TMRW Sports announced the close of its Series A investment round co-led by Dynasty Equity and Connect Ventures. TMRW was founded in 2022 by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and former Golf Channel executive Mike McCarley, and its first project is the tech-driven team golf league, TGL, set to launch in January 2025.
The funding round values TMRW Sports at nearly $500 million, according to someone familiar with the terms who was not authorized to comment publicly. Bloomberg was the first to report the funding news and valuation.
Dynasty Equity was co-founded by Jonathan Nelson and Don Cornwell to invest in sports assets and last year bought a minority stake in Liverpool FC from Fenway Sports Group. As part of the TMRW investment, Cornwell joins its board of directors as an observer.
Connect is an investment partnership between entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. Connect led the initial fundraising round for TMRW Sports with participation from investors with deep ties to the banking and sports business world. They included longtime NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol, former Goldman Sachs partner and NFL EVP Eric Grubman, former NHL COO John Collins and former chairman of Goldman Sachs global equity capital markets John Daly.
In November 2022, TMRW Sports announced a deeper roster of investors including team owners Arthur Blank, David Blitzer and Fenway Sports Group, as well as star athletes Stephen Curry, Lewis Hamilton, Alex Morgan, Shohei Ohtani and Serena Williams, and musicians Justin Bieber, DJ Khaled, Darius Rucker and Justin Timberlake.
TMRW Sports was founded to use technology and new media to push sports into the future. The six TGL teams will each feature four golfers hitting shots into a 3,000-square-foot golf simulator screen until they are within 50 yards of the hole and the action transfers to a 22,475-square-foot customizable short game area that transforms between holes. TGL rules also include a shot clock, and the league plans for players to be mic’d up during the action. A seating area for 1,500 has been designed around the playing zone.
TGL was slated to start play this January but delayed its inaugural season to 2025 after a power failure caused the dome of the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to deflate. The required repairs caused the delay.
Eben Novy-Williams contributed reporting.
