Private equity and investment company KKR & Co. announced Thursday a definitive agreement to acquire sports-focused private equity firm Arctos Partners L.P. for an initial $1.4 billion. Arctos is projected to become part of a new investing business, KKR Solutions, which will include Arctos; its general partner stakes Keystone business; and a new secondaries business KKR will build over time.
The deal, which includes up to $550 million in future equity, is expected to close in the year’s second quarter, according to KKR’s Q4 2025 earnings call, held on Thursday, and an Arctos Partners spokesperson. The additional equity would be tied to KKR’s share priced and specific performance targets, valuing the deal at up to $1.95 billion.
Arctos, which manages $15 billion in assets, is the only firm that has permission from each of four U.S. sports leagues—the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League—to invest in and take ownership stakes in their teams. The acquisition “provides KKR with a differentiated entry point into the sports franchise stakes sector, a category characterized by historical and expected long-term value appreciation and growing global demand,” according to a statement from KKR.
Arctos has stakes in the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers; the NBA’s Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors; soccer clubs Paris Saint-Germain F.C. and Liverpool F.C., six Major League Baseball teams, and numerous other sports teams, as well as ticketing resale website SeatGeek.
Following the close of the transaction, Arctos Partners’ co-founders, Ian Charles and David ‘Doc’ O’Connor, will join KKR as partners and will lead the KKR Solutions platform. KKR also announced plans to build a multi-asset secondaries platform through Charles’ experience as a pioneer in the secondaries market at Cogent Partners and Landmark Partners.
“We will be able to leverage KKR’s broad range of products and capabilities to extend and enhance our relationships with leagues, teams, GPs and sponsors,” Charles and O’Connor said in a joint statement. “Through this transaction, we will become an even stronger partner to the markets and investors that we serve, which has been our goal from the very beginning.”
Large asset managers have increasingly added capabilities for sports investing. In September, Apollo Global Management launched its sports-focused platform, Apollo Sports Capital. Ares Management has also raised billions for its sports-focused strategies.
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Tags: Arctos Partners, KKR