What money can't buy, the Sandbox provides.
Any fund can write a check. BOA gives every investment something capital alone can't: validation from the people who actually run professional franchises — tested in live environments, before we price a single deal.
Capital isn't a moat. Expert validation is.
The hardest problem in sports tech investing isn't finding deals — it's knowing which ones actually work inside a professional franchise. BOA's Advisory Council and Founding LP network are current and former owners, executives, and operators across the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, MLS, NBL Australia, and the Premier League. They don't evaluate technology from a pitch deck. They put it to work — inside real front offices, on real game days, with real budgets on the line.
The Advisory Council
Senior sports executives, franchise owners, and elite athletes who've run the exact organizations our portfolio companies are trying to sell into.
Live Franchise Pilots
Every candidate technology is deployed inside a real venue, with real staff and real fans — not a demo environment built to flatter it.
Proof Before Price
BOA invests only in what survives contact with a real operating environment. That's the diligence money alone can't replicate.
The BOA Sandbox™ — proof before we price.
Every fund claims access. BOA productized it. The Sandbox is a structured pilot program inside professional franchises: Founding LP owners open their venues, candidate technology proves itself in live environments, and Fund I invests only in what survives.
Hardball Capital's POS Competition
Three minor-league baseball clubs — the Fort Wayne TinCaps, Chattanooga Lookouts, and Columbia Fireflies — ran a live point-of-sale bake-off judged by Jason Freier, President & CEO of Hardball Capital and a BOA Founding LP. The teams faced a real operating problem with several emerging solutions on the market; the Sandbox ran the head-to-head pilot to identify the winner on real-world performance, not a sales deck. It was the model the Sandbox is built upon.