On the new episode of Coffey Talk, venture capitalist Michael Proman goes in-depth about what his $68 million sports tech fund looks for in an investment.
“Sports technology is massive, and it’s constantly reinventing itself,” Proman told Sportico’s Brendan Coffey. “We say to ourselves, at a bare minimum, is this an opportunity that can get to $100 million revenue. Is there a 10x potential on an exit?”
An executive who founded and sold his own financial services startup and worked in global development for the NBA and sports-focused marketing at Coca-Cola before joining Scrum ventures in 2018, Proman leans on his background as head of the firm’s sports-focused efforts he helped launched in 2023.
While sports tech naturally has applications in the pros, Proman says his fund looks for a path for portfolio companies to grow outside of sports and have an impact on the broader tech and consumer markets. “When you can get outside of a core customer base of teams, leagues and properties, you actually have real meaningful revenue opportunities associated with that.”
Scrum is unique among VC firms in sport tech because it is one of the few investors backed by Japanese capital that seeks to invest outside that country. The company was formed by entrepreneur Tak Miyata last decade and counts conglomerates including Mitsubishi as backers. Based out of Minneapolis, Proman invests the sports tech fund primarily on the earlier side of the VC investing spectrum, concentrating on “late seed, early A” round opportunities.
“We feel we can add the most value if people are hitting that inflection point where the market has really said, ‘Hey, listen, there’s something here. It’s sticky. It’s repeatable and it has the scale potential.’”
Among Scrum’s investments: a sleep technology company, a display business that can tailor different images to specific parts of an arena from one video board and, of course, AI.
Coffey Talk, hosted by Sportico’s sports finance reporter, is a regular video interview series with some of the industry’s most influential people. Past chats have featured billionaire Marc Lasry, PFL founder Donn Davis and the sports investing chiefs of private equity’s Ares Management. Videos are available on the Sportico’s official YouTube Channel.
(This story has been updated in the first paragraph to correct the amount of assets under management for Scrum.)
