FutureSports Launches as New Index Provider Transforming Sports Statistics into Tradable Financial Instruments

FutureSports, the new independent index administrator transforming professional and college sports statistics into rules-based, benchmark financial indexes, announced its emergence from stealth. Backed by a broad range of leading financial and sports institutions, FutureSports in the coming months will announce a series of partnerships, collaborations and products that will bring significant new risk management and trading opportunities to the massive ecosystem supporting the most popular sports.

FutureSports previously raised a seed investment round co-led by Marquee Ventures, spun out of the ownership group of the Chicago Cubs. Major financial industry leaders joined the round, including CME Ventures (the corporate venture capital division of CME Group), Robinhood Markets Inc., WEDBUSH and DRW Special Investments (an investment arm of DRW). Other investors include Motivate VC, Phoenix Capital Ventures, and John and Linda Henry (Fenway Sports Group).

The company also announced the addition of industry experts to its board of directors, including Chairman Mark Wassersug, longtime Chief Operating & Information Officer of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE); Tim McCourt, Senior Managing Director, Global Head of Equity, FX, and Alternative Products at CME Group, and Erik Hammer, Managing Partner at Marquee Ventures.

The firm will soon unveil its first series of exclusive partnerships with major sports leagues, paving the way for institutional investors and companies in and around the sports industry to manage their risk in an unprecedented fashion and participate in regulated, tradable, broad-based index futures contracts based on team and athlete statistical performance. FutureSports creates rules-based financial indexes, known as FutureSports Performance Indexes (FSPI), that accurately represent the performance of teams and athletes in prominent sports leagues. By utilizing transparent, rules-based methodologies based on officially reported statistical outcomes, the company creates continuous values designed to underpin tradable financial products, such as listed derivatives, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and over-the-counter (OTC) swaps.

Potential market participants will include league broadcasting partners, team and athlete sponsors and endorsers, insurers, stadium owners and operators, private equity investors, lenders, and apparel manufacturers. Asset managers, pension funds and professional trading firms are expected to participate in the contracts and contribute to liquidity in this new uncorrelated asset class. Retail investors will also be able to participate in the first-of-their-kind trading vehicles, which the company expects to capture the interest of sophisticated traders looking for more traditional financial trading instruments.

Leigh Taylforth, FutureSports Co-Founder, said: “The global sporting industry generates $650 billion a year, yet there has been no liquid, robust opportunity to hedge the extensive and varied industry risks that range from weather events, to injuries, to unanticipated behavior issues and more. That is about to change. We’ve been truly gratified to see the interest our business has generated within the sports and sports-adjacent industries and the quality of investors we have attracted already.”

Rhett Dinsdale, FutureSports Co-Founder, said: “Up until today, we have been operating in stealth mode while developing our products and establishing key relationships that we expect to be fundamental to our success as we move forward. The recent rise in popularity of prediction markets has only reinforced the concept we created several years ago, that sports as an asset class has huge utility within the sports and entertainment industries, with indexes serving as key institutional instruments to manage risk. What is sorely needed is the type of reliable data and financial instruments that institutional investors have leveraged for so long within the regulated derivatives industry, and we’re excited to bring these to market.”

The Executive team includes Co-Founders Taylforth and Dinsdale, who each have more than 20 years of experience in derivatives trading for market makers, investment banks and hedge funds, along with:

• Dave Abbott, Chief Technology Officer – formerly Managing Director at Sportradar;

• Steve Byrd, Head of Partnerships – formerly Chief Operating Officer (COO) at STATS LLC & Chief Commercial Officer at Sportradar US;

• Jodie Gunzberg, Head of Index Services – formerly Managing Director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, Morgan Stanley & CoinDesk;

• Tom Jenkins, Head of Business Development – formerly Head of Index Partnerships & Strategy at FTSE Russell;

• Josh Kravitt, Head of Operations – formerly Director at CME Ventures;

• Sunny Modi, Head of Product – formerly Head of BI at Ardent Leisure Group;

• Mike Philipp, Chief Legal & Strategy Officer – formerly partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP;

• Charlie Thornton, Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer – formerly Chief of Staff and COO at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).