New Orleans Saints great Marques Colston details his entrepreneur journey since his playing career ended. (Photo by Rich Schultz /Getty Images)
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Marques Colston knows the New Orleans Saints still have to find their identity as a franchise in the post-Sean Payton, Drew Brees era.
The Saints are in the midst of their first season with new head coach Kellen Moore under the helm. After starting out 0-4, New Orleans was able to notch its first win, an impressive showing in a 26-14 win over the New York Giants. The Saints forced five turnovers in the win, while Spencer Rattler was able to notch his first victory as a starting quarterback.
“I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far, just in that the team looks like they’re continuing to get better,” says Colston in a one-on-one interview. “You don’t really have a way to evaluate a coach through the first quarter of his first head coaching gig. But the one thing that you do see on the field is guys are playing hard. Guys are playing like they believe. That’s really the first step to win it. You’ve got to believe in the coaching staff.”
The Saints have gone through a rough stretch as of late since the departures of Payton and Brees. Following Brees’ retirement after the 2020 season, the Saints haven’t made it to the playoffs. Shortly after Payton’s departure after the 2021 season, New Orleans compiled a 21-30 record under the leadership of Dennis Allen.
It has resulted in the Saints starting fresh with Moore, a 37-year-old offensive whiz coming off of a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles.
“You’ve got to believe that the staff is going to put you in the right positions to make plays, and just the effort that you see guys playing with, that they believe internally, and ultimately that that will turn over into wins,” says Colston of Moore. “I think he’s done it. I think he’s done a really good job just kind navigating a season of transition in a way that will continue to turn over into wins.”
When asked if Moore reminds him of any coach in particular, Colston actually brings up his former coach, Payton. Colston played 10 seasons under Payton, starting with his arrival in New Orleans all the way through the 2015 season.
“As a play caller, he definitely has some Sean Payton in him – you saw that in Philly,” says Colston of when Moore was the offensive coordinator of the Eagles. “He’s got a creative mind that is going to keep people engaged. He’s going to get a bunch of people engaged in the game plan, which are all Sean Peyton traits. We would have games where we got nine or 10 guys catching passes, and you see a lot of those similarities down there now. I’m anxious to see what he continues to do over the course of his first season.”
Although Colston hasn’t played in a decade, he still keeps in touch with a lot of his former Saints teammates. The 36-year-old Cameron Jordan – who was drafted by the Saints in 2011 – is the lone remaining member of the franchise from when Colston was there.
“I got my core guys, but it’s funny, because we’re all all in that mode where our kids, my oldest will be going to high school next year,” says Colston. “We’re all in that new sports mix. We joke we’re renting the weekend, we don’t really own the weekends anymore. But now you stay in touch with guys like that, because you built with some of those guys we built together for a decade. \We had a saying in the locker room,’You win together, You walk together forever.’ Those relationships aren’t going anywhere.”
Marques Colston Starts Up Evergreen Investment Vehicle, The Champion Fund
During his post-playing career, Colston has become a business entrepreneur. The 42-year-old recently founded “The Champion Fund” with mixed martial artist Nick Edwards, who he’s known since before COVID. The Champion Fund is an investment vehicle that gives retail investors access to sports assets such as teams and real estate that previously were only exclusive to those that were insiders or big institutions.
Colston and Edwards say its the first investment vehicle of its kind to give athletes and investors an opportunity at owning the platform.
“We really realized the gaps in available investment opportunities for athletes,” says Edwards. “We started looking at as an athlete initial investor avatar, we really came to find out it’s the same thing that everybody else is facing so we really went on this alts for all quest. People think team ownership, they have a vision of what that looks like, but most of the folks are completely left on the sidelines and don’t have the opportunity to invest in teams, downstream pieces, everything connected to the sports asset system.
“We said, ‘Well, if nobody’s going to do it, then we’re going to do it ourselves,’” Edwards continues. “That’s kind of how we got to the quest of Champion Fund. Really what it is it is a evergreen fund that allows everybody – retail investors, non-accredited investors – to own and have meaningful ownership and sports assets.”
Colston goes into further detail why The Champion Fund is unique and stands out from other investment vehicles.
“It was really the impetus behind this structure,” Colston says of getting everyone involved as potential investors. “You just get tired of seeing the same names, the same people get invited to the party, so to say. There’s just so much value being created by the athlete, by the fan, by that coach, by that administrator, by the mom or dad paying into the youth sports system. There’s a lot of people paying into the system, creating value within the ecosystem, but not really having meaningful ways to extract monetary value back out of it.
“Us being a part of one of those stakeholder groups, The Champion Fund – for us — represents the opportunity to bring ownership,” says Colston. “Meaningful ownership to all of the stakeholders that create the value that is sports. It’s been a longer journey than we had liked, it’s a really intense process to get this fund stood up. But ultimately it’s about that all for all, and it’s about returning that value to the people that created within sports.”
The Champion Fund is currently in the “pre-launch” mode right now, awaiting approval from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). The Champion Fund currently has a waitlist and it’s been open for about a month as they wait official approval.
“We’re currently pre launch right now,” says Colston. “We’re in tailend of the approval process with the SEC. We started this, we started down this road about 18 months ago with the SEC making sure that we have all of our T’s crossing our eyes dotted, putting the thesis together, putting in perspectives together, kind of interfacing going back and forth with the SEC to make sure we get that rubber stamp. We’re kind of inches to go inches and goal to go with that process. But it’s been about 18 months to two years in the making.”
A statement from the investment vehicle reveals that once the investment vehicle is given the green light, people will have the opportunity to invest in a SerieA European soccer club and a U.S.-based USL team.
“Champion has secured future purchase rights for ownership stakes in a SerieA soccer team, another prominent European club, and a U.S.-based USL team, along with associated downstream assets, stadium, and real estate opportunities. These investments represent high-profile, strategically selected assets acquired through exclusive, off-market private deals which reflects Champion’s deep relationships and proven track record in the global sports investment space.”
Edwards once again hammers home that the whole point of the investment vehicle is to give access to everyone that helps create and drive the monetization value of sports franchises.
“Everybody’s kind of been left on the sidelines,” says Edwards. “If you look at sports as an asset class right now, valuations are increasing. These multi-use districts are emerging around sports assets. But ultimately, what it comes down to is access and looking at, ‘How do we drive the propensity to market around a sports asset?’ We’re seeing this emergence of it beyond game day monetization is 365 days a year.
“If we look at that, coupled with access and the Creator world that we’re a part of right now, the end consumer is the person who’s constantly driving up all of those valuations, everything that’s happening. They’re part of the monetization model. They’re actively engaging inside of these sports assets. To us, it’s only natural that, why would we not open up ownership access to that same group of people to help continue to drive that forward.”
Marques Colston Details Entrepreneur Background And ‘Gap’ Since Playing Career Ended
Colston’s own background as an entrepreneur began while he was still playing, owning and solo-operating an indoor football team for three years before moving on to the Philadelphia Soul as an owner-operator, spanning about “seven” total years together.
“Those two opportunities spanned about seven years, and that’s really where I got my operational chops, within the sports business landscape,” says Colston. “As a solo operator, you’re literally building it from the ground up. When I got into the Arena Football League, it was an opportunity to genuinely partner with groups like Monumental Sports like Dan Gilbert out in Cleveland, who were all owners in the league, and just see it from a different perspective.
“We were building what looked like the first kind of digital-first professional sports league,” Colston continues. “From there, I’ve just continued to invest, been an individual investor for over 15 years across sports, health and wellness, mostly tech enabled, and then ultimately, that gap that we keep talking about, I’ve been trying to fill that gap in a bunch of different ways over the last decade.”
When asked if Colston has filled that void that he’s been trying to fill over the past decade from what he experienced during his professional sports career – he was Brees’ favorite target and posted six different 1,000-yard seasons – he says he’s trying to throw a “pebble in the ocean” right now.
“I feel like I’m throwing a pebble in the ocean right now,” says Colston. “But that’s just the standard, that’s the internal standard. You always want to continue to do more and there’s always going to be more to be done. That’s the beauty of a vehicle like this. It allows us to be able to keep chipping away at it over time.”