David Blitzer Joins League One Volleyball as Austin Co-Owner

League One Volleyball (LOVB) has announced David Blitzer, Peter J. Holt and Amy Griffin will buy the LOVB Austin Volleyball pro team in Austin, Texas.

The group will also gain an ownership stake in LOVB itself. Griffin, through her private equity firm G9 Ventures, had already been involved in the competition as an investor.

Financial details of the LOVB Austin transaction were not disclosed. With assistance from law firm Proskauer, LOVB’s chief growth officer Stephanie Alger led talks with G9 Ventures, Blitzer’s Bolt Ventures and Spurs Sports & Entertainment, which is chaired by Holt.

The original six LOVB teams had all been owned and operated by the league, but Rosie Spaulding, president of LOVB Pro, said there was always a roadmap towards individual team ownership.

Spaulding said in a video interview that the experience in sports that Blitzer, Holt and Griffin bring to the table will be an invaluable asset to LOVB, and that the group was drawn to LOVB Austin by “the model … and the ecosystem approach that we have with the youth community.”

The new stewards of LOVB Austin, which won the inaugural LOVB championship in April, come to a place that has long supported the sport through the University of Texas’ famed program. Nine of the 15 players in LOVB Austin are former Longhorns—keeping with the league’s mission of promoting local stars.

“Austin is such a hotbed for volleyball,” Spaulding said. “Incredible participation on the club side, incredible success in the collegiate side.”

Blitzer is believed to be the first person invested in all five major male U.S. team sports leagues at the same time, though he is in the process of selling the control stakes of MLS’ Real Salt Lake and the NWSL’s Utah Royals to the Miller family. He is the co-owner both of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers (valued at $4.57 billion) and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils ($1.7 billion) along with Josh Harris. He’s also an investor in the NFL’s Washington Commanders, of which Harris is the majority owner, and in MLB’s Cleveland Guardians, where he has a pathway to control within the next few years. Through Bolt Ventures, Blitzer holds a stake in Crystal Palace and controls several other European soccer clubs.

While Blitzer has the widest sports ownership portfolio, Holt and Griffin have the strongest ties to Austin and volleyball.

In 1996, Holt’s father, Peter M. Holt, joined the San Antonio Spurs’ ownership group and became the franchise’s majority owner just a few months later. Since then, the Spurs have won five NBA championships, and the family added the NBA G League’s Austin Spurs and the USL’s San Antonio FC to its holdings. (Its former WNBA team, the San Antonio Silver Stars, was sold to MGM International in 2017. The Stars became the Las Vegas Aces, currently the most valuable team in the W.)

Peter J. Holt succeeded his father and mother as the chairman and CEO of Spurs Sports & Entertainment in 2019. The Spurs are valued at $3.79 billion, ranked 20th in Sportico’s NBA franchise valuations.

Griffin, the managing partner of G9 Ventures, leads a private equity firm with investments in On Running, Bumble, Oura and Spanx, among other consumer products. G9 is already an investor in the league, and Spanx is a league-wide sponsor.

A Texas native, Griffin is a former outside hitter and team captain of the women’s volleyball team at the University of Virginia. She is also a New York Times bestselling author. Her memoir The Tell was released in March.

In January, Spaulding said LOVB was weighing expansion outside of its six current markets. When asked this week if the league would focus on adding new clubs or sell the existing teams to well-heeled owners, Spaulding said that pairing the original teams with the right group is more important.

“In approaching the idea of team ownership, we’ve really focused on bringing together the right individuals in the right markets versus selling all teams outright,” Spaulding said. “We’ll continue to be super deliberate and intentional in identifying those [ownership] groups and ensuring that they’re aligned with… what we’re building here, not just on the pro side, but [having] a true ecosystem through our youth-to-pro model.”