What everybody needs to know about private equity and college sports, according to experts

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For most of 2025, private equity and institutional investors getting involved in college athletics was more of a hypothetical. There was investor interest and school interest, but plenty of technical and logistical hurdles got in the way.

But in the last few months of the year, those conversations weren’t hypothetical anymore. Utah broke the seal and announced a partnership. The Big 12 is working through a deal with private capital to provide cash infusions at the institutional level. And the Big Ten got this close to signing a deal with a pension fund. I expect other schools and conferences to have similar conversations — and perhaps even announce deals — over the next six months.

Last week, I had the chance to talk to two folks at Sheppard Mullin, a global law firm that works with the sports industry at multiple levels. Recently, Sheppard Mullin worked with one of the Big Ten institutions as the conference evaluated potentially partnering with an institutional investor.

Though I couldn’t get anybody to chat much about the specifics of the Big Ten proposal or where it might go next (at least, on the record), the Sheppard Mullin folks were happy to speak at a high level about what schools, conferences, institutional investors and the public ought to know about future deals.

So what’s in the deal?

David Sunkin, a co-leader of the firm’s sports industry team, was clear about the fact that there are major differences between a deal with a specific institution and a deal with an entire conference. Before any investor can partner with anybody in college athletics, they need to know exactly what they’re buying, as schools and conferences control very different assets.

“What are your typical revenue sources for conferences? That’s primarily the broadcast rights, bowl revenue, College Football Playoff revenue,” Sunkin explained. “Conferences do have some IP, a little ticket revenue … but in terms of hard assets, they’re usually at the school level.”

Hard assets can include real estate and MMR branding locations.

The real estate component is critical, not just for potential development projects around a stadium or a campus, but for the stadium itself. Many large programs, including some in the Big Ten, Sunkin pointed out, don’t actually own their major stadiums. UCLA, for example, as of right this second, plays at the Rose Bowl, which the city of Pasadena owns. Depending on the stadium lease, a school may not control all the parking, food, beverage or game-day revenue, and thus can’t sell it.

So who exactly controls what — and where specific rights are allocated between campus and conference — will matter a lot in the valuation and execution of any hypothetical deal.

“I also can’t imagine a world where a school would ever allow any of their real, fixed assets to be pledged into one of these deals,” Sunkin said. “UCLA wouldn’t let Pauley Pavilion get pledged into a deal, you know? Now, fixed signage, digital signage — sure, that’s a different thing. But not the actual stadium.”

Then Sunkin said what I think was the most important thing for any institutional investor in college sports to remember.