How Mellody Hobson Decided to Invest Big in Women’s Sports
On the latest episode of The Deal, the influential investor explains how stakes in the White Sox and Broncos put her on a path to a new sports growth fund.
Mellody Hobson, left, on The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly
Like any good investor, Mellody Hobson knows that the numbers have to back up an instinct. So when she had a hunch about the hypergrowth in women’s sports, she went to the data.
“I started to study women’s sports like an 11-year-old studies baseball statistics,” Hobson, the president and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, says on the latest episode of The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. “And I got dangerous in seeing up arrows, up arrows, up arrows on what was happening in attendance, in sponsorships, in media rights, in girls playing starting at young ages.”