Ted and Chris Ackerley are on the hunt for business at the leading edge of sports and media development.
The Seattle magnate just recently revealed the Ackerley Sports Group (ASG), a brand-new arm of their long time financial investment company Ackerley Partners.
ASG strategies to purchase groups, leagues, and development phase business.
The Ackerley siblings are part-owners of Seattle’s NHL franchise, the Seattle Kraken, which debuted 2 years earlier. And this year they ended up being owners and partners of Leeds United Football Club, a leading English soccer franchise that just recently moved bulk ownership to 49ers Enterprises, which owns the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.
The Leeds financial investment is the very first out of ASG, the company informed GeekWire.
We have actually recorded the crossover in between innovation and sports for many years here at GeekWire, and the crossway continues to develop with the expansion of AI, more tech giants entering live streaming, development of analytics, and a lot more.
Sports runs deep in the Ackerley household. Ted and Chris are the kids of the late Barry Ackerley, a Seattle entrepreneur and creator of The Ackerley Group media business, which owned the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics for 18 years. Barry and Ginger Ackerley, his partner, established the WNBA’s Seattle Storm in 2000.
The Ackerley siblings are likewise associated with an unique function acquisition business, or SPAC, called ESH Acquisition Corp. that is targeting a business in the home entertainment, sports, and hospitality sectors. It closed an IPO in June, raising $115 million
Ackerley Partners formed after The Ackerley Group offered to Clear Channel Communications in 2002 for more than $800 million. The company, now led by Ted and Chris, has actually backed different Seattle tech start-ups in addition to other financial investments.