This comes amid a swathe of private investment in sports in general — not only in the professional arena, but also the world of youth sports, as highlighted by KKR’s recent acquisition of Varsity Brands.

Office fantasy football leagues in the finance industry are about to get a whole lot more skin in the game.

Kicking off

Multiple M&A and sponsor-driven financings are expected to be in the front seat post-Labor Day.

“It's not like the floodgates are open, but there's some increased activity,” said one leveraged finance banker. “With the rate cuts, people will be a little more open to trying to do stuff.”

KKR’s acquisition of Janney Montgomery Scott is among the first slated to hit the market, after lead arranger UBS announced a 4 September lender call on Thursday to discuss the financing package behind the transaction.

The $2.25bn debt financing for KKR’s acquisition of educational software company Instructure is also understood to be ready to launch soon after the holiday weekend, as we reported last week.

BDT & MSD Partners’ industrial paint and equipment supplier Wesco Group has also been pre-marketing a $755m broadly syndicated loan via BMO to refinance its private credit facility.

See our US LevFin Pipeline for a list of M&A financing that’s expected to hit the market in coming weeks and months. This includes deals to fund Lone Star Funds’ carve out of Carrier Global’s commercial and residential fire business, and Apollo’s acquisition and combination of gaming companies IGT and Everi.

Slim pickings in August, via 9fin data (Chart)

Plenty of demand

New supply is hitting the market as sentiment continues to improve after the mini-meltdown earlier in the month. New issue supply has also been negligible recently.

“Globally you see a lot of money coming into our asset class, so you just have a ton of demand,” said Bill Zox, co-portfolio manager at Brandywine Global. “Supply has been muted, issuance has picked up but it's almost all been refinancings, so net new issuance is pretty muted compared to the huge amount of demand out there."

Average high yield spreads have tightened to 362bps, according to JP Morgan data, well inside the August wide of 424bps, while average yields of 7.45% are 57bps below the 5 August high and are close to a two-year low.

Average loan yields and spreads are 38bps and 3bps lower in August meanwhile at 8.18% and 473bps, according to JP Morgan. Investor sentiment in general is being supported by recent data flashes including the upward revision in Q2 GDP growth yesterday

As we explored this week, loan and bond pricing dynamics are shifting and recalibrating to meet investor demand as the market prepares for rate cuts — which is driving more bond supply and some attractive loan pricing, depending on your views on rates.

"I think that if you can go loan to bond, that might make some good sense right now because the Treasury curve is already baking in a ton of rate cuts,” said Zox. “So if you can issue at reasonable spread off of a five-year Treasury at 365bps or 370bps there's a lot of logic to that. I'm not sure that we'll get all the rate cuts that are baked into those base rates."

Other stuff

Telegram bond trades down after CEO arrest (9fin)

Bill Ackman seeks to revive IPO with sweeteners for investors (FT)

The private-equity scion buying up America’s trophy homes (WSJ)

Evercore ordered to disclose secrets of iced tea can supplier auction (FT)

CVC in talks to invest in $3 billion property manager Odevo (Bloomberg)

From Southwest to Spirit, budget airlines are in a tailspin (The Economist)

OpenAI in talks for deal that would value company at $100 billion (NYT)

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