Dynasty Financial Partners takes stake in Tom Brady's NoBull

RIA platform services provider Dynasty Financial Partners is furthering its push into private markets with its new investment in NoBull, a sneaker and athletic apparel company co-owned by entrepreneur Mike Repole and NFL legend Tom Brady. 

“When you think about Mike [Repole] and his team, their track record [and] billions of exits across a number of different deals for them — NoBull is their next great company that they want to build,” Karim Simplis, director of private markets at Dynasty Financial Partners, told InvestmentNews. 

Dynasty says it has now closed on more than $200 million in private markets funds over the last nine months, including its latest Dynasty Growth Equity & Coinvest I fund that closed at $110 million. NoBull reached a reported valuation of $1 billion earlier this year, with Dynasty acquiring roughly 3% of the company through its new co-investment made via a special purpose vehicle (SPV) with Driven Capital, Repole's family office. 

“We believe independent advisors are hungry for differentiated private-market opportunities typically only available to the world's largest investors, and as Dynasty continues to more than level the playing field for RIAs that are Powered by Dynasty, we look forward to continuing to selectively bring these unique value-add opportunities to our network of independent RIAs," Dynasty CEO Shirl Penney said in a statement. 

Penney has a longstanding relationship with Repole, who also co-owns the United Football League that named Dynasty its official wealth management partner this past season. Repole is best known for making billions from Coca-Cola buying his sports drink companies Vitaminwater and BodyArmor, which attracted investment from Kobe Bryant in 2014.  

“That's part of Mike's playbook. If you look at BodyArmor and what he did there with Kobe, he's great at brand building and part of that is aligning his companies with certain individuals and celebrities,” said Simplis. “So that's part of the Repole playbook as we call it, which is about people and brand building.” 

More than 700 financial advisors across roughly 60 partnered RIAs are part of Dynasty’s network, including firms like the $129 billion Merrill Lynch breakaway OpenArc Corporate Advisory and $3.1 billion Cyndeo Wealth Partners. In June, Dynasty expanded its partnership with private markets access platform Allocate. 

The private markets gap

KKR’s 2025 RIA survey cited data from Cerulli that said the average allocation to private markets was just 2.3% across RIA portfolios. KKR’s survey also found that more than 80% of RIAs expect to maintain or increase exposure to private markets over the next five years. Dynasty has been hosting webinars and other educational programs in hopes to drive adoption of private market investing within its RIA network. 

“What we've noticed is there's a massive disconnect between that level of penetration and where these RIAs want to go,” said Simplis. “There have been surveys that have been put out there around what is your target allocation to private markets, versus what is your current allocation? And the bottom line is that the targets tend to be significantly higher.” 

Brady’s NoBull marks the latest push into the sports realm from Dynasty, which recently added former MLB player turned private equity investor Matt Laporta to help build out the firm’s practice for supporting RIAs with sports investments. So far this month, private equity firm Apollo acquired a minority stake in the New York Yankees, while insurance magnate Mark Walter sold the Los Angeles Lakers for a record $12.5 billion. 

“You really try to focus [investing] in these opportunities where there's less disruption risk,” Simplis said. “A lot of the disruption that's been in the headlines has been around AI obviously. And when you think about sports, sports would be resilient to AI. So that's a great characteristic.”