The National Football League owns more than 5% of Genius Sports, according to a prospectus filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission Wednesday evening. NBA owners and tech titans Steve Ballmer and Joe Tsai also have stakes in the company, according to the filing.
The NFL, through its venture capital arm, NFL Enterprises, controls 11.25 million shares on the basis of warrants exercisable within 60 days. That’s 5.3% of the business. The NFL’s investment and immediate stake was previously reported by Sportico. Overall, the league will receive 22.5 million warrants in Genius, the equivalent of more than 10% of the business and more than founder Mark Locke owns, according to the document. However, many of those NFL warrants aren’t exercisable until future dates, and the timeline for them becoming exercisable isn’t disclosed in the current filing.
Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO who now owns the Los Angeles Clippers, owns 991,205 shares of Genius, while Tsai, the Brooklyn Nets owner and Alibaba entrepreneur, holds 295,902 shares, according to the filing. A number of the new investors in Genius revealed by the filing include executives and investors in Second Spectrum, the sports data and analytics firm that Genius Sports purchased earlier this year for $200 million in cash and stock. They include Ballmer, and co-founders Rajiv Maheswaran, Yu-Han Chang and Jeff Su.
Genius Sports went public in April. The sports data and analytics provider has a market cap of $4 billion. Its shares closed trading Wednesday in New York at $19.55.
A spokesperson for Genius Sports didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
