Former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry is nearing a deal to buy a control stake in the NWSL‘s North Carolina Courage from Steve Malik at a roughly $108 million valuation, according to multiple people familiar with the details.
Lasry’s offer is for 60% of the Courage, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. The billionaire recently signed a letter of intent, typically a non-binding document outlining the basic deal points, one of the people added.
Under the proposal, Lasry would be the team’s principal owner, a source said. His private equity fund could play a role in the financing, but the proposed structure is not the same as PE giant Sixth Street’s ownership of recent expansion team Bay FC.
If a deal is reached, it would still be subject to board approval. Lasry, the Courage and the NWSL declined to comment.
It is a pivot for Lasry, who expressed interest in the Seattle Reign and was in the running to buy Angel City FC before Willow Bay and Bob Iger secured a control stake in the NWSL’s most valuable club at a $250 million valuation. The Courage sit on the other end of the NWSL’s financial table with one of the lowest revenues in the league. The club has often been mentioned as a potential seller, given that nearly every other NWSL team is either a new franchise or has a new principal governor over the past four years, and most of those ownership groups want to invest heavily to propel the league forward.
Sportico valued the team last year at $52 million.
The Courage were founded in 2017 after Malik acquired the Western New York Flash and moved the club to North Carolina. The team won the 2018 and 2019 NWSL championships. In 2021, Malik added a half-dozen minority investors, including four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka. Last summer, the Courage raised $15 million at a $66 million valuation.
The deal would be another marker in the explosion of NWSL team values. The San Diego Wave and Angel City paid roughly $2 million expansion fees in the run-up to their debuts in 2022. This year, Lauren Leichtman and her husband Arthur Levine bought the Wave in a two-part transaction, with the second part expected to close next month at a $120 million valuation.
Boston and Bay FC both paid $53 million expansion fees, but owners are looking for $100 million in the latest round of expansion that is expected to add a 16th club before the end of the year.
Lasry and his sister Sonia Gardner founded the private equity firm Avenue Capital Group in 1995. It manages $12.2 billion in assets. Last year, Lasry launched Avenue Sports Opportunities Fund after he sold his 25% stake in the Bucks at a $3.2 billion valuation. The new fund has raised $445.1 million as of June, according to SEC filings.
The fund’s first investment was the purchase of the San Francisco-based franchise in TGL, the tech-infused golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. In November, Avenue Sports was the lead investor in the purchase of SailGP’s U.S. team last year. Other investments include the New York Mavericks of the Professional Bull Riders Team Series, a stake in Trackhouse Entertainment Group, immersive tech platform Cosm, EPL club Ipswich Town and PGA Tour Enterprises, the new commercial arm of the PGA Tour.
Lasry is worth $1.9 billion, according to Forbes.
“You’re literally in the first inning, second inning of sports,” Lasry told CNBC last week. “You are going to have private equity coming in, people are raising capital, this is like literally a trillion-dollar industry when you look at all the different subsets.”