Drive by DraftKings, a Boston-based venture capital firm, has raised $60 million for its first fund that is investing in sports technology and entertainment companies.

The fund’s investors include the Kraft Group, which owns the New England Patriots; Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys; Todd Boehly, who owns a stake in the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Sparks; and Madison Square Garden Sports Corp.
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, owner of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers.

Drive was formed two years ago by four founding partners: DraftKings Inc., best known as a fantasy sports and sports betting company, and VC firms Catalyst, Accomplice and Boston Seed Capital. It was initially conceived as a way to help athletes learn about the VC industry and technology investing and connect them with sports technology firms. It also used its own capital to make some small investments in startups. But Drive last year shifted its focus to become a pure-play VC investor and began raising a fund.

So far, Drive has invested in 13 companies, mostly in seed rounds. But it occasionally participates in later rounds, including investing last year in a $100 million Series E round for Whoop, which valued the wearables technology company at $1.2 billion.

The fund expects to make more investments this year, next year and into 2023. It will continue to primarily back early-stage companies, but it will save some capital for investments in those companies’ later rounds.

“Given our strategic position, we set out to find great companies that generate great returns where we can be helpful to them at whatever stage they’re at,” said Meredith McPherron, Drive’s chief executive and managing partner. “We have a lot of deal flow. We are looking at companies every day. We’ll continue to invest where we see the opportunities are there and make sense.”

McPherron, a soccer and lacrosse player at Harvard University in the late 1980s, joined Drive in July 2020 from Glasswing Ventures, an early-stage VC firm where she was a partner. During the past 30 years, she’s held several executive-level operations, marketing and investing roles.

At Drive, McPherron has targeted four main areas: human performance; sports and gaming; media and fan engagement; and data analytics and monetization. Examples of the company’s investments include Guidesly, a mobile platform that connects outdoor enthusiasts with guides for fishing trips; Papaya Gaming, a mobile gaming company; and Just Women’s Sports, a media startup focused on women’s sports.

Drive has also assembled a nine-person group of advisors who have experience as athletes and executives, many of whom have invested in the fund. Those include Larry Fitzgerald, a 17-year NFL wide receiver; Hilary Knight, a hockey player who was a member of the United States
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team that won the 2018 Olympics gold medal; Theo Epstein, former top baseball operations executive with the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs; and James Blake, a former professional tennis player.

“As we launched the strategy fir the venture fund, we knew it would be important to have an advisory group with a deep insight into the space we’re investing in,” McPherron said.