Athletes Turned Angel Investors: Our Super Six
Spotlighting the UK companies backed by athletes, past and present.
2024 is the summer of sport. We’ve already had the Euros (though we’re still not over that one), the Copa America, and Wimbledon, with just the small matter of the Olympic Games that are in full swing.
Sports fans have truly been spoilt for choice. Inspired by this summer of sport, we used the Beauhurst platform to check out famous athletes linked to fast-growing UK companies.
Sports stars have the potential to be great angel investors. They are often highly paid and can use their fame to help boost the awareness of the companies they invest in.
We’ve seen the dark side of this, with the high-profile bankruptcy of FTX, a global cryptocurrency firm, but let’s now look at some of the more successful stories of sports stars and the UK companies they’ve invested in.
The MVPs of UK Sportswear Companies
From sportswear companies to activetech, we explore the most valuable suppliers and manufacturers across the UK.
Ian Wright
Sporting accomplishments:
1x Premier League Winner with Arsenal
2x FA Cup Winner with Arsenal
1x English Cup Winner with Arsenal
Arsenal and England legend Ian Wright invested in Hackney-based Willy’s Pies in October 2022 after Arsenal Women star Lotte Wubben-Moy convinced Wright to sample one of the company’s pies.
Willy’s Pies was founded during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021 by Will Lewis and Josh Hill after Will was furloughed from his job as a chef.
Will would make the pies and post them on Instagram, and the pair would cycle around London to deliver them.
The business has come a long way since then; Willy’s Pies is now the official pie sponsor of Watford FC.
The company has also collaborated with Wagamama to make a katsu curry pie, and of course, attracted ‘Wrighty’ as an investor.
Willy’s Pies was founded during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021 by Will Lewis and Josh Hill after Will was furloughed from his job as a chef.
Will would make the pies and post them on Instagram, and the pair would cycle around London to deliver them.
The business has come a long way since then; Willy’s Pies is now the official pie sponsor of Watford FC.
Wright was recently spotted handing out free pies in Brixton Village Market, just outside our London office, which meant a lucky few colleagues got to meet him!
The company has also collaborated with Wagamama to make a katsu curry pie, and of course, attracted ‘Wrighty’ as an investor.
Wright was recently spotted handing out free pies in Brixton Village Market, just outside our London office, which meant a lucky few colleagues got to meet him!
Willy’s Pies Scorecard:
Year founded: 2021
Fundraising events: 1
Total fundraising amount: Undisclosed
Employee count: 6
Gary Lineker
Sporting accomplishments:
1x FA Cup winner with Tottenham Hotspur
1x Spanish Cup Winner with FC Barcelona
3x English Super Cup Winner
Most World Cup goals by an Englishman
Legendary football player turned legendary football presenter Gary Lineker’s involvement in the football world spans generations. Lineker has invested in several companies over the years, two of which, Flipper and YourBusinessNumber, were founded by his son George.
Phoenix founders 2024
Read more about George Lineker and his business journey in our Phoenix Founders report with Charles Stanley
One of Gary’s key investment areas is the insurance industry. He invested in Ticker, a company providing telematics insurance services. Telematics technology is usually used to reduce insurance premiums for young drivers, but Ticker is attempting to open up this technology to a broader range of drivers.
Ticker was founded by Richard King (King was Lineker’s old neighbour and he was the best man at King’s wedding), having previously founded two insurance companies, Innovation Group and ingenie.
Ticker scorecard:
Year founded: 2017
Fundraising events: 6
Total fundraising amount: £22.0m
Employee count: 72
Andy Murray
Sporting accomplishments:
2x Wimbledon Winner
1x US Open Winner
2x Olympic Gold Medalist
Arguably Britain’s greatest ever male tennis player, Andy Murray was the first British Wimbledon Men’s Singles champion in 77 years, winning the iconic tournament in 2013 and then again in 2016.
In 2015, Murray partnered with the crowdfunding platform Republic Europe (previously Seedrs), offering strategic advice to the Republic Europe management team and investing through Republic Europe to build his investment portfolio.
One of the companies that Murray has invested in is London-based Perkbox. Perkbox is a subscription-based employee benefit scheme, which features a range of commercial offers and discounts, including supermarket discounts, gym memberships and cinema tickets.
Perkbox scorecard:
Year founded: 2010
Fundraising events: 7
Total fundraising amount: £33.6m
Employee count: 201
Nico Rosberg
Sporting accomplishments:
1x Formula 1 Champion with Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team in 2016
23x Formula 1 race Winner
Nico Rosberg gave us the perfect example of quitting while you’re ahead when he chose to retire from Formula 1 in 2016, having just won the World Championship with Mercedes. During this season he beat his teammate and legendary British driver Lewis Hamilton to top the driver rankings.
Since his retirement, Rosberg has moved into F1 punditry, driver management (founding his own Extreme E racing team in 2020) and angel investing. In 2022, Rosberg founded Rosberg Ventures which operates a venture capital fund of funds and Nico’s angel investments.
Rosberg invested in the Westminster-based what3words in 2018. what3words is a geospatial technology company that has divided the world into 3m x 3m squares, assigning each square a unique combination of three words to refer to specific locations.
what3words is popular among delivery companies, especially those delivering to rural locations where finding addresses can be difficult. Some emergency services have encouraged use of their system to help locate people in the case of an emergency.
what3words scorecard:
Year founded: 2013
Fundraising events: 18
Total fundraising amount: £174m
Employee count: 128
Top 10 Angel Networks in the UK
Our ranking of the most active angel investor networks in the UK, and explore their most common sectors and locations of interest.
Chris Smalling
Sporting accomplishments:
2x Premier League Winner with Manchester United
1x FA Cup Winner with Manchester United
1x EFL Cup Winner with Manchester United
1x UEFA Europa Conference League Winner with Roma
Currently playing football for Roma in Italy, Chris Smalling is best known for his role in Manchester United’s Premier League title-winning seasons in 2010-11 and 2012-13. Smalling is a vegan, making the transition to a plant-based diet thanks to his wife.
His investment decisions reflect his own lifestyle, with several companies in his portfolio operating in the alternative meat and cleantech sectors. In 2021, Smalling, alongside Rebecca Wheeler and Sebastiano Cossia Castiglioni, founded ForGood, a fund that invests in early-stage planet-friendly businesses.
Smalling has invested in several UK high-growth companies, including Allplants, THIS and Heights. Smalling’s investment in Heights comes alongside many other notable names, including Grace Beverley (founder of TALA) and Tom Singh (founder of New Look).
THIS was co-founded in 2017 by Peter Sharman and Andrew Shovel when they quit their jobs as the owners of a burger chain (they’re aware of the irony) and realised they should eat less meat. They found that the options for meat alternatives were lacking, so they decided to make their own. The company now offers a range of products replicating meat products, including lamb kebabs, beef burgers and bacon rashers.
THIS scorecard:
Year founded: 2017
Fundraising events: 9
Total fundraising amount: £53.3m
Employee count: 62
Harry Kane
Sporting accomplishments:
2x UEFA European Championship runner-up with England
1x UEFA Champions League runner-up with Tottenham Hotspur
2x England Player of the Year
England and Tottenham Hotspur’s all-time leading goalscorer
Harry Kane completes the hat trick of English strikers on this list (apparently England strikers have an eye for scoring big!). Widely regarded as one of the best strikers in the history of English football, Kane has captained the England men’s team to back-to-back Euro finals.
Despite Kane’s big move from London to Munich in 2023, the former Spurs man still has investment roots in the UK high-growth ecosystem. Some of his portfolio companies include Freja, Bio&Me, and Urban Legend.
Freja is a bone broth company founded by the husband and wife team of Ed Armitage and Jess Leather in 2020. Freja produces a range of bone broths, including beef, chicken and a vegan variety which are sold via its website and in stores including Selfridges and Whole Foods. Kane invested in the company in January 2023 alongside Olympic triathlete Alistair Brownlee.
Freja scorecard:
Year founded: 2020
Fundraising events: 3
Total fundraising amount: £3.48m
Employee count: 5
For more Beauhurst sports content, check out our blog on the MVPs of UK Sportswear Companies here or learn about the Top 10 UK Angel Networks here.
Perform your own research
Our industry analysis reports this one are made using Beauhurst data. That means you can perform your own analysis with access to our platform. From the most valuable sportswear companies to the fastest-growing companies in the UK, Beauhurst has data on over 4.6m companies, meaning you can get a full overview of the whole UK economy.
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