SURJ Sports Investment, the sports arm of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, has led a new round of funding for the Professional Triathletes Organisation, which operates professional and amateur triathlons around the globe.
The capital from SURJ closes the capital raising round for PTO, which Sportico earlier reported includes $10 million from Cordillera Investment Partners and has participation from Verance Capital and Michael Moritz, the billionaire chairperson of Sequoia Capital. The size of the round is about $50 million, with SURJ the lead investor, according to a person familiar with the details who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t being publicly disclosed.
“We’ve been looking at triathlon for a long time as a sport that we felt was right for growth and investment,” SURJ CEO Danny Townsend said in a statement provided to Sportico. “Saudi Arabia is a growing sporting nation and has ambitions to one day host the Olympic Games and triathlon being a key Olympic sport. We’re really looking to try and embed ourselves into those sports to enable people to participate and one day aspire to be an Olympic athlete.”
The SURJ investment will “fuel PTO’s global expansion and mass participation strategy, including planned growth in Saudi Arabia” and the wider Middle East, according to a release jointly issued by SURJ and PTO.
The country will likely be a host of a future T100 Triathalon World Tour contest, PTO’s headline event. The addition of SURJ to PTO’s investor roster comes as triathlon participation in the country rose 24% from 2022 to 2024, and viewership increased 6,000%, according to the press release.
Other investors in PTO during prior venture capital rounds include Moritz, who invested in both Series A and B rounds, according to the release, as well as Divergent Investments, which invested $30 million in 2022, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Healthcare-focused fund Eckuity had also invested in 2022 an undisclosed amount, according to S&P.
SURJ was established by PIF, the Saudi wealth fund, in 2023 to accelerate sports’ growth in the country and the wider Middle East North Africa region. The fund is an investor in the Professional Fighters League and has a partnership with Enfield Investment Partners, a recently launched U.S.-based sports investment fund that claims $4 billion in fund value.
