Tampa investor buys minority stake in Scottish football club

Tampa investor and tech entrepreneur Will Freeman has scored another win in building his budding soccer empire. 

The firm Freeman founded and oversees, Catalyst Sports Ventures, has acquired a minority stake in the Scottish football club Kilwinning Rangers FC. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The announcement follows a separate deal from last October, when Freeman made his first official European football investment — using personal capital — to become a minority owner in Welsh football team Haverfordwest County AFC. Haverfordwest plays in Cymru Premier, the top division of Welsh football.

As part of the Kilwinning Rangers investment, Freeman, according to a statement, will join the club’s board. Founded in 1899, Kilwinning Rangers has more than 125 years of history in Scottish football and earned promotion to the Lowland League for the 2026/27 season.

“Kilwinning Rangers has deep history, strong community roots and an ambitious vision for the future,” Freeman says in the release. “We’re excited to invest in the club and work alongside its leadership to support its continued growth on and off the pitch.”

A Business Observer 40 Under 40 winner in 2024, Freeman, 29, has worked for both LinkedIn and Oracle. He also recently made two other soccer-related investment announcements, on the charitable side: For one, according to a LinkedIn post, he founded and will chair a nonprofit, the Global Sports Access Foundation, “dedicated to making the business side of global sports more accessible to underserved young adults.” On the other, he announced the debut of the Freeman Global Football Award Fund through USF Men’s Soccer, which. according to a statement, “provides awards to USF Men's Soccer student-athletes pursuing international playing and career development opportunities within the global football industry.”