duolingo Language Learning App, Super Duolingo, Duolingo English Test: AI-Driven Language Assessment, Duolingo For Schools, Duolingo ABC, and Duolingo Math. It has four predominant sources of revenue; time-based subscriptions, in-app advertising placement by third parties, and the Duolingo English Test, and In-App Purchases.