OneTeam Partners, a joint venture representing commercial and licensing rights of more than 10,000 professional and college athletes in the US, has named Sean Sansiveri as the organization’s new chief executive officer.
(Bloomberg) — OneTeam Partners, a joint venture representing commercial and licensing rights of more than 10,000 professional and college athletes in the US, has named Sean Sansiveri as the organization’s new chief executive officer.
Sansiveri, who most recently served as general counsel for the NFL Players Association, said in an interview that OneTeam Partners is targeting a long-term valuation of $10 billion.
“That is the type of number we need to be in order to have a real impact,” said Sansiveri. “Whether it take us five years or 10 years we’ll get there.”
OneTeam was valued at about $2 billion last year after RedBird Capital sold its 40% stake.
Frank Arthofer is also joining OneTeam as president after most recently serving as a sports and media adviser for the Boston Consulting Group. He previously was director of digital and licensing at Formula 1 racing. His duties at OneTeam will include running OneTeam’s revenue, the games division, consumer products and integrated marketing.
“We’re sitting on a sleeping giant here,” Arthofer said in an interview. “There is all this value that has accrued from these athletes and our goal is to unlock that.”
Senior vice president Malaika Underwood previously held the position of interim CEO since 2022, following the departure of Ahmad Nassar.
The organization, created in 2019 as a joint venture between the NFL Players Association and the MLB Players Association, has since expanded to include the commercial interests of thousands of other professional and college athletes in basketball, hockey and other sports leagues.
Sansiveri and Arthofer said they intend to develop new revenue in such areas as video games, gaming, medical tech and commercialization of athlete data.
While Sansiveri was at the NFLPA, the association took an ownership stake in Sports Data labs to improve player safety and to create more opportunities for them to earn revenue.
“Everything we do at OneTeam under the new leadership will be in service of challenging the status quo for employees,” Sansiveri said. “We will be arming players with leverage at the bargaining table through economic parity.”
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