Tottenham Hotspur Trades Sponsorship for Equity With Hotspur Labs

Tottenham Hotspur is taking equity in startups in exchange for sponsorship, not cash, through Hotspur Labs, a venture programme launched last month with TPF Labs, the corporate venture arm of the UK's first athlete-led VC firm, The Players Fund.

The structure inverts the standard corporate venture capital playbook. Instead of a company writing cheques for financial or strategic returns, the club offers assets it already owns — a stadium, a global fan base, data, and a live sporting environment where products can be tested.

"With Tottenham, we are having a focus on sponsorship for equity," says Flora Bell, managing director of TPF Labs. The club wants early relationships with Series A and Series B companies, betting a startup might become a paying sponsor as it grows. That is a long-term position, not a quick revenue line: "this is not one year to the next," says Bell.

What does a football club actually contribute?

The model rests on a broader view of what a sports organisation is. "A modern sports team has about 10 different companies within it," Bell says, pointing to the range of operations and assets around a club.

A ticketing business, for instance, might value access to data about match attendees. The fit doesn't have to align with the club's core technology stack — some companies become suppliers, others benefit from an asset without ever becoming vendors. Every arrangement is bespoke, structured around what the specific startup and club each bring.

TPF Labs' first task with a club isn't pitching investments. It's understanding how the organisation works and where it has problems worth solving. "We meet everybody at their level," says Bell. That means sitting down with IT, HR and legal departments and asking: "what's your biggest problem day to day?" The answers often have little to do with on-field performance — slow recruitment, internal systems, transport. Those conversations shape the sourcing themes, alongside open applications from startups.

The deals already done

The model has produced concrete transactions. Swiss brain-health technology company Connectome, whose core business sat in hospitals, needed data to develop its product. TPF Labs' partner Como 1907 provided it. The agreement involved "750 brain scans of the academy team, the female team, and the male team in exchange for equity," says Bell. The club offered a structured setting for scans that a young company could not have assembled alone.

TPF Labs also runs Juventus Forward, an innovation programme for the Italian club, with an initial cohort spanning gait and motion analysis, football-related wearables, neurological tracking and media technologies.

Flexibility is part of the offer. TPF Labs is planning a hackathon that would bring Tottenham Hotspur together with the San Antonio Spurs, the US professional basketball team, reflecting an existing relationship with both clubs.

Cohorts stay deliberately small — typically three to five companies per club per year, a scale both sides can manage. Success can mean a financial return, but also a commercial partnership or joint venture. One Como cohort company is now set to launch a joint venture with the club.

A family fund built from a WhatsApp group

The Players Fund was founded roughly four years ago by former footballer Fergus Bell and his brother Ruari Bell, a former rugby player. It started with a problem familiar to many athletes: getting pitched investment opportunities without guidance on judging them. The founders became informal advisers to teammates — a "WhatsApp sounding board" for working out "what a good deal looks like, what a bad deal looks like."

The fund now manages £10m as a generalist vehicle with an interest in B2B software and frontier AI. Flora Bell, the founders' sister, runs TPF Labs. The two teams operate separately but share infrastructure and expertise.

For the clubs themselves, the programme doubles as a venture education. Building a fund takes capital, time and legal work, so TPF Labs pitches a three-year "venture readiness" programme — a way to learn before deciding whether to launch a dedicated investment fund. For startups, the pitch is simpler: sports organisations can offer something a cheque alone cannot.

The open question is whether these distinctive assets can move beyond intriguing one-off deals — like Como's 750 brain scans — and become repeatable, useful partnerships.