Matt Winkelried first walked into Bleecker Trading last year as a customer, looking to rekindle a childhood love of collecting. Now, he owns the company.

Bleecker operates two New York City collectibles retail stores with 20 total employees, one in the West Village and another on the Upper West Side, and he also has a website that gets roughly 20,000 web visits daily. It sells trading cards, including for sports of all kinds, as well as memorabilia, like a basketball signed by Victor Wembanyama that’s listed for $750.

“I immediately fell in love with the vibe,” Winkelried tells Front Office Sports. “It made me feel comfortable getting back into a hobby I hadn’t been involved in for many years.”

Winkelried, 36, who has previously invested in an array of businesses through his private family office—including Twitch, Harry’s shave company, and another card collector company, Courtyard.io—is buying Bleecker from its founder, Mark Zablow, 43. 

Terms were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the deal tell FOS it is a “seven-figure” deal.

“I was not looking to sell the business,” Zablow says.

But Winkelried, who first came into the shop as a customer and later joined as a retail associate before assuming the role of head of operations last May, saw the same upside Zablow did, and had the capital to take the business further.

Zablow, who lives in Connecticut, intends to stay on in an advisory role, while Winkelried, who lives in New York City, will take over day-to-day operations.

A Hobby Reimagined

A big card collector his whole life, Zablow had noted a rising interest in the collectibles space before the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the pandemic struck in 2020, his day job running marketing agency Cogent World—which focuses on live events and counts Corona beer, Calvin Klein, and Samsung as clients—went quiet.

“Being the marketer for a beer with the same name as the virus, and your skill is live in-person events, we didn’t have a lot going on,” he tells FOS. 

Zablow says he sold “all of his cards” to launch Bleecker in a retail space secured through a real estate partner looking to bring new life to a stretch of the West Village.

“The idea was, ‘Hey, if you can put some Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter photos in the storefront and brighten up this street a little bit, we’ll work with you,’” Zablow says.

His instinct was correct. In 2021, the global sports trading card market was valued at $13.9 billion, and by 2032 it’s projected to reach almost $49 billion. Bleecker says revenue has increased 300% year-to-date, but provided no further details on its financials.

More Than a Retail Shop

From the beginning, Zablow wanted Bleecker to be more than just a place to buy cards. The company focused on building a community through trade nights, athlete appearances, and drop-off services for people to get their products graded by Professional Sports Authenticator, or PSA.

Bleecker has collaborated with NFL star Micah Parsons and his Lionheart Foundation on a limited-edition hat, with the majority of proceeds donated to charity, as well as the Jonas Brothers on a pop-up event. 

“We’re not a retail business first—we’re a hospitality business,” Winkelried says. “Our goal now is to elevate what’s already special. To double down on culture, community, and pride.”

The shop’s reach is split between locals and tourists, with about 60% of its customer base residing in New York and the rest made up of visitors—including 15% from overseas. 

Looking Ahead

Both Winkelried and Zablow see promise in what they call the growing “collectibles district” of downtown Manhattan—Bleecker’s original shop is just a few blocks from Fanatics’s New York headquarters, and other card shops are beginning to move in.

“If you look at Fairfax [in Los Angeles], the amount of sneaker stores next to each other didn’t hurt anybody. Collectors bring collectors,” Zablow says. “We welcome more stores.”

There may eventually be plans to open new stores, but Winkelried and Zablow declined to share specifics of expansion plans. The primary point of emphasis as Winkelried takes over will be growing the business while continuing to serve its existing customers and maintaining its ethos.

“There’s something at Bleecker for everybody,” he says. “But the heart of it all is community. We’re not just a card shop—we’re a place for collectors and investors to feel at home.”

J.J. Spaun’s 64-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to win the U.S. Open last month may have also helped the company behind his putter win a nine-figure sale to private-equity firm L Catterton.

The Connecticut-headquartered PE firm is buying a majority stake in L.A.B. Golf, the maker of Spaun’s zero-torque DF3 putter, in a deal that values the company at more than $200 million, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to Front Office Sports. The companies announced the deal, without financial details, on Tuesday. The agreement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

L.A.B. Golf, based in Oregon, has “experienced rapid growth in recent years,” according to the press release. Some of that recent growth can be attributed to the high-profile putt from Spaun, a PGA Tour journeyman whose winning putt did more than just net him a record-tying $4.3 million winner’s check—it led to a surge of new sales and social media posts referencing the company and its products.

At the time, Sam Hahn, founder and CEO of L.A.B. Golf, told FOS that Spaun’s success had led to “total pandemonium” at the company. Hahn said then that the company, formed in 2018, had no private backers, though he told FOS he was willing to listen if the attention provided by Spaun’s winning putt ginned up any interested investors. “We’re open to any phone calls, of course.”

Turns out he was being coy. Talks had already started with L Catterton, but discussions were not exclusive. In fact, prior to entering into serious discussions with L Catterton, Hahn says L.A.B. Golf was “courted, in a real way,” by roughly a dozen potential buyers, including multiple PE firms. 

“L Catterton was literally the only company that didn’t mention the flip and their exit within the first 20 minutes of being in the building,” he tells FOS. “They are truly entrepreneurial in spirit. They asked, very simply, ‘How do we make this brand the biggest and baddest it can be? What can we do to continue what you guys have already done?’”

L Catterton is a consumer-focused firm; other companies in its portfolio include Birkenstock and JustFoodforDogs. Past investments include exercise bike giant Peloton and road bike maker Pinarello.

The deal has not been well-received by everyone. Customers voiced concerns on social media this week when the transaction was rumored, including a Reddit thread that racked up a number of negative comments. But Hahn says the entire management team is staying on—minus the CFO, who had been planning to leave before the deal anyway—and he stresses that L Catterton is not coming in to operate the company. Instead, it wants to provide financial backing to help it grow, develop new and more customized products, and more.

“When the news broke, we were definitely pretty bummed to see how concerned everybody was about the future,” he tells FOS. “That said, I totally get it. When we first set out to do a transaction, I was vehemently opposed to doing it with private equity.”

But in order to find the right deal, Hahn ultimately realized the right move was to at least hear out potential PE suitors, and L Catterton “just blew me away in their philosophy around cultivating brands.”

In response to concerns, Hahn says: “Customers are the single reason we are where we are. Give us a chance to break the stereotypes around private equity. I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Tom Brady has spent his post-playing career amassing ownership stakes in teams like the NFL’s Raiders, the WNBA’s Aces and English soccer club Birmingham City, but the seven-time Super Bowl winner says he’s more focused on what’s happening on the field than what’s taking place in the boardroom.

“I don’t look at it from a business standpoint,” he told Front Office Sports when asked about his ownership portfolio. “I look at it from a purpose-driven standpoint.” 

Brady, promoting an upcoming documentary about Birmingham City, repeatedly dodged questions about the business side of his ownership holdings like he was a running back juking the defense. He maintains his focus is using his many years of experience as a successful pro athlete to support the athletes on the field. He says that to “bring a part of competition and trying to help other people be successful” is his motivation as an owner.

“I enjoy the process and the product that happens on the field,” he said on FOS Today. “There’s certainly businesspeople involved in selling tickets and sponsorships and so forth, but I want to see other people be successful in their life and their sporting career.”

He stressed that he is not in a “day-to-day operational role” with Birmingham.

“I feel like I can play a role from 30,000 feet to make sure the players are saying the right thing, the coaches are saying the right thing, the processes for their success are correct,” he said. “And I really enjoy that role, and I can play a mentorship role in different ways in a lot of different areas.”

In addition to stakes in the Raiders, Aces, and Birmingham, Brady co-owns a Major League Pickleball team and an electric powerboat racing team. He’s also co-owner of collectors retail business CardVault, which is planning to open a location in Chicago, not to mention his role as a broadcaster on Fox Sports.

“I’ve got a lot on my plate,” Brady said.

Brady also remained mostly mum with regard to his thoughts on the NFL allowing private-equity firms to invest in teams. (A limited PE ownership policy was approved last summer, and three teams already have PE investment: the Dolphins, Bills, and Chargers.)

“To be honest, I don’t really focus much on that. I really focus on the process of improvement for these clubs and for the players, and for the practices and the games,” he said. “The business side, I know there’s a lot of other people involved in those things, and the business of sports is very intense and there’s a lot of different nuances to the business of sports as well, both in the U.K. and America. I think where my expertise fits is actually on the field.”