Volume 22. A ton of exciting companies in the pipeline and announcements to come for No Huddle - stay locked in! 

Last week, I was out in San Francisco for the first time. Cold and rainy the whole time… and I could still see what all the buzz is about. And to top it all off, got to see Wemby in person. 41 and 17 on 73% shooting. Just a Wednesday for him.

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How I am seeing the field across sports, media, entertainment, wellness and CPG

Think about the last time you went to a game. For me, it was last Saturday @ Fenway- another Sox loss but got to see Roman, Mason Miller and Tatis do their thing.

Boston fandom aside - there is something that never gets old about going to a game. Walking through the gates, the smell of the concourse, the rogue jerseys, the overpriced merchandise and food (still need to get to Mercedes-Benz). By the time the game kicks off, you’ve probably already dropped $50+ just to get situated. The magic of the in-venue experience is part of the many reasons why team valuations continue to soar. 

Teams have poured billions into the stadium experience over the last decade. Better food, premium clubs, VIP experiences, mobile ordering, cashless systems. The arms race is real and is evident from the minute you scan your ticket. 

Stadiums and arenas are now year-round venues. The Kia Forum hosts more concerts than most dedicated music venues. SoFi Stadium has had the Super Bowl, WrestleMania, and College Football Playoff all in the same calendar year. Chase Center, Crypto.com, Madison Square Garden are running 200+ event nights annually and aggressively expanding that number. Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium host college football bowl games every year. And every one of those nights is a completely different operational set up and challenge for organizations to manage. As we have covered, a surge in real estate plays have followed: mixed-use entertainment districts are sprouting up around venues in every major market, from the Power & Light District in Kansas City to what's taking shape around the new stadiums in Las Vegas. Owners aren't just buying a team, they're buying an anchor asset for a broader commercial ecosystem. The venue is the business.

Now think about the people responsible for all of that. Stop thinking like a fan, and start thinking like a CRO sitting in an office across the street trying to manage everything that is going on inside those doors and ensuring the fans have the best experience possible. 

That job is a tough one. You're managing concessions, merch, suite packages ,and in-game promotions – often across multiple systems that don't talk to each other. You're making real-time calls: do we run a flash drink special in the third quarter? Are we overstocked on one item and underselling another? Which suite holders are most likely to renew? What's our per-cap spend trending against last year?

This is the operational reality that most people on the fan side never see. Teams with rosters worth hundreds of millions of dollars are often running their front-office revenue operations on patchwork systems that a mid-size restaurant chain would have outgrown years ago. The inefficiency rarely surfaces until something publicly breaks - think long lines, sold out items, slow service.

Execution matters even more now. With franchise valuations continuing to break records -  LP stakes in NFL teams trading hands at $10B+ implied valuations - the new class of investors coming into sports aren't just looking for a trophy asset. They are PE-trained operators who think in multiples, margin expansion and want to see the business run like a business. That means every dollar of in-venue revenue needs to be optimized. 

The teams that do this well will compound their business advantages in ways that will go far beyond wins and losses. Better margins, better fan experiences, cleaner data equals a more valuable franchise. That’s what Catch has built to help solve.

A mini investment memo on the stars of tomorrow

The Company: Catch

The Business in a tweet: Catch is the all-in-one operating system built for sports teams and venues — combining point-of-sale, front office management, sponsorships, CRM, and revenue reporting into a single platform. Think Square, but purpose-built for sports. One system. No spreadsheets. No excuses.

The 101: 

If you’re interested in learning more and meeting the Catch team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected]. 

📶The Signal (No Huddle’s Take):

The sports org stack is truly broken. All the headlines go to the big team sales - billions of dollars trading hands and “decades of management experience” coming in to help run ballclubs. While some operators do bring genuine hands-on experience, Catch was built from it.

I love Catch’s GTM strategy. Rather than swinging for the fences right away, they systematically started with minor league and independent clubs, which allows them to immerse themselves into the front office business operating paradigm and focus on putting the best product forward. The market is moving fast and the opportunities are starting to fall in line. 

Private equity-backed holding companies have been on a minor league buying spree - Diamond Baseball Holdings (Endeavor and Silver Lake), OnDeck Partners (Avenue Sports), Prospector Baseball Group (Arctos), and a wave of regional ownership groups have been rolling up MiLB franchises with a clear mandate: professionalize and monetize. When PE comes in, the first question is often “what does the tech stack look like”? Right now, the answer at most properties is “outdated” or “fragmented”. Catch is built exactly for that moment.

The college side is just as compelling - as we broke down last week. Athletic departments are under more pressure than ever to generate top-line revenue as NIL, conference realignment, and revenue sharing fundamentally reshape the economics of college sports. Sponsorship activation, suite sales, and in-venue monetization are no longer nice-to-haves. They are survival tools. The programs investing in smarter systems now will be the ones that win the revenue race, and Catch sits right at that intersection.

The bootstrapped path tells you all you need to know about Vince too. He isn’t chasing headlines or a valuation, he’s been maniacally focused on building the business - and the 150% YoY growth says his plan is working. A few strategic investors or the right partnerships could be the accelerant that takes Catch to the next level. The AAPB deal feels like just the start of something big. 

The broader market context makes the timing even harder to ignore. The sports management software market sits at roughly $10bn today and is projected to nearly double by 2030, yet remains deeply fragmented. The enterprise side is dominated by the likes of Square, Toast, and Ticketmaster, while a long tail of niche vendors operate in specific lanes: ticketing here, CRM there, POS somewhere else. Nobody has snapped it all together cleanly for teams operating below the enterprise level. Drake Star even specifically highlighted sporting venues and facilities as one of the most fragmented verticals ripe for consolidation. 

Next time you're at a game this season — take a look around. How's the POS transaction? The inventory management? Are there long lines? A disjointed operation? If so, Catch can fix that. (And yes, we'll refrain from any and all Red Sox commentary for now.)

You put it all together: Vince's operator DNA, the PE consolidation wave, college revenue pressure, and a generation of sports orgs finally ready for a unified OS - and what you have is a hidden gem hiding in plain sight.

If you’re interested in learning more and meeting the Catch team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].

From the archive

If this topic caught your attention, you may also want to read our earlier breakdown of Waypoint and the new college revenue playbook. We explored how rising revenue pressure is forcing sports organizations to think differently about infrastructure, monetization, and operational leverage there — and it is worth revisiting in light of this week's issue.

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