USOPC Shopping Minority Stake in Team USA Rights, Tests Privatization Model

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee has retained advisors to explore the sale of a minority stake in Team USA's commercial rights, according to two people familiar with the process. The entity on the block holds sponsorship inventory, licensing authority, and media partnerships tied to the Olympic brand outside individual Games organizing committees. One person pegged the valuation discussion in the $2 billion to $3 billion range, though no formal bids have circulated.

The move follows eighteen months of quiet sponsor fatigue. USOPC revenue from domestic partners fell 11 percent in the most recent filing period, driven partly by category conflicts with LA28's separate sponsor slate and partly by brands deferring Olympic spend until the home Games arrive. The committee has $167 million in operating reserves, down from $184 million two years prior, and faces rising athlete stipend commitments under the new revenue-share framework Congress blessed in 2023. A minority capital partner would stabilize the balance sheet without surrendering governance, the structure PE shops have sold to European football federations since 2019.

The timing matters because LA28 is now visibly expensive. The organizing committee's latest budget sits at $6.9 billion, up from the $5.3 billion pitch that won the bid, with venue overruns at SoFi Stadium and the Coliseum driving the gap. IOC President Thomas Bach has privately told USOPC leadership that LA28 must hit its revenue target—$2.5 billion in domestic sponsorship—or risk the IOC witholding portions of its $900 million broadcast guarantee. That dependency makes USOPC's standalone commercial engine more valuable, not less, to a buyer who wants exposure to Olympic IP without underwriting a Games.

The structure also tests whether U.S. Olympic assets can command the multiples that European football rights now attract. CVC bought 13 percent of LaLiga's commercial arm at a €2.7 billion enterprise value in 2021; Silver Lake took 10 percent of City Football Group at $4.8 billion in 2019. Both deals priced recurring sponsorship revenue at roughly 18x to 22x trailing EBITDA, a range USOPC cannot match because its revenue spikes every four years and craters between cycles. The buyer will need to underwrite a model where Team USA becomes a year-round licensing platform—think Nike's Swoosh on everything from training gear to youth soccer kits—rather than a quadrennial media event. That requires the USOPC to grant the commercial entity broader trademark authority than it has historically allowed, a governance concession the board has debated since December.

Three bidder profiles are circulating among advisors: a PE consortium that would pair the stake with media distribution plays, a sovereign wealth fund treating this as U.S. soft-power access, and a family office with Super Bowl box-level donor interest in Olympic pathways. The PE bid is the most structured, involving a commitment to stand up a licensing subsidiary that would chase the $1.1 billion U.S. Olympic merchandise market currently fragmented across 47 licensees. The SWF angle is quieter but includes language about underwriting athlete training centers, a signal it wants something closer to a sponsorship with equity upside than a pure financial return.

What happens next depends on whether the USOPC board approves a formal sale process or uses the valuation work to negotiate a larger sponsorship deal with an existing partner who would prefer to avoid a minoritized structure. One board member said the exploration is "as much about price discovery as it is about liquidity," meaning the committee wants to know what the market thinks Team USA is worth before committing to a partner it cannot easily remove. The IOC has no veto over national Olympic committee capital structures, but it does control the use of the rings in commercial contexts, which means any deal will require Lausanne's quiet nod.

Advisors expect a decision on whether to proceed with a full process by June, which would position any transaction to close before the 2026 Milano-Cortina cycle begins and sponsor negotiations for LA28's final tier reset. If the USOPC sells, it becomes the first major National Olympic Committee to bring in private capital at the parent level, a template other federations with expensive home Games on the horizon—Brisbane 2032, India's likely 2036 bid—will study closely.