Sports consulting agency Elevate has added a new member to its ownership group.
Levy, a hospitality company specializing in sports and entertainment dining, has joined the Elevate ownership group, which already includes the San Francisco 49ers, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE) and Velocity Capital Management. The concessionaire joins the cap table as Elevate plans on opening new offices in 2025 to serve a client roster of more than 1,000 organizations.
Elevate CEO and 49ers president Al Guido said Levy’s relationships, current league partners and data analytics team, E15 Group, made it an ideal fit. The company expects to provide clients with a robust slate of fan data.
“When you start checking off all the boxes, it made too much sense not to join forces,” Guido said in an interview.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Levy CEO Andy Lansing will join the company’s board of directors as part of this transaction. Lansing and Velocity Capital Management managing partner David Abrams are being appointed to a board that includes Guido, 49ers CEO Jed York, Arctos partner Chad Hutchinson and Bolt Ventures partner Scott Krase. The deal started as an internal funding round, where Velocity increased its percentage in the company, before Elevate considered external strategic partners and landed on Levy, the official hospitality partner for the 49ers.
Elevate clients include the PGA Tour, NASCAR and the U.S. Open. The company is moving forward with its new-look ownership group, which no longer includes real estate company Oak View Group, concert giant Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation. The three entities joined the original ownership group in 2018 when Elevate first launched. They remain partners and assist on select client projects but are no longer invested.
The 49ers and Levy have previous history of being capital partners, investig in tech startup VenueNext, which was later sold to Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR) in 2021. For Levy, owned by Britain’s Compass Group, acquiring equity in Elevate was a natural progression. Both companies have partnered with each other for years on activations and events, some of which were held in Levy restaurants. Compass has more than 55,000 cilent locations around 45 countries—a footprint that is appealing to Elevate as it looks to become a global hospitality leader.
“Their broad network is appetizing to us,” Guido said. “From a North America (standpoint), we feel really good about our services and no doubt will continue to add, but with our global ambitions we thought Levy and Compass could really help us.”
This is the latest move for Elevate after three major acquisitions this past year: global executive search firm SRI, Fenway Sports Management’s Consulting Group and Zinc Agency (now branded as Elevate Experiences). The six-year-old firm, which also offers expertise in sponsorship sales, consumer analytics, renovation studies and now executive search, remains in acquisition mode as it eyes multiple businesses to acquire next year.
Elevate has more than 300 employees worldwide and plans to open a headquarter location in Chicago in partnership with Levy, which is based there. The firm will also be opening offices in New York City, Nashville and London in 2025.
