ABOUT US
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 grow high potential sports businesses and sports technology companies.
Our Founding Team
Dragan Šolak is the Lead Investor and Chairman 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 cable operator in Central Serbia to become a leader in South East 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 leading media company with 5 national broadcasters, more than 50 pay TV channels, very successful digital portfolio of 28 web portals, 8 newspapers and magazines, five radio stations, produces excess of 20.000 hours of original content annually and operates a global streaming TV service.
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.
Henrik Kraft is the co-founder and Vice-Chairman 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.