A small investment team with one industry and a long memory.
SportTech Gem Holdings was formed to do one thing properly: put first institutional capital into the software and data infrastructure that modern sport depends on, and then be useful for the eight or ten years that follow.
Specialist by choice, not by accident
Generalist funds can invest in sports technology. Few can tell the difference between a ticketing platform with a durable rights-holder relationship and one that is a reseller in disguise, or price the working-capital risk in a hardware business that ships sensors to two hundred venues before a season starts. That difference is the whole job.
So we stayed narrow. The team spends its time inside one industry: reading competition regulations, sitting in venue operations meetings, tracking how transfer policy changes between one season and the next, and maintaining relationships with the commercial and ticketing leaders who ultimately decide whether a portfolio company renews. We are not trying to have a view on everything. We are trying to be the firm that already knows the answer when a founder asks whether a federation can sign a three-year deal in an election year.
Being specialist has costs. It means we decline a great many good companies for no reason other than sector fit, and it means our returns are correlated to one industry’s cycle in a way a diversified fund’s are not. We accept both, and we say so to limited partners before they commit rather than after.
Five things we hold ourselves to
A written answer
Every company that reaches a second meeting gets a written reason for the decision, including the ones we decline. It costs us an hour and it is the least a founder is owed for four weeks of their time.
No positions on both sides
We do not invest in competing companies within the same sub-sector, and we disclose adjacencies at first meeting. If a conflict emerges later, the earlier investment is told first.
Reserves decided at entry
Follow-on capital is modelled when we invest, not when the next round is already oversubscribed. Founders are told what our reserve posture is before they sign.
Governance we can service
We take a board seat only where we can prepare properly and attend in person. Where we cannot, we take an observer seat or no seat, and we say which at term sheet.
Roles, not personalities
We list the firm by function. Investment decisions are made by the partnership as a whole; no individual can commit capital alone, and no company is championed by one person in isolation.
Managing Partner
Chairs the investment committee, owns the relationship with limited partners, and holds final responsibility for portfolio construction and reserve policy. Sits on a limited number of boards where we have led.
Partner, Ticketing & Infrastructure
Leads diligence on admission credentials, transfer policy engines, access control and venue systems. Maintains the firm’s relationships with ticketing and operations leadership across leagues and venue operators.
Partner, Fan Platforms
Covers identity, loyalty, commerce and second-screen products. Responsible for the firm’s work on data protection posture and consent architecture in portfolio companies.
Principal, Diligence
Runs cohort analysis, unit economics and technical review sessions. Writes the first draft of every investment memo and is expected to argue the bear case in committee.
Head of Portfolio Operations
Coordinates hiring support, pricing work, pilot design and rights-holder introductions. The single point of contact for founders who need something between board meetings.
Head of Finance & Compliance
Fund administration, valuation policy, limited partner reporting, and the regulatory and anti-money-laundering obligations that attach to a manager of pooled investment vehicles.
What we tell investors before they commit
We report quarterly, with a written portfolio commentary rather than a spreadsheet alone. Valuations follow a documented policy that marks positions to the most recent priced round or to a defensible fair-value assessment where a company has not raised, and we disclose the method used for each material position. Where a portfolio company is in difficulty, it appears in the commentary in the quarter we form that view, not the quarter it is resolved.
We do not publish performance on this website. Firms that do tend to publish it once, at a flattering moment, and quietly stop. Institutional investors, family offices and their advisers can request our current materials directly; we will normally arrange a call before sending anything, and everything goes out under a non-disclosure agreement to qualified investors.
Nothing on this website constitutes an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security or interest in any fund. Any such offer would be made only through formal offering documents to eligible investors in jurisdictions where such an offer is lawful.
Our terms are conventional for a specialist manager of this size, and we would rather discuss them plainly than negotiate through a placement deck. If the strategy is a poor fit for your mandate, we will say so on the first call.
Two doors: founders and investors.
Founders should send a short note about the company and the round. Prospective limited partners should say which mandate the firm would sit in, and we will arrange a call.