Insider is highlighting prominent venture-capital investors who are funding startups in sports. The list includes early-stage investors with funds of varying sizes and different sector expertises, but all view sports as a core focus area and have made significant investments in the category in the last 12 months. 

Obtaining funding has gotten more challenging over the past two years. In one corner of the industry, sports betting and gambling startups had raised $150 million in VC funding as of August, compared to $160.3 million in the first half of 2022 and $186.2 million in the first half of 2021, according to data from PitchBook.

“It’s a very difficult environment, especially with early stage companies, with interest rates and the market being skittish,” Brad Farkas, general partner and co-founder of HBSE Ventures, told Insider.

Still, interest in sports remains high among investors. More than $5 billion in new funds from such sources as venture capital and private equity went into sports tech in 2022, and already $6 billion this year has been tracked in the sector by mid-August, according to principal Mohit Pareek at the tech investment bank DrakeStar.

Some of the largest rounds raised in sports this year include $35 million for Jake Paul and Joey Levy’s sports-betting app Betr, $20 million for the sports streaming startup Buzzer Technologies, and $11 million for SlamBall, a renewed league for a more physical version of basketball on trampolines.

Insider compiled this list of investors based on our own reporting as well as nominations we vetted from readers and industry experts. We considered factors including an investor’s role within their firm, the size of the fund or assets under management, the scope of their sports investments in the last 12 months, and their impact on the industry.

Here are the 26 venture capital and other early-stage investors — listed alphabetically by company — that have made prominent investments in sports in 2023: