The World Cup is for sale

Hello and welcome to Alts Cafe.

A curated pour of the week’s most important alt investing stories, customized and brewed to your liking.

Highlights

• International Investing: South Africa’s M-KOPA passes ​10 million customers across five African markets​ by financing smartphones for people banks will not touch
• Startups & VC: Thirty firms now own the AI cycle, with their portfolios ​doubling to $7 trillion​ since 2023
• Sports: FIFA moves to sell ​21% of the World Cup’s commercial arm​ at a $20 billion valuation
• Prediction Markets: The Mets sign baseball’s first prediction-market deal and ​pick Novig over Kalshi​
• Music & Film: AI tracks now make up ​more than half of everything uploaded​ to Deezer
• Crypto: ​BitMEX is shutting down​ after inventing the perpetual swap
• Collectibles, Culture and Luxury: Auction houses book $10 billion in six months as a ​Jackie Robinson rookie hits $1.86 million​
• Private Equity & Private Credit: Bain and Carlyle go to the mat over a ​$7 billion wealth manager​
• Real Estate: Japan now has ​9 million empty houses​ and one in three homes will be vacant by 2038
• Precious Metals and Gems: A record 45% of central banks ​plan to buy more gold​ even at these prices
• Artwork: Auction sales jump 70% to ​$6.8 billion in the first half​
• Farmland: Land values ​hold flat to higher at midyear​ despite the worst farm margins in years
• Wine, Whiskey & Spirits: Boxed wine sales are up ​144% year over year​ in a flat alcohol market

International Investing

Around the world…

1. Shein wins approval for a Hong Kong listing at​ $40 billion to $50 billion​, less than half its 2022 mark, after operating profit dropped 26% on tariffs
2. In Germany, Porsche cuts​ 9,000 jobs, one in five​, after a 56% collapse in China sales took operating profit down 93%
3. South Africa’s M-KOPA passes ​10 million customers across five African markets​, adding nine million in six years by financing smartphones for people banks will not touch
4. Brookfield closes​ $2 billion for a Middle East vehicle backed by PIF​, committing half the fund to Saudi Arabia

Why it matters: African consumer credit is taking shape

​M-KOPA​ looks like a phone retailer but is actually a secured lender.

The reason banks across Africa do not extend consumer credit is collateral: no credit file, no repossessable asset, no realistic recovery.

M-KOPA solved it by making the loan and the collateral the same object. The customer takes home a smartphone on a daily or weekly payment plan, and ​if the payments stop, the handset is remotely locked​ until they resume.

This mechanism turns an unsecured advance to someone with no financial history into a secured loan with instant, costless enforcement.The company is now signing up roughly 10,000 people per day across five markets.

This is a balance-sheet business that grows on the cost and availability of debt, not equity, which is why ​a $30 million facility from a Dutch development bank​ matters more than another venture round would.

The broader lesson travels well beyond Africa, and it shows up twice more in this issue: the frontier of credit right now is lending against collateral the traditional system refuses to recognize, whether that is a locked handset, a future AdSense stream, or a fractional share of a Ferrari.

Startups & VC

• The 30 leading VC firms have raised over a third of all global capital this year and ​seen their portfolios double to $7 trillion​ since 2023, with step-ups back at 2021 peaks
• OpenAI chooses to wait rather than list below $1 trillion, leaving private investors to absorb a projected ​$63 billion of 2027 operating burn​ with no public exit to offset it
• Stripe is in talks to buy AI model marketplace OpenRouter for about ​$10 billion, roughly eight times its May valuation​ of $1.3 billion
• Slow Ventures puts ​$2.5 million into a boating Instagram account​ bought for $7,000 in 2016, now a boat manufacturer, dealer software suite, and marketplace
• Elon Musk’s Boring Company seeks $4 billion at a ​$20 billion valuation​, nearly quadruple its 2022 mark, on the strength of the Las Vegas loop
• The de-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences is reportedly raising at ​$20 billion to $30 billion​, triple its last round, while secondary marketplaces mark it closer to $6 billion
• The semiconductor selloff ​repriced the exit pipeline​ for seven venture-backed chip startups that were lined up to list

Why it matters: Venture has become an oligopoly

Thirty firms have raised more than a third of all global venture capital this year, and the collective value of their portfolio companies has ​doubled to $7 trillion since 2023​, with valuation step-ups matching the 2021 mania.

For LPs this creates an uncomfortable inversion of the usual advice. Access, not selection, is the whole game, and if you are not in those funds your venture allocation is a different asset class than the one that produces the headline returns.

The concentration also builds a single point of failure, since the same firms own the same AI companies at the same marks.

PitchBook’s own framing leaves the question open: either this is the generational technology its backers believe, or these are the highest prices ever paid for a bubble.

Sports

• FIFA will spin the World Cup’s media rights, ticketing, licensing, and sponsorships into a new for-profit entity and ​sell up to 21% at a $20 billion valuation​, with Josh Kushner’s Thrive Eternal leading and JPMorgan advising
• UEFA threatens to boycott future FIFA competitions if the sale proceeds, calling the ​structure a transfer of the sport’s crown jewel​ to private hands
• Real Madrid books a third straight world record with ​€1.22 billion in revenue​ and €287 million of EBITDA, without winning a single trophy, on the back of its $1 billion stadium renovation
• The Green Bay Packers post a $1.1 million operating loss, their first since 1990, and the chairman says rival owners now have ​an ATM the Packers do not​ in the form of private equity minority stakes
• Fanatics buys a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse from BGC to ​list and clear its own event contracts​, moving from partner to operator

Why it matters: FIFA sells the World Cup

Sports has spent a decade selling minority stakes in teams. FIFA just proposed selling a stake in the event itself.

FIFA Forward Enterprise would hold the World Cup’s media rights, ticketing, licensing, and sponsorship income, with up to 21% sold at a $20 billion valuation to ​raise $4.2 billion in cash​.

Strip away the politics and the structure is elegant: a quadrennial, globally distributed, effectively uncorrelated revenue stream with a monopoly on the largest event in sport, wrapped so that outsiders can own the cash flows without owning the governance.

​UEFA is threatening to boycott​, and the objection is over who captures the growth of a sport that member federations believe they hold in trust.

Prediction Markets

• The Mets become the first MLB club to sign a prediction-market sponsor and ​choose Novig​ over Kalshi and Polymarket​, putting the sports-only platform on the Citi Field outfield wall and in broadcasts
• Fanatics acquires Water Street Labs and CX Clearinghouse from BGC, giving it a ​designated contract market and clearing organization​ of its own rather than a partnership with Crypto.com
• The NFL and NBA tell the CFTC its rule proposal still leaves gaps on manipulation and age limits, and have asked the administration to impose ​a 21-year minimum on event contracts​
• One skeptic notes that for all the hedging anecdotes about bars and ice cream shops, prediction markets remain ​almost entirely sports gambling​ by volume

Why it matters: The Mets pick the underdog

The interesting part of the Mets deal is not that a baseball team took prediction-market money. It is which platform got the call.

Novig has raised just over $100 million and has been invisible next to Kalshi and Polymarket, yet it ​won the first MLB franchise deal​ by being the only one of the three that is sports-only and enforces a 21-year age minimum, exactly ​the standard the NFL and NBA have been lobbying the CFTC to impose​.

If the leagues succeed in shaping the CFTC’s rules around age limits, data licensing, and integrity monitoring, the compliant sports-native platforms inherit the distribution and the generalist exchanges spend years retrofitting.

Novig has the outfield wall and the leagues’ preferred rulebook, and in a business where the regulator ultimately picks the winners, that may be the better asset.

Music & Film

• Deezer received nearly 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day in June, ​passing half of all new uploads​ for the first time, up from 75,000 a day in April, with much of it uploaded to farm royalties
• IMAX China hands ​nearly its entire 800-screen network​ to The Odyssey for its August 14 opening, as the film clears $652 million globally before China, Korea, and Japan have opened
• A federal grand jury in Chicago indicts film producer Jason Cloth on seven counts of wire fraud for allegedly ​defrauding clients of more than $100 million​ through purported film and entertainment projects
• The reactivated Hollywood Foreign Press Association sues Penske Media for more than ​$150 million over the Golden Globes takeover​, alleging the trades were used to devalue the award before acquiring it
• Apple Music raises US prices for the first time since 2022, moving the family plan from $16.99 to $19.99 and ​blaming rising licensing costs​

Why it matters: Are AI uploads taking over streaming?

Deezer is a small platform with an unusually honest disclosure policy, which makes it the best available window into what is happening to the music supply chain.

In April, 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks per day were arriving, 44% of uploads. By June it was ​90,000 a day and, on peak days, more than half of everything​ delivered to the service.

Deezer’s own position is that most of it exists to commit fraud, streamed by bots to skim the royalty pool. Streaming royalties are paid from a fixed pot divided by share of plays, so infinite supply at near-zero marginal cost does not lower prices, it dilutes every existing rights holder pro rata.

That makes the music catalog trade, one of the great alternative asset stories of the past decade, dependent on platforms policing something they have limited incentive to police, since fraudulent streams still count toward subscriber engagement.

Crypto

• BitMEX will ​shut down permanently on September 23​ after 11 years, several failed attempts to sell the business, and a legacy that includes inventing the 100x leveraged perpetual swap
• A bipartisan pair of bills would ​end crypto’s exemption from wash-sale rules​, closing a loophole Treasury values at nearly $24 billion over a decade
• Kenya gazettes its ​Virtual Asset Service Providers regulations​, a 116-page framework covering licensing, stablecoin backing, tokenized real-world assets, and custody
• The updated CLARITY Act text merges the Banking and Agriculture approaches and adds ​ethics provisions barring federal officials​ from issuing or sponsoring digital assets, though the rule sunsets in 2029
• Senate Democrats call the ethics language a nonstarter, objecting that enforcement would run through ​the Justice Department alone​ rather than state attorneys general or private plaintiffs

Why it matters: BitMEX turns out the lights

The company that invented the product every crypto exchange now depends on could not find a buyer.

BitMEX created the 100x leveraged perpetual swap, ran roughly 57% of the derivatives market at its peak, and cleared over $1 trillion of volume in 2019. It ​shuts down on September 23​ after a strategic review and multiple failed sale processes.

The proximate cause was the 2020 Bank Secrecy Act charges against its founders, which vaporized its regulatory standing and its order flow.

But BitMEX’s innovation was copied everywhere within two years and generated essentially no durable franchise for its inventor, while the exchanges that survived did so on compliance, banking relationships, and licenses rather than product.

That is why Citadel is writing checks into regulated retail venues and Kenya is publishing ​a 116-page rulebook covering stablecoin reserves and tokenized assets​, and why ​closing the wash-sale loophole​ is a bigger deal than it looks.

Own the licensed rails and the compliance moat, not the clever mechanism, because the mechanism gets copied and the license does not.

Collectibles, Culture and Luxury

• A signed 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson rookie sells for ​a record $1.86 million​, the priciest signed vintage sports card ever, as major auction houses clear $10 billion in first-half sales across art, cars, watches, and memorabilia
• Rally winds down direct fractional ownership for the NYSE-bound PIKA fund and partners with Alt on exits, prompting the question of whether ​alternative asset platforms are becoming funds​ and abandoning the model they invented
• Japan’s ruling party opens discussions on ​regulating the Pokémon card market​ after it grew 90% in four years to ¥338 billion, citing counterfeiting rings and money laundering
• A letter written aboard the Titanic the day it left Southampton sells for ​a record £60,000​, nearly double its high estimate
• Eminem consigns 117 hand-signed pairs from his personal sneaker collection to Julien’s, with ​bids opening as low as $25​ and proceeds going to his foundation
• Colonel Sanders’ 1964 personal planner, complete with a handwritten spice list, fetches $30,000 at auction while his ​clip-on bow tie brings $8,000​

Why it matters: Jackie Robinson $1.86 million card

The Jackie Robinson signed rookie at $1.86 million is the sharpest data point, ​beating the previous signed-vintage record by nearly $400,000​, and it holds because only five signed copies have ever been authenticated.

The same AI cycle minting paper millionaires in San Francisco is the one funding trophy bids, which is also why the correlation with the Nasdaq is tighter than anyone in this market likes to admit.

Two things worth watching from here.

• ​Japan moving to regulate Pokémon cards​ after a 90% run to $2.1 billion is the moment a hobby is officially reclassified as a financial asset, with the authentication and anti-laundering plumbing that follows
• And ​Rally folding its fractional platform into a listed fund​ is the reminder that the assets have matured faster than the wrappers built to hold them.

Collectibles are working. The financial products wrapped around them are still finding out what they are.

Private Equity & Private Credit

• Carlyle and Bain are the final bidders for Wealth Enhancement Group at roughly ​$7 billion including debt​, a price that would equal nearly a quarter of this year’s wealth-management deal value
• A growing share of the roughly 5,000 companies held by BDCs is ​showing credit stress​, with software names adding to the pressure on retail investors’ favorite private-credit vehicle
• Australia’s ASIC says some private credit funds have valuations ​lagging economic reality​ and puts the sector on notice as defaults and arrears climb
• Greenbacker’s CFO tries to explain the gap between a ​$4.22 stated NAV and a $1.83 deal price​, a 57% haircut on a nontraded fund’s own marks
• Only 1.8% of recently rated semiliquid funds ​earned even a bronze Medalist rating​ from Morningstar, with high fees and unproven strategies holding back the rest
• Credit fundraising ​fell 40% through June while hard assets gained 31%​, and larger PE managers continue to ​underperform their smaller peers​

Why it matters: The fight for the distribution pipe

Two of the largest buyout firms in the world are bidding $7 billion for a business that does not manufacture anything, does not own intellectual property, and whose main assets go home every night.

What Carlyle and Bain actually want is the distribution. ​Registered investment advisers now control $9.8 trillion​, up from $6.6 trillion in 2019, and since the Labor Department proposed easing private assets into 401(k) plans in March, that adviser network became the on-ramp to the largest untapped pool of capital in the country.

The median disclosed deal in this sector jumped from $19 million to $86 million in a single year! But the uncomfortable part is what is being pushed through the pipe.

• BDC portfolios are showing broadening credit stress
• ​ASIC is publicly warning that private credit marks lag reality​,
• Greenbacker just accepted a deal price 57% below its own stated NAV
• Morningstar could find ​bronze-grade quality in fewer than one in fifty​ semiliquid funds it rated.

Credit fundraising has already fallen 40% while hard assets rose 31%, so allocators are voting. The rational question before buying any of this is not what it yields, it is who is being paid to sell it to you and how far the mark can fall when someone finally tests it in a transaction.

Real Estate

• Japan now has more than ​9 million vacant homes, 13.8% of its entire housing supply​, with 3.9 million fully abandoned akiya and projections that one in three homes will be empty by 2038
• English-language searches for Japanese property are up sixfold this year as municipalities dangle ​renovation grants of up to ¥3 million​ and foreign buyers face new disclosure rules but no ownership restrictions
• The SEC charges nontraded REIT RAD Diversified and its founders with a ​$152 million fraud​, alleging they told 5,500 retail investors nobody had ever lost money while properties went into foreclosure
• Industrial vacancy falls below 7% as ​demand outpaces new supply for the first time since 2022​, with 62.1 million square feet of net absorption and deliveries down 20% year over year
• BREIT posts its ​best net flows in four years​ even as BCRED outflows persist, a clean split between investors’ appetite for property and for private credit

Why it matters: Japan’s 9 million empty houses

The most interesting real estate market in the world is the one where the buildings are free and the demographics are the enemy. Japan has over ​9 million vacant homes, 13.8% of its housing stock​, and 3.9 million of them are abandoned akiya with no economic purpose at all. By 2038 the projection is one in three.

This is not just a rural story, since Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya are full of empty units, and it is the product of a population that has shrunk by 4 million in 20 years, a tax code that punishes demolition, and a culture that treats houses as depreciating consumer goods with roughly a 30-year useful life.

That last detail is the investable one. Because Japanese homes are assumed to be worthless after three decades, the market prices the structure at zero and the land at whatever the local demographics justify, which is why foreigners are now buying habitable houses for the price of a used car and why English-language searches for Japanese property are up sixfold this year.

Municipalities are adding ​renovation grants up to ¥3 million​ because they would rather subsidize an outsider than manage another derelict.

This is a yield trade, not an appreciation trade. Buy in a town that is dying and you have bought the demographics along with the roof. So the parcels that work are the ones with tourism, transit, or a second-home thesis behind them.

Japan trip: 75 days away!

Three nights in Tokyo. One night in the Nagano highlands.

Our Japan trip is 90 days away, and we’re excited to share the trip is taking shape.

Updates:

• Hotels locked in: ​Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel​ (Shibuya) for 3 nights, ​Hotel Silk (Madarao)​ for our night in Iiyama
• Bonsai Day is fully confirmed: ​Shunkaen Bonsai Museum​, a traditional tea ceremony, and a private live bonsai performance with renowned artist ​Mr. Saeki​
• Sumo show is set. This is gonna be epic.
• Traditional tea ceremony in ​Shinjuku​ (matcha and sencha)
• Nagano day: Now includes the ​Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park​ before our distillery tour and tasting at ​Kiyokawa​
• Vinyl hunting in Shimokitazawa added for those sticking around before departure

More details to come as we lock in the final pieces.

Only 4 Spots Left

Tokyo, sumo, bonsai masters, snow monkeys, sake at a private distillery — this trip is going to be epic.

Early bird pricing is over, but you can still lock in before it’s fully booked.

• Price: $3,999
• Bring a guest: +$2,999
• Includes: All meals, drinks, activities, events, and transportation. Everything except flights.

Don’t wait, once the 12 spots are gone, they’re gone.

​Lock in your spot with a $1,000 deposit​. Fully refundable up to 60 days before departure.

Artwork

• Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips posted ​$6.8 billion in first-half auction sales, up 70% year on year​, the best half since 2022, with 20th and 21st century art doing most of the lifting
• The Lewis collection made ​$406.2 million in London​, the highest total ever for a sale of Impressionist, modern, and contemporary art staged in Europe
• Jim Irsay’s Americana collection cleared ​$105.2 million across five auctions​, the largest sale total ever for a memorabilia collection
• The houses are now selling participation rather than records, pointing to ​bidder counts and sell-through in the $20,000 to $100,000 band​ rather than headline hammer prices

Why it matters: A 70% half

=First-half sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips ​reached $6.8 billion, up 70% on 2025​, and the composition explains the jump better than the total does.

Two single-owner collections, Lewis at $406 million and ​Irsay’s Americana at $105 million​, supplied an enormous share.

The houses are now reporting record bidder participation and improving sell-through in the $20,000 to $100,000 band.

Precious Metals and Gems

• The World Gold Council’s 2026 survey finds ​a record 45% of central banks plan to add gold​ over the next year, with 89% expecting global official reserves to rise
• Gold set an all-time high near $5,000 in late January, then ground down to about ​$4,000 to $4,050 by late June​, a correction the official sector spent buying
• Silver’s round trip was more violent, from a record $121.62 on January 29 to roughly $58, even as the metal enters ​its sixth straight year of supply deficit​
• Analysts cut gold forecasts for the first time since late 2023 to a $4,509 median, while ​HSBC holds a $4,750 year-end target​ on the structural bull case

Farmland

• Benchmark farmland values across Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming came in ​flat to slightly higher at midyear​, supported by the balance sheets of buyers and a tight market that produced even fewer sales than last year
• Nonirrigated cropland values are running about ​3% above a year ago​ across the Federal Reserve districts surveyed, despite high rates and falling net farm income
• Producer confidence in the land market ​has not cracked even on tight margins​, with landowners simply declining to list rather than accept lower prices
• Buyers are getting choosier, concentrating bids on ​Grade A ground with proven yield history​ while marginal acres sit, and the institutional row-crop index was essentially flat at plus 0.38% over the year

Why it matters: Flat landscape is the story

Net farm income is falling, borrowing costs are high, and margins are the tightest in years, which is the exact combination that historically breaks land prices.

But instead, ​benchmark values across the core Midwest came in flat to slightly higher​ and nonirrigated cropland is ​running about 3% above last year​.

The mechanism is supply. Owners with strong balance sheets and no debt pressure respond to a soft bid by not selling, so transaction volume collapses before price does. That is why the asset shows such low reported volatility.

The dispersion beneath the average is where the actual returns live. ​Grade A ground with documented tile, water rights, and yield history​ is drawing premiums while marginal acres sit unsold, and the institutional row-crop index was flat at plus 0.38%.

Underwrite farmland the way a lender underwrites collateral, parcel by parcel, and the picture is intact.

Buy the asset class off an index and you are buying an average that no individual field actually trades at.

Wine, Whiskey, and Spirits

• Boxed wine sales rose ​more than 144% year over year in June​, the fastest-growing segment in an otherwise flat alcohol industry, as premium brands push $34 to $54 bag-in-box formats into hotels and private clubs
• Gratsi has gone from about 2,000 cases in 2020 to 375,000 in 2025 with a 50% subscriber retention rate, and expects sales to ​climb another 60% this year​
• The Rare Whisky 101 Japanese index rose nearly ​580% in the decade to 2024​, with Yamazaki 18 appreciating over 1,100% and Hakushu 25 going from $1,000 to $14,500
• July auctions stayed quiet on a seasonal break, though Karuizawa and ​Hibiki 40 Year Old kept drawing Japanese collectors​, while the bottom half of the whisky market by value keeps losing money in real terms

Why it matters: Boxed wine goes upmarket

A 144% growth rate in a declining category is interesting.

Boxed wine is winning on unit economics. One box holds four bottles’ worth at roughly $34 to $54, the packaging is far cheaper to produce and ship, the carbon footprint is about a tenth of glass, and the spigot keeps the wine drinkable for weeks instead of hours.

That last feature is the commercial insight. A generation drinking less per occasion has been structurally penalized by the 750ml bottle, which forces a commitment most moderate drinkers may not want to make, and the format that removes the penalty gets the growth.

​Gratsi scaling from 2,000 cases to 375,000​ with 50% subscriber retention is a direct-to-consumer business with a wine label on it, and hotels and private clubs adopting the format is what converts a value play into a premium one.

See you next time, Stefan

Disclosures

• This issue has no sponsors and contains no affiliate links.