January 11, 2022

Milbank Advises Dragan Šolak as Lead Investor in Sport Republic’s Acquisition of Controlling Stake in Southampton Football Club Limited

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Milbank LLP advised Dragan Šolak on the investment/consortium arrangements between Dragan Šolak, Henrik Kraft and Rasmus Ankersen in the founding of Sport Republic, to acquire the controlling stake in Southampton Football Club.

The Milbank team was led by Global Corporate partner Andrej Wolf and European Capital Markets partner Apostolos Gkoutzinis, with assistance from Global Corporate associate Anna Bryant. 

About Sport Republic:

Sport Republic is a London-based investment firm in the sports and entertainment industry. Founded by Henrik Kraft and Rasmus Ankersen and backed by lead investor Dragan Šolak, Sport Republic’s vision is to apply propriety intelligence and data analytics to help football clubs and sports technology companies reach their full potential. More information about Sport Republic can be found on www.sportrepublic.com.

Dragan Šolak is the lead investor of Sport Republic. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Advisory Board of United Group. Under Šolak’s stewardship, United Group has grown from a green field investment in a cable operator in Central Serbia to become a leader in Southeast Europe in telecommunication and media sectors. UG Telecom is delivering broadband, mobile and pay-TV services to a market of more than 40 million people across eight countries. United Group’s media arm, United Media, is a leading media company with five national broadcasters, more than 50 pay TV channels, a very successful digital portfolio of 28 web portals, eight newspapers and magazines and five radio stations, producing in excess of 20,000 hours of original content annually whilst it also operates a global streaming TV service. United Group is dedicated to the production of renewable energy for its own use and for the market and founded an award-winning R&D centre using local talents - United Cloud. Šolak has founded and developed many other companies, his first being the motion picture production and distribution company VANS, which he established in 1990 with a group of friends and movie enthusiasts. Šolak is also a passionate golfer who was deeply involved in the development of golf in the Balkan region and serves as the Chairman of the Board of the international golf group Eligo.

Henrik Kraft is the Chairman and co-founder of Sport Republic and has spent the last 20 years investing in the technology, telecoms and media industry, including as an active early stage investor in sports technology companies such as Tonsser, Sportlight, Wave.tv, Oura Ring, Sava Health and MastersApp. Most recently, Kraft spent 10 years at KKR where he was a Partner and head of the Technology and Telecoms team in Europe, playing leading roles in investments including TDC, Versatel, Visma and United Group. Prior to joining KKR, Kraft worked at Apax Partners for nearly 7 years having originally started his career as a strategy consultant with Braxton Associates.

Rasmus Ankersen is the CEO and co-founder of Sport Republic. Over the last seven years, he has worked as a football executive. From 2015-2021 he has overseen Brentford FC’s football department as a Co-Director of Football, culminating in winning promotion to the Premier League for the first time in 74 years in May 2020. In the same time period he has been the Executive Chairman of the Danish club FC Midtjylland and overseen the most successful period in the club’s history, winning three Danish Championships, qualifying for the Champions League group stages in 2020 as well as making the club highly profitable. Ankersen is also the author of several bestselling books on talent development including The Gold Mine Effect and Hunger in Paradise.