Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback in the NFL and arguably the most marketable athlete in American professional sports. Forbes estimated his off-field earnings at $25 million in 2024, more than double the next-highest NFL player. He signed the richest contract in team sports history in 2020 at $503 million over 10 years. The money is real. What he does with it is the more interesting story.

The Kansas City Strategy

Patrick Mahomes investments are anchored in Kansas City in a way that is deliberate and structured. He holds a stake in the Kansas City Royals, the MLB franchise that was purchased for $1 billion in 2019 by a new ownership group that welcomed him as an investor. MLB franchise valuations have appreciated significantly: the Royals were valued at $1 billion at acquisition and the average franchise valuation across the league has grown substantially since then.

He co-owns Sporting Kansas City, the MLS franchise valued around $557 million. He and his wife Brittany co-own the Kansas City Current, a National Women's Soccer League franchise that opened CPKC Stadium in March 2024, the first stadium built specifically for a women's professional soccer team. Mahomes has been vocal about the women's sports investment thesis: "the more you invest in women, the more that they give back and come out with this great product every single day." The Current's new stadium is proof of concept for that argument.

He also holds a stake in a Major League Pickleball franchise, the sport whose growth curve has attracted investors across the athlete landscape.

Eric Bahn of Hustle Fund has noted that the smartest athlete investments are the ones where the athlete has genuine domain expertise in the category, not just brand recognition. Mahomes grew up around professional sports through his father, a former MLB pitcher, and understands franchise economics and long-term sports business dynamics from the inside. Angel Squad members thinking about sports-adjacent investments can access similar frameworks through the community at hustlefund.vc/squad.

The Performance Tech Stack

Beyond sports franchises, Mahomes has built a portfolio of performance technology investments that map directly onto his own athletic life. He invested in Whoop at a $1.2 billion valuation, a wearable fitness technology company now valued at $3.6 billion. He is also an investor and brand ambassador for Hyperice, the athlete recovery brand whose products he uses during training and games. Hyperice grew its revenue from $10 million to $200 million in three years.

The Throne Sport Coffee investment in 2024 followed the same pattern. Mahomes became the lead investor and second-largest shareholder, was involved in product formulation, testing, and distribution deal-making, and is now the public face of the brand's marketing campaign. That is founder-adjacent behavior, not passive celebrity endorsement.

The Kansas City Current and Women'''s Sports

The Kansas City Current investment deserves its own analysis because it represents something distinct from the franchise stakes Mahomes holds in the Royals and Sporting KC. The Current was an early NWSL team that Mahomes and Brittany invested in well before women'''s professional sports valuations had appreciated to their current levels. In March 2024, the club opened CPKC Stadium, an 11,500-seat venue that became the first purpose-built stadium for any women'''s professional sports team in the world.

The economics of that decision will compound. Women'''s sports attendance and media rights are growing at rates that outpace men'''s sports across most major categories. Angel Squad members evaluating sports investment theses should look closely at the Current'''s path as a case study in early positioning in an undervalued category. The team sold out multiple matches in the new stadium immediately, suggesting demand has been there all along. The infrastructure just wasn'''t.

The Alpine F1 Connection

In a more speculative bet, Mahomes joined an investment group that took stakes in the Alpine Formula 1 team alongside fellow athletes Rory McIlroy, Anthony Joshua, and Trent Alexander-Arnold. F1's global commercial expansion, driven partly by the Drive to Survive documentary, has made stakes in teams attractive to athletes and celebrities worldwide. Whether this bet appreciates depends on Alpine's competitive trajectory and the overall growth of F1's commercial footprint.

The Endorsement Foundation

Mahomes earns around $20 to $25 million annually from endorsements with Adidas, State Farm, Oakley, Nestlé, Prime, T-Mobile, Subway, and a dozen other brands. That cash flow, combined with his $50-plus million per year NFL salary, provides the capital base that funds his investment activity without requiring his investment returns to perform on any particular schedule. He can be patient.

Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund has written that the best early-stage investors are the ones who invest with time horizons that don't depend on near-term liquidity needs. Mahomes's financial structure gives him exactly that freedom. At 28, he has decades of compounding ahead of him.