Ascentive Capital — We Build Ascending Sports

What we produce

Four systems, built and operated.

02 — What We Build

Product & Platform

The apps and platforms that turn a sport into a real media product

OTT and app infrastructure, automated workflows, and the owned data layer — shipped and maintained, not just spec'd.

Rights & Distribution

Rights packaged and placed, not just recommended

Distribution deals structured and executed — inventory, packaging, placement into the markets that fit.

Audience & Monetization

CRM and sponsor infrastructure we build and run

The data pipeline, fan capture, and attribution model, operated daily — attention converted into revenue we can prove.

Content & Community

An ongoing production calendar, not a one-off campaign

Shoulder content, recurring formats, and community platforms on a standing schedule between events.

The stack we operate

The stack is modular, not a rip-and-replace. Plug in at any layer, work around the vendors and contracts already in place, and we build only what’s missing to close the loop.

Media & Distribution

The consumer brand, built on everything below it

Where everyone starts

Clip & Data

Every performance tagged to a durable record

Rarely built

Capture

Training and competition recorded automatically

Rarely built

Event Management

The operational backbone of a live sport

Often outsourced

Registration & Identity

A persistent record for every athlete, team, and venue

Where we start

News

Where we’ve put our own capital.

03 — The Work

April 15, 2026

Ascentive Capital takes an ownership stake in Horse & Country

An ownership position in the world’s most watched equestrian network — and the clearest expression of the thesis this firm was built on.

NEW YORK, NY — April 15, 2026

Ascentive Capital, a technology and strategy firm focused on modernizing digital infrastructure for sports organizations, today announced it has taken an ownership stake in Horse & Country, the international streaming network for equestrian sport.

Horse & Country delivers live competition, training, and documentary programming directly to a paying membership of riders and equestrian fans worldwide. Rather than renting attention on third-party platforms, it owns the relationship with its audience — the model Ascentive argues ascending sports should be building toward.

The investment reflects Ascentive’s core thesis: that in participation-led sports, the audience and the participant base are the same people. Equestrian has millions who ride and a fraction of that number on any formal record, which the firm views as a structural gap rather than a demand problem.

“Equestrian is the clearest case we know of a sport whose audience is already inside it. The people who watch are the people who ride, and their families. You don’t have to manufacture demand — you have to build the system that turns participation into a business.”

David Guinan, Co-Founder, Ascentive Capital

Ascentive’s work in equestrian also includes its selection by the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association to rebuild the organization’s national membership database and horseshow management platform, announced separately.

About Horse & Country

Horse & Country is an international sports streaming service dedicated to equestrian sport, offering live competition, training series, and documentary programming to a direct membership. More information is available at horseandcountry.tv.

Media contact

David Guinan, Co-Founder, Ascentive Capital
david@ascentivecapital.com · 718.915.4017

August 1, 2026

Ascentive Capital to rebuild and modernize the IHSA’s membership and horseshow management platform

A modern, mobile-friendly system for one of the country’s largest collegiate athletic organizations — while preserving the workflows its coaches and volunteers already know.

NEW YORK, NY — August 1, 2026

Ascentive Capital, a technology and strategy firm focused on modernizing digital infrastructure for sports organizations, today announced it has been selected by the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association (IHSA) to rebuild the organization’s national membership database and horseshow management platform.

Founded in 1967 and organized today as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, IHSA represents thousands of student riders on hundreds of college and university teams competing in hunter seat, Western, and reining disciplines across the United States and Canada. Its distinctive format — in which riders draw an unfamiliar horse and compete without warm-up — has long been credited with making equestrian sport accessible to students regardless of whether they can afford to own or lease a horse.

The new platform will give coaches, riders, and volunteer administrators a faster, mobile-friendly way to manage rosters, enter shows, track points, and follow rankings from anywhere — including at rural and Western venues where internet access is often unreliable. Ascentive says the rebuild is designed to feel familiar to the coaches and administrators who already know the current system, while modernizing the technology underneath it for the long term.

“IHSA’s real product isn’t a website — it’s fairness, integrity, and procedural trust, enforced consistently across a huge, mostly volunteer-run organization. Our job isn’t to hand IHSA a flashier system. It’s to rebuild the foundation underneath the system they already trust, so it’s secure, maintainable, and never again dependent on a single vendor.”

David Guinan, Co-Founder, Ascentive Capital

The engagement builds on Ascentive’s existing work in equestrian sport, including its involvement with Horse & Country and other U.S. equestrian initiatives, and reflects the firm’s broader focus on helping sports organizations own and control their own technology rather than depend on any single vendor.

About the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association

Founded in 1967, the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association provides equestrian competition for college and university students of all riding levels, regardless of financial status, in hunter seat equitation, Western horsemanship, and reining. IHSA today spans dozens of regions across eight zones, with member teams competing toward Regional, Zone, and National Championships. More information is available at ihsainc.com.

Media contact

David Guinan, Co-Founder, Ascentive Capital
david@ascentivecapital.com · 718.915.4017

Why it compounds

The flywheel.

04 — Why It Compounds

For ascending sports, the wheel doesn’t start with fans. It starts with the athletes coming up through the sport — and the story they can see in front of them.

Structure puts everyone on the record

Registration and event data give every athlete, division, and result a permanent identity in the sport.

Entries · divisions · results · membership

Capture makes the record visible

Not just finals — every round, every training day, tagged to the competitor it belongs to.

Unattended capture · auto-tagging · archive

Cohorts keep young athletes in the sport

For tier-two and tier-three properties, the funnel of young athletes is survival. A kid who can see the group just ahead of them, measure themselves against peers, and watch someone they know win, stays in the sport. One competing into a void leaves it.

Peer groups · rankings · retention

The pathway is the story worth telling

Show a young athlete the route from where they stand today to regional, to elite, to professional — made legible, step by step, in people they can actually watch. That narrative is the single most valuable asset an ascending sport owns.

Progression · visibility · recruitment

Fandom starts with the people who played

Nobody is more durably a fan than someone who once competed, or whose kid competes. Participation is the most reliable engine of future audience there is — and it’s the one ascending sports already have and rarely use.

Family · alumni · community · CRM

Fandom turns the wheel again

An audience grown from inside the sport shows up, subscribes, and brings the next cohort with it — so the next turn starts with more athletes than the last.

Subscriptions · sponsorship · reinvestment

Who we are

Two operators, not a consultancy.

05 — Who We Are

$850MIntegral Ad Science exit

130K+OTT subscribers built, 0 to exit

25+ yrsMedia, sports & DTC

EMEA / USWhere we’ve operated

Jeffrey Lee

Co-Founder & Partner
Strategy & Capital

Jeffrey is a media executive who has launched, grown, invested in, and exited multiple businesses across media, sports, and tech in EMEA and the Americas. He is a shareholder and VP International for the Nielsen-backed streaming ad solution G-Mana, working with sports streaming platforms, rights holders, and broadcasters including beIN Sports, DAZN, StarzPlay, Willow, and Global Champions.

He was previously Managing Director of a top-10 UK digital publisher, Lycos, where he tripled traffic to 12 million monthly users, and Marketing Director of Cat Games, running joint ventures with MLB, NHL, and ESPN and negotiating licensing deals with Manchester United, Liverpool, Roma, EA, Coke, and Sky before an exit offer from ESPN. As CEO he also launched and sold the UK television industry's leading trade site, Broadcast Now.

Over the past decade Jeffrey has consulted for and invested in media businesses including Dstillery, Duration Media, Integral Ad Science, and Wicket Labs — contributing to an eight-figure exit at Wicket Labs and an $850 million exit at Integral Ad Science. He has produced award-winning documentary film and worked in production and editorial at the BBC and Channel 4 News, where he served as Foreign Editor. He is a former Leadership Council member of the UK's IAB.

David Guinan

Co-Founder & Partner
Product & Strategy

David is a digital executive with over 25 years in media and sports entertainment, focused on direct-to-consumer strategy, digital transformation, and streaming sports product. He currently works with LIV Golf and Major League Table Tennis, and previously worked with the English Premier League and Chelsea FC on their U.S. direct-to-consumer strategy.

David served as Chief Digital Officer for The Cowboy Channel, where he created and scaled Cowboy Channel+, an OTT platform that grew from zero to over 130,000 paying subscribers and reached a high eight-figure exit in 2024. He builds from the spectator's point of view first: what makes a sport thrilling to watch, follow, and stay emotionally invested in.

He holds a master's degree in AR/VR and data simulation, and has delivered digital health communication tools for the CDC and helped launch a national news and documentary channel for the government of Nigeria. Earlier in his career he worked at MTV across production and creative development.

We build the systems ascending sports run on.

Integrate

Refine

Grow

Content

Cadence

Community

It was never a demand problem.