It was in the early summer of 2024, when Everton were in the eye of a storm caused by the disintegration of their prospective owners, 777 Partners, that Vatche Manoukian’s name suddenly hit the headlines.
The London-based Armenian, a former finance lawyer turned investor, emerged as a potential saviour to the cash-strapped Merseyside football club by fronting a reported £400m deal.
Manoukian, 46, had only been alerted to the opportunity six weeks earlier and quickly tapped into his network to form a consortium and make a rival offer to Everton’s owner, Farhad Moshiri.
Ultimately, his proposal did not proceed and US multi-club owner The Friedkin Group bought Moshiri’s majority stake but that, it turns out, was not the end of Manoukian’s interest in sport.
He is behind Stadion, which has been billed as the world’s first purpose-built neobank aimed at athletes and sports institutions and officially launches this week.
At the heart of the business is providing bridging loans to sportspeople, often early in their careers, whose future earnings are guaranteed by lucrative contracts but can still struggle to get credit because it is traditionally calculated based on historical finances.
Stadion also draws on the expertise of Manoukian’s IMS Digital Ventures and IMS Sports & Entertainment, which invests in and uses its in-house tech team to grow early-stage companies.
“Stadion is using technology to facilitate a fundamental shift in sports finance,” says CEO Manoukian.
“Our AI-powered platform has solved problems that traditional banks cannot – reducing decision making to a matter of minutes as opposed to several days.
“Now, we have used this proven technology to build the world’s first purpose-built neobank for sports, connecting athletes, sports teams, and institutional capital in ways that have previously been impossible.”
Stadion eyes football clients in Europe and UK
Manoukian has tested the concept through a handful of loans with athletes in US sports which, he says, have generated annualised gross returns of 20 per cent.
That has allowed Stadion to raise $10m in initial funding from family offices but Manoukian says the company has a $100m pipeline of further loans to sportspeople competing in the five main US leagues, the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS.
In addition to its core product, Stadion will offer a full-service platform that includes marketplaces connecting institutional investors and capital providers with athlete and team financing opportunities, as well as an alternative investments arm to bridge sports capital flows into broader financial markets.
Stadion projects that revenue from its various offerings will reach $150m by 2030. By then it is hoped the company will have clients in the UK and Europe, most likely in football, where combined salaries hit around $7bn in 2024.
More than a year on from his flirtation with Everton, Manoukian is understood to still be open to buying another football club but, for now, he has a different goal.
He says: “With dozens of athletes in our pipeline and an unparalleled network of sporting organisations and institutional investors, Stadion is in a position to revolutionise the sports business.”