LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For years, Marc Spiegel has been trying to buy a soccer club.
He’s traveled. He’s bid. He’s walked away. He’s learned. The one thing he never did was give up.
And this week, in a Liga MX boardroom nearly 1,500 miles from his hometown, he finally got his team.
Spiegel, a Louisville native, Eastern High School graduate, and University of Louisville double alum, officially became chairman of Querétaro Fútbol Club on Thursday. His firm, Innovatio Capital, completed a reported $120 million purchase from Jorge Alberto Hank, making his group the first majority-American ownership in the history of Mexico’s top soccer division.
“I could not be happier,” Spiegel said in the official announcement. And he meant it.
This was a long chase — not of any one club, but of a future he believed in. A data-driven, tech-enabled, globally connected sports model. Spiegel made his fortune founding Rubicon, a tech firm that reimagined waste management through analytics and logistics. He’s spent years finding inefficiencies in industries others overlook.
Sports was next. And in Liga MX — one of the most-watched soccer leagues in the U.S., but still far undervalued by global investment standards — he saw the opportunity he’d been looking for.
“We identified Liga MX as a competition we wanted to invest in a long time ago, and when the opportunity came up to visit Queretaro and see the city and the club, we knew that this was where we wanted to be,” Spiegel said. “Queretaro as a city and a state is buzzing with investment right now and we are excited to be part of this energetic community and bring some happiness to the region through football.”
Estadio Corregidora, the home stadium of Queretaro FC.
Spiegel hasn’t exactly been quiet about his love for sports or his love for Louisville.
He’s a die-hard Cardinals fan, founder of the 502Circle collective that supports U of L athletes through NIL, and a growing presence around Louisville’s sports and business circles. He stays involved. He gives back. And he thinks big.
So it’s not a surprise that when he started looking for a soccer team, he didn’t settle for a cute story or a discount price tag. Last year, he made a run at English club Charlton Athletic — a club with history, but also red ink. He passed. The numbers didn’t line up.
This time, they did.
Liga MX, long dominated by domestic ownership and decentralized media rights, is on the verge of private equity transformation. The league is cleaning up its cross-ownership issues. New York-based Apollo Global Management is circling with a potential billion-dollar deal. And for investors like Spiegel, the math is starting to look compelling.
Querétaro, in Spiegel’s view, could be a sleeping giant. No league titles in its 75-year history, but a modern stadium, a loyal fanbase, and a home city that’s booming with business and population growth. The team’s nickname is “Gallos Blancos” — the white roosters — but Spiegel sees a phoenix.
“We’ve looked at over 200 different investments across the world,” he told Forbes. “When we dug in, we saw the most potential of any league that we’ve looked at.”
Spiegel’s Atlanta-based firm, Innovatio, is a sports and data investment company that treats clubs not just as brands or assets, but as systems to optimize. His general partners include Ed Malyon, a former journalist turned sports executive, and Chris Spooner, a veteran CFO. The firm looks for inefficiencies, undervalued markets, and scalable upside.
The idea is simple: If you can apply data models to trash pickup routes or freight logistics, why not to soccer strategy and squad building?
That doesn’t mean buying trophies. It means building structure. Improving player development. Finding overlooked talent. Monetizing media and merchandise. Connecting community with commerce.
It’s a modern approach — and it’s one Spiegel has been preparing to lead.
He won’t be moving to Mexico, but he’s all in. “We want the fans to know we can’t wait to see them at La Corregidora,” he said.
Still, you can bet he’ll be repping Louisville along the way.
The guy who turned trash into tech and NIL into influence just made history in Mexican soccer. And if things go the way he believes they can, he might help reshape the league’s future — and offer a blueprint for the next wave of sports investment.
Sometimes, the road to a dream runs through Europe. Sometimes, it loops back through Latin America. But for Marc Spiegel, the path started in Louisville.
And now, he’s got his team.
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