Harry Kane, top scorer and entrepreneur

There is a version of this story that begins and ends with a boot deal. In August 2023, Kane signed a lifetime deal with Skechers, timed to the hour of his arrival at Bayern Munich. The structure was not a flat fee, but a royalty stake in the brand’s football division: a smaller base, a bigger share of the upside.

It was an unusual arrangement. It became a template.

Over the three years since, Kane has assembled a portfolio spanning premium ticketing, sustainable sportswear, player tracking technology, gut health nutrition and a Bavarian porridge brand discovered after his move to Munich. Each investment runs through a single family owned holding company. Each is structured, where possible, around equity rather than endorsement fees. Most of it has unfolded quietly.

The latest move: Seat Unique, a London based premium ticketing and hospitality platform, closed a £20 million funding round on June 22 led by Nickleby Capital, with additional participation from Active Partners, Pentland Ventures, Hearst Ventures and The Players Fund. Kane has been a shareholder since March 2025, when he joined a round that valued the company at more than £100 million, according to the Financial Times.

The “operating system for premium live experiences.”

Seat Unique is not a secondary ticketing marketplace. It works directly with rights holders to distribute official premium inventory, with partnerships at Wembley Stadium, Manchester’s Co op Live arena and 16 racecourses run by Arena Racing. Its most recent acquisitions, P1 Travel and Circuit Hospitality, expanded its reach into Premier League hospitality through agreements with Arsenal and Everton. The goal, in the words of co founder and COO James Duffy, is to become the “operating system for premium live experiences.”

The company is targeting £175 million in sales this year, more than triple the more than £55 million it reported in its most recent year. It has set a three year target above £350 million and says it aims to reach a £500 million valuation.

Skechers: the start of a business architecture

Seat Unique is the next domino in an architecture that began with Skechers, the model we call the “athlete economy.” The premise is straightforward: the athlete endorsement also carries a stake in the business, sometimes purely financial, more often operational and creative.

The Kane family, specifically Charlie Kane and Patrick Kane, laid the groundwork in 2023. They saw a chance to move beyond the existing agreement with Nike after renewal talks stalled, and Erling Haaland’s arrival at Manchester City reset expectations for what an elite striker was worth to a boot sponsor. Kane’s representatives concluded he was being undervalued. Walking away from Nike became a negotiating reset.

Skechers, building its first football boot and needing a credible anchor athlete, was willing to structure something different. Kane’s team chose the royalty route over a larger guaranteed fee.

The Skechers deal combined an annual retainer with a royalty component. Kane accepted a smaller base fee in exchange for a larger long term share of sales. By 2026, that choice looks like the first expression of a consistent operating philosophy.

The vehicle: HK28

Behind the deals is HK28 Limited, registered as The Harry Kane Company. It is directed by Charlie Kane alongside HK28 Digital Limited and the management firm CK66. Structurally, it looks less like a conventional athlete management office and more like a small private equity operation.

The property arm, Edward James Investments, holds about £15 million (€17.6 million, $20.3 million) in assets. Kane’s Bayern Munich contract is reportedly worth about £400,000 (€468,000, $540,000) per week over a four year term (about £83.2 million/€97.3 million/$112.3 million in total), providing the capital base for the wider portfolio.

CK66 exists to represent one client. Every commercial contract, equity stake and licensing agreement is negotiated in house and held centrally. The model removes the third party agency layer that often dilutes control and economics for elite athletes, and it lets Kane’s team move quickly when a deal fits the thesis. 

The portfolio and what connects it

Reflo, a London-based sustainable sportswear brand founded in 2021, brought Kane on as lead investor and ambassador in 2024. The company reported £5 million in revenue for 2025, operates at a gross margin of around 60 percent, and launched a £2.5 million Crowdcubeequity raise in March 2026 at a £25 million valuation. Its co-founder Rory MacFadyen described Kane as someone who “takes the time to understand what we’re building and why” — a line that sounds like PR, but fits the pattern.

On the food side, Kane is also a confirmed shareholder in 3Bears Foods, the Munich-based porridge brand, after joining the company as both investor and brand partner following his move to Germany.

Kane has also invested into STATSports, the GPS player-tracking firm used by Manchester City, Arsenal, PSG, and the England national team. And in the low-calorie bakery startup Urban Legend.

The connective tissue across the verified portfolio is not sector: it is conviction. The strongest confirmed investments map either to something Kane uses personally, something he has spoken about publicly, or something that sits at the intersection of performance, health, and sustainability. Kane’s investment strategy reads less like accumulation and more like curation.

The goal record and the business record

The athlete investor model is crowded now. What is less common is the structural discipline behind it. Most athletes who take equity stakes do so through third party vehicles, on terms set by others, tied to brands that needed a famous face more than a genuine partner.

Kane’s portfolio looks different: selective, grounded in the athlete’s own convictions, family controlled throughout, and quiet enough that much of it only became visible when the companies themselves made news.

It is worth holding that picture next to what Kane has built on the pitch. He arrived at this World Cup having already broken England’s all time international scoring record. He has now broken Lineker’s World Cup record too: 11 goals across three tournaments, in the competition he has described as the biggest a professional footballer plays.

Those records are the source of the commercial leverage that makes the off pitch architecture possible. Visibility at this scale, sustained across a career this long, is what gives a royalty stake in a challenger boot brand real value. It is also what puts a premium ticketing platform on the front page when it closes a new funding round, one year after bringing the champion on board.

The shift from endorsement fees to ownership participation is playing out across the industry, from Mo Farah’s involvement with URUNN to Stephen Curry’s relationship with Li Ning, but it rarely shows this level of structural coherence at this point in an active career. Kane is 32, still operating at the peak of his abilities, but already running what amounts to a post football enterprise in parallel. The Bayern Munich and England captain can continue their prolific scoring career. The family office, meanwhile, can keep building its portfolio as a patient investor.

Athlete economy

The new athlete paradigm: entrepreneurs building brands, investors backing ventures, and community leaders driving change—plus the sports organizations, partnerships, and monetization strategies shaping the sporting goods industry.

Explore Athlete Economy →