Andrew Brown

Founder & Principal at 1896 Partners

Speaker

Andrew is founder & principal of 1896 Partners where he works with operators and investors on opportunities across the sports and entertainment ecosystem. His work includes building commercialization strategies for leagues, teams, & emerging IP; sourcing & diligencing new investment opportunities; and developing post-investment value-creation plans.

Over the last year Andrew has worked on many of the most disruptive & innovative sports IP in development. Among his notable engagements are College Sports Tomorrow - the working group formed by several prominent sports team owners and executives including David Blitzer, Jimmy Haslam, Todd Boehly, Grant Hill and others to build a holistic long term solution for college athletics starting with developing a new business model for college football. Other engagements include partnering with investors and founding teams building in soccer, combat sports, Western sports, horse racing, cricket, and padel.

Until 2023, Andrew was VP of Strategy & Corporate Development at WWE, where he partnered with the exec team to develop and execute all elements of its global business strategy across media rights, live events, sponsorship, etc. - over his 9-year tenure, he helped grow enterprise value from $900M to $9B.

In his role, Andrew also led WWE's corporate venture and innovation activities that included sourcing partnerships and investment opportunities from investment banks, VCs, and start-ups. He sourced, diligenced, and led investments in the Premier Lacrosse League and JomBoy Media. In leading WWE's venture activities, Andrew also represented WWE as a Board Observer as part of investments in Cloud9 (leading esports org) and FloSports (niche sports OTT service).

Before WWE, Andrew was a management consultant at The Parthenon Group in Boston working with private equity and corporate clients on investment due diligence and growth strategy engagements. In the sports and entertainment sector, notable assignments included The Kraft Group, Legends Hospitality, and Under Armour.

Andrew holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA in Economics from Georgetown University. At Georgetown, he was a 4-year student-athlete on the rowing team.