Jake Paul's promotion just absorbed the second-biggest MMA league in the world, and he's still fighting in it. Beyoncé bought her whisky brand back from LVMH, running the celebrity spirits playbook in reverse. Serena took her own name off a $111 million fund so it would outlive her. Welcome back to The Closeout. Let's get into it.

The competition continues to heat up for the incumbent in the MMA space. On Thursday, Most Valuable Promotions and the Professional Fighters League officially merged, operating under the MVP banner. The Professional Fighters League (or PFL) spent seven years building the second-biggest MMA promotion in the world, second only to UFC. The PFL name will be phased out by the start of 2027. 

MVP, which Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian co-founded five years ago, is now the second serious challenger targeting UFC's spot. Back in Issue #1, I wrote about Scott Coker raising $60 million for a new MMA league backed by Tony Hawk and a group of NFL and NBA owners, also targeting 2027. UFC hasn't faced two funded challengers at once in a long time.

Both Paul and Bidarian are co-founders and board members of the new entity. John Martin, PFL's CEO and the former chairman of Turner Networks, runs the combined business. Bidarian keeps oversight of boxing and live events. Founding investors 885 Capital and Knighthead Capital Management committed fresh capital, which the company says gives it the strongest balance sheet in its history.

What they now control: roughly 400 fighters across boxing and MMA, PFL's distribution across 34 broadcast and streaming partners in more than 170 countries, existing deals with Netflix, ESPN, and Sky Sports, and five premium events scheduled in August alone.

"We're going to compete with the UFC head to head," Paul said. The new company is publicly recruiting fighters from rival promotions the moment their contracts expire.

Here’s the kicker: Jake Paul is still fighting. He's 12-2, coming off a knockout loss to Anthony Joshua in December, and he's said he'll return to the ring and make his MMA debut under his own banner next year. That means he's an active competitor on a platform he co-owns, sitting on the board that sets the terms he fights under.

Athletes have bought stakes in professional teams. They’ve also started production companies. Very few, if any at all, have built the promotion, merged with the number-two player in the sport, and then scheduled themselves on the card to compete within it. 

Serena Williams renamed Serena Ventures to Starfire Ventures. Back in Issue #3, I wrote about the $111 million fund with 16 unicorns in the portfolio. Same fund, same managing partner, same $111 million, new name that doesn't have Serena Williams in it. Her reasoning: "I felt like Serena Ventures is great, but I wanted it to be bigger than me.”

Chan Ho Park led a South Korean investment group, BTS's Suga included, putting $70 million into the Athletics' Las Vegas ballpark buildout. Park becomes a senior adviser to ownership. First South Korea-born owner in MLB history.

Travis Scott's Cactus Jack signed a first-look deal with Paramount across film, TV, theater, and live shows. Paramount gets right of first refusal on anything he develops before he can shop it anywhere else. 

Jimmie Johnson added a real ownership group to Legacy Motor Club this week, Bryce Harper, Andy Roddick, Kelly Slater, and Chase Utley among them. Johnson stays majority owner.

Beyoncé launched SirDavis American Whisky in 2024 with Moët Hennessy, the wine and spirits arm of LVMH. It was the first spirits brand Moët Hennessy built from the ground up in the United States rather than acquired. Two years later, she owns all of it.

She acquired Moët Hennessy's stake, making SirDavis fully independent under her sole ownership. Terms weren't disclosed. The brand described it as the end of a nearly four-year collaboration through creation, development, and launch, with Knowles-Carter taking full ownership and control, making SirDavis a woman-, family-, and Black-owned company.

The product has real credentials. It was developed with Dr. Bill Lumsden, director of whisky creation at Glenmorangie and Ardbeg, alongside head blender Cameron George. It scored 96 points at the New York International Spirits Competition and took Best New Product at the 2025 Spirits Business Awards. It retails around $90, sells through Total Wine in the US and Selfridges and Berry Bros in Britain. The name comes from her great-grandfather, Davis Hogue, a farmer and moonshiner during Prohibition.

Now the part that makes this different from every other celebrity liquor story.

The modern playbook starts with George Clooney. He co-founded Casamigos in 2013 and sold it to Diageo in 2017 for up to $1 billion, $700 million cash plus a $300 million earn-out, on a brand moving roughly 170,000 cases a year. Ryan Reynolds took a stake in Aviation Gin in 2018 and sold to Diageo two years later in a deal valued up to $610 million. Conor McGregor sold a majority of Proper No. Twelve for around $600 million. Every one of those is the same trade: build the brand, attach the name, exit to the conglomerate.

Most celebrities are building toward an exit. She saw an opportunity to capitalize on a brand she helped build and did the opposite.

Pharrell's Joopiter is launching a dedicated Watches Department. Joopiter is the digital auction house Pharrell founded in 2022 to sell rare and collectible pieces, streetwear, jewelry, art, and now timepieces, with curated sales built around cultural moments rather than traditional auction categories. Its debut sale, a collection from Pharrell's own archive, pulled in $5.25 million against a $3.2 million high estimate with 94% of lots sold. Pharrell didn't just show up to an auction. He built the auction house, and now he's expanding it into a new category the way any real business expands.

Back in Issue #7 I wrote about Colston launching the Champion Fund, which lets regular fans buy into pro sports for as little as $500. Here he is explaining the thinking behind it himself. The Saints champion has spent his second act building access to the parts of sports ownership that normally require a nine-figure net worth, team equity, sports tech, stadium real estate. Worth watching for how a former player talks about ownership when he's the one structuring the deal instead of signing one.

If you missed last week, I sat down with a former ATP top-100 pro who broke into the world's top 100 at 30 and cleared $3,000 that week. Full conversation is on YouTube. See you next Wednesday.