Lyle Ayes

Founder & CEO

Lyle founded Verance following 20 years of advising and investing across sports, media and entertainment. Lyle was most recently an Operating Partner at RedBird Capital Partners where he focused on deals in the sports, media and consumer sectors, including leading the venture investment efforts for RedBird portfolio company OneTeam Partners. Prior to RedBird, Lyle served as Head of Sports Advisory at LionTree, and previously was at Evercore where he served as Managing Director and Co-Head of the firm’s Sports practice. Earlier in his career, Lyle was an Executive Director of Morgan Stanley’s Mergers & Acquisitions division.

Lyle has received national recognition as one of the Sports Business Journal’s Power Players: Advisory, as well as the Sports Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award, which recognizes top sports executives. Lyle has also been a Forbes 30 Under 30 judge, and a featured panelist at the Bloomberg Sports Summit, NeuLion Sports Media & Technology, and MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conferences.

Lyle serves as a Board Member of Swag Golf, TAPPP, Betsperts, Stix, Candytopia and as a Board Observer of Wave Sports & Entertainment, and previously served as a Board Member of Exile Content Studio prior to its acquisition by Candle Media.

Lyle holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School where he graduated cum laude and received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Colorado where he graduated summa cum laude.