Rory McIlroy on investing in Formula 1 team Alpine and fixing the 'fractured' sport of golf
PGA Tour pro Rory McIlroy's ventures off the course are picking up steam, just as the golf world enters a new post-LIV era.
AUSTIN, Texas — Pro golfer Rory McIlroy knows a thing or two about winning on the course; four major championships among other big wins in his career attest to that. But McIlroy’s looking to win off the course too, with big investments.
McIlroy has taken on a number of investments in the past few years, but his latest made a stir in the paddock at the Formula 1 (FWONK) US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, this weekend. McIlroy, along with a few other notable athletes including Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes, invested in the Alpine F1 team (RNLSY) through private investment firm Otro Capital. The total investment by the group amounts to 200 million euros, or $218 million, for 24% of the team.
“I thought it was a really cool opportunity,” McIlroy told Yahoo Finance. “I've started to get into investing a little bit over the past four or five years, started my own investment vehicle — Symphony Ventures — and we've invested in a bunch of stuff, whether it be within the golf space or technology or healthcare. [Investing in Alpine] was the first real opportunity to do something like this.”
McIlroy and his team looked over the pitch deck, saw the growth of F1 both here and abroad, and decided the numbers made sense. But money isn’t the sole motivation, he said.
“What I've learned from investing over the years is, obviously you want to make smart investments and have your money work for you, and obviously, ultimately make money from it. But at the end of the day, I've realized you don't have to try to squeeze every single last dollar out of every single deal.”
McIlroy was also keen to work with the ownership group — which also includes Ryan Reynolds’s Maximum Effort and RedBird Capital Partners, among others — due to the success these investors have had in past ventures. At the same time, the Alpine team and Otro were interested in what big names like McIlroy, Kelce, and Mahomes could bring to Alpine’s stature on the F1 grid.
McIlroy’s interest in F1 started as a fan, but he’s now more interested in the team aspect of the sport — the competitiveness on the grid, and desire to win. But it also helps that there are only 10 F1 teams on the grid — and similar to team valuations across other sports, the values of these teams are skyrocketing. It pays to own a part of an industry that only has a finite number of assets, it seems.
That was also the motivation for McIlroy’s investment in Topgolf Live — his venture with fellow golfer Tiger Woods and the PGA.
“I think TGL [Top Golf Live] is going to be amazing,” he said. “We've sort of tried to adopt a little bit of that sports team model; there's six teams, we've already got some great ownership groups in those teams, like Fenway Sports Group and Steve Cohen who owns the Mets. We have Marc Lasry who owns the [Milwaukee] Bucks, plus, [Golden State Warriors player] Steph Curry, [former NBA champ] Andre Iguodala, we've got so many.”
Which brings us back to the golf world, where McIlroy is one of the biggest names in the sport, as well as a lightning rod in the industry for his support of the PGA during its recent war with splinter golf league, LIV Golf. Golfers who took LIV money and bolted to the Saudi-backed league faced criticism from fans, as well as PGA loyalists like McIlroy.
The LIV golfers fired back claiming pros like McIlroy and Woods have so much money they could afford to remain with the PGA, while they saw the LIV tour as a shot at generational wealth. The impending merger of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf may calm some of these emotions, but a schism remains.
McIlroy wants to put the chasm behind them, however, for the sake of the sport.
“I'm hopeful that the PGA Tour and DP World Tour [PGA Europe], and the Public Investment Fund [owners of LIV golf] can come together and try to get some sort of a deal done, because to me, with a fractured competitive landscape, it just divides the eyeballs. I'd rather concentrate all the eyeballs on one product,” McIlroy said.
McIlroy believes what’s best for the golf world is the best “product,” and he’s willing to let bygones be bygones.
“To me it's a product problem, and if we can all put our heads together and get to the point where the product is really good, I think it's full steam ahead and, hopefully great things can happen.”
Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.
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