Mojo, an upcoming app for fans to buy and sell “stocks” of professional athletes at values based on performance, raises a $75M Series A led by Thrive Capital
Baseball great Alex Rodriguez and his business partner, Marc Lore, are investing in a new company aiming to be a …
Context & Ripple Effects
Mojo enters a growing set of products that turn sports fandom into a market: Alt's sports-card marketplace funding backed a collectibles venue, while Sporttrade's funding supported a trading exchange for sports bets. Mojo applies a similar transactional framing to athlete performance rather than cards or wagers.
The round also arrives alongside Fanatics' large sports-commerce financing, underscoring how well-capitalized platforms were competing to own different parts of the fan-spending relationship.
First-order effects
- Mojo gains $75 million in Series A capital and Thrive Capital as lead investor as it prepares its athlete-stock app.
- Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore become investors in a product that places athlete performance at the center of fan transactions.
Second-order effects
- Sporttrade and Alt face another sports-focused platform competing for users accustomed to treating fandom as a tradeable activity, though each centers on a different asset or market.
- Fan-commerce operators such as Fanatics confront a broader contest for fan wallet share as marketplaces, betting exchanges, and performance-linked products seek recurring transactions.
Third-order effects
- If these models gain traction, sports monetization shifts further from one-off merchandise and collectibles purchases toward platform-mediated markets tied to athletes and game outcomes.
- The category's competitive advantage will increasingly rest on whether a platform can build trusted, liquid fan markets around its chosen sports asset.
The trend: Sports platforms are increasingly turning fandom into tradeable, recurring transactions across collectibles, betting markets, and athlete-linked products.