SMRF Capital

SMRF Capital securitizes the contracted media, commercial and digital revenue streams of sports rights owners. Rather than taking equity stakes in teams or leagues, the firm provides growth capital to sports organizations in return for a claim on their predictable contractual income. The model is designed to convert stable, long-term cash flows into investable assets for institutional and family-office investors.

The three founding partners — Claude Ruibal, Marcus Luer, and David Saab — collectively run the firm. Ruibal brings digital and media-rights experience from Google and YouTube, Luer built Asia's leading sports-marketing agency over 25 years, and Saab is a former J.P. Morgan fixed-income managing director who later served as Head of Portfolio Management at Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild. No single CIO role has been designated publicly.

SMRF Capital has not publicly disclosed specific portfolio names or closed transactions. The founding partners' prior experience includes work with FIFA, World Rugby, the NFL, NASCAR, the PGA Tour and the International Ski Federation, but the firm's current investment holdings remain unlisted.

Most sports private-equity funds take equity stakes in teams, leagues or sports-related businesses. SMRF Capital instead securitizes media-rights and commercial-revenue contracts, treating them as income-producing assets. The firm underwrites the contractual cash flows rather than betting on enterprise-value appreciation, making the model closer to specialty finance or structured credit than to conventional sports buyouts.

SMRF Capital's website does not disclose whether it operates through a blind-pool fund, a deal-by-deal capital-raising model, or a managed-account structure. The firm describes itself as an 'independent investment firm focused on the sports marketplace' but provides no public details on fund size or vehicle structure.