- October 1, 2026
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The sound of a ball snapping against a racquet and swooshing across a net is the type of energy that reverberates across the campus of IMG Academy in Bradenton.
And the vibe and verve is getting even more pronounced, as the world-renowned school for student-athletes has been getting some recent upgrades and additions in recent months. The energy can be felt in its shiny new wrestling facility that opened in September and at the indoor, air-conditioned tennis facility that debuted in May. It is a feeling IMG Academy COO Mike Milliron describes as “contagious," that has been intentionally woven into the institution's design.
In the last year, there have been about 16 projects under construction across the 600-acre campus of IMG Academy in west Bradenton.
“That's the most projects we've ever had going on at one time,” says Milliron, giving the Business Observer a recent tour of some of the work. It also marks the “largest single investment” that the ownership group has made in the campus. While he declines to disclose the cost, Milliron says the ownership group is funding all the projects.
The owner of IMG Academy is Swedish private equity firm EQT Group, which purchased the institution in 2023 for $1.25 billion. EQT has more than $307 billion in assets under management across more than 50 active funds invested in more than 330 portfolio companies worldwide.
The capital projects in Bradenton are part of a campus strategy called “evolve to grow,” Milliron says, that calls for scaling up facilities and infrastructure to accommodate more student-athletes. IMG Academy, which currently serves about 1,700 student-athletes, is “on a path” to have around 2,000 enrolled over the next few years, he says. That’s more than a 17% increase in enrollment. IMG has about 1,100 employees.
“We firmly believe we're the global leader in sports education,” says Milliron. Among the athletes who have trained at IMG are tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams; Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J,. McCarthy; pro soccer player Michelle Cooper of the Kansas City Current; James Wood of the Washington Nationals; NBA Utah Jazz point guard Keyonte George; and John Ryan Murphy of the New York Yankees.
IMG was founded in 1978 as the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. IMG acquired the academy in 1987 and added golf as its second sport followed by soccer, baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse, track and field and volleyball.
To grow its impact, the school is looking to serve more student-athletes through a few strategies.
“One is through expansion of facilities to better serve the sports that we currently have,” Milliron says, “and then also providing new and unique opportunities” by adding more sports.
In the past two years, the school has announced the addition of four new sports — volleyball, softball and wrestling, while swimming is coming in 2027. Its largest program to date is soccer, according to Milliron.
“Another core focus of ours over the years has been how do we get more female student-athletes involved and engaged in our campus,” Milliron says. The current student population is 71% male and 29% female.
“We've had tremendous success in the last couple of years with the launch of women's volleyball, which is the fastest-growing [sport] to ever hit this campus,” Milliron says.
The strategy of adding sports that attract more females appears to be working: IMG Academy has seen an 18% increase in female student-athletes on campus since 2023, the year it launched girls volleyball. (Boys volleyball debuted this fall.) The school also added softball in 2025.
With the decision to offer new sports comes the need to build anew or renovate existing spaces to accommodate them.
Two Lakewood Ranch-based firms have been collaborating with IMG Academy on its slew of capital projects: Fawley Bryant is the architect, while Tandem Construction is the builder.
About 40,000 square feet of new space is being added to the campus through new builds and renovations, according to Fawley Bryant Director of Sports Kirk Bauer.
When designing, Bauer says, the team has to consider more than just how spaces will be used. It has to consider, too, how it is perceived — especially by families coming from all over the world.
“We have to be focused on the effect that the building makes, making the impact on the tour — so Mike is proud to bring the parents and the potential student-athletes through there,” Bauer says.
Consider swimming at IMG. Before it launches, crews are working to build a state-of-the-art aquatic center to house the sport.
“We truly believe that we’re building one of the best swimming facilities there is,” Milliron says.
With a projected opening of spring 2027, the center will span more than 6,400 square feet. Its pool will be 54 by 25 meters and have 10 lanes with two bulkheads, accommodating those competing at different levels.
The aquatic center will be just beyond the “front door” of the west campus entrance, Milliron says, making it vital to a “great first impression” on visitors.
In addition to the aquatic center, a nearly 24,000-square-foot athletic complex is under construction. It will serve as the home for several female sports, like lacrosse, track and field and softball, Milliron says. It will contain locker rooms, meeting space, video rooms and eight batting cages.
The athletic complex will be across from the stadium and due to its central location, “needs to be a showstopper,” Milliron says. “It needs to look really good and have the brand and have the feel” of IMG Academy. “It’s going to be a really important component of the personality of our campus.”
Once given the direction to create a “showstopper,” Bauer says, the design team refined some of its original plans, which at first called for a breezeway without an enclosed entry.
For the athletic complex, Fawley Bryant came back with a “two-story, beautiful lobby space” that is somewhat tiered, Bauer says.
The firm also shifted plans from four to three locker rooms and double-stacked lockers to increase density so it could create a multipurpose space for classes or camps. On the second floor, the designers also incorporated a 50-person meeting space for staff meetings and classes.
The architecture firm has been working with IMG for decades, says Stu Henderson, partner at Fawley Bryant, allowing the myriad of projects to get off the ground without a learning curve.
“We consider ourselves a team, and we have these sort of no-look passes,” Henderson says. “We know what to expect when they say something.”
Part of that understanding stems from the process.
“One of the most intriguing parts of starting projects with [IMG] is the listening tour, the surveys, the conversations,” Henderson says.
Before starting the projects, the team engages with those who will be using the spaces to determine how best to design them.
“We're trying to accommodate … their anticipated growth,” Henderson says. “We're recognizing where there are pinch points and how we might be better be able to use space.”
One challenge has been the amount of use of the campus during construction. IMG hosts 15,000 campers each year, in addition to student-athletes and visiting sports teams.
Henderson notes students and campers can be both curious and “mischievous.” Throughout the renovations and additions, crews have protected the safety of those on campus by ensuring “they cannot get access to these [projects] and things are buttoned up tight when the sun goes down and as you go,” Henderson says.
The projects have been coming to fruition in short order, with eight completed between April and September alone.
“We locked arms and we scheduled things out and we did a lot,” Milliron says, getting through the busy summer camp season and start of the school year without a hitch. "I'm insanely proud of that.”
