Andrew Kotliar's firm lends against books that are 30 years old and films that are 20, 30 and 40 years old, because those titles are still producing cash a reader can count.
The institutional money moving into sports and entertainment has gone to the trophy assets, and the host opened with the largest recent example, a $2.6 billion deal between Apollo and the company that owns the New York Yankees. Kotliar's firm does close to the opposite: it finances the receivables around those assets, and he says the unglamorous end of a catalog is where the predictable money sits.
"If a piece of content or a cohort of content today continues to generate a diversified set of revenue many years after its original release, that is a signal that there's some level of evergreen quality to it."
Kotliar spent the financial crisis as an investment banker in Europe, worked in distressed credit at Centerbridge, started his own intellectual-property business in 2014, and now runs MEP Capital, which both lends against and outright owns rights across music, film, television, games and sports.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 39 minutes of audio, 16 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 insights that matter.
👤 Guest: Andrew Kotliar, Founder and Partner at MEP Capital, which lends against and owns intellectual property across media, entertainment and sports
🎙️ Host: Marley Kayden, who anchors Market Matters on Schwab Network
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on YouTube (Schwab Network)
🔴 YouTube | 🟢 Spotify | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 39 min | ✅ Time saved: 23 min
Key Takeaways
The money in entertainment credit is in the catalog nobody writes about, not the hit
He lends against books 30 years old and films 20, 30 and 40 years old that still pay
A sports deal is underwritten as media rights, sponsorship and hospitality, not as a team
The loan is secured by the intellectual property, never by the platform distributing it
A travel influencer's brand placement and an evergreen documentary are different collateral
Streaming is what made music royalties institutional, and insurance and pension money followed
His firm finances the receivables around clubs — player transfers, broadcast money, sponsorship
Women's sports is still an equity story, because the credit collateral has not been created yet
He is watching the media-rights renewals, which is where the lendable cash flow comes from
A lender in a specialist market has to be ready to own the asset from day one
The most interesting sports asset he says nobody is talking about is professional bull riding
1. What Wall Street Missed
Kayden opened the show on the theme rather than the guest: institutional capital is moving across sports, gaming and media as leagues relax their ownership rules, streaming platforms break up legacy rights, and asset-backed credit structures are written against everything from stadiums to content catalogs. Her first question to Kotliar was what he understood about the sector that Wall Street did not.
He grew up as a musician and covered media from the moment he entered finance about 20 years ago, so he watched what he called the very painful 15-year decline in music from the days of Napster onward.
The insight was a pricing one: certain pockets of intellectual property rights were being undervalued while the industry was written off as uninvestable. He was working with Spotify as an investment banker in Europe around 2007, and by 2014, when he started his own business, Spotify was still relatively early in the US and there were, in his words, a lot of misconceptions about what streaming was doing to the underlying rights in music.
The same thing was happening elsewhere. He said film, television, video gaming and YouTube were all changing in similar ways, and institutional capital was not paying attention.
Kayden said she is a former musician who found her way into finance too, and told him they were going to get along just fine.
2. The IP Middle Class
Asked what gap MEP was built to fill, Kotliar described a class of rights holder that traditional lenders do not serve.
Digital distribution, he said, created a middle class of owners with real intellectual property assets generating real cash flows, and that middle class was underserved by traditional sources of capital.
The borrowers are individuals and companies alike — a musician, a producer, an author, a record label, a production company, a game studio — and whichever they are, he said, "you're always looking to invest in new IP."
The firm's motto came out of that: "we will provide capital against the old more seasoned intellectual property so that our partners can invest in the new." He said that simple model has been the guiding light for the business since day one.
3. Lender and Owner
Kayden pushed on why the firm sits at the intersection of lending and ownership rather than picking one, which is not the norm in media, entertainment and sports.
"Well, I think the honest answer is, you know, we're not that smart to know exactly what the right place in the capital structure is at any one point in time in markets," he said. The bias has been to sit senior, as a lender.
On occasion, owning an asset outright — a royalty stream, a pool of receivables — is the better risk-adjusted return, and the firm wanted the flexibility and the internal capability to do both from day one.
The deeper reason comes from his distressed-credit training: "That's always been our philosophy, because you know lenders have to be ready for downside scenarios and to be able to manage and manage out of assets."
"So, you know, it's too late to figure out how to be an owner if you were initially a lender and then something happened, you got to be ready to be an owner from day one and to potentially be a manager of certain assets from day one."
"Again, most lenders, ourselves included, do not anticipate owning the assets."
Kayden told him humility will get you everywhere, and said she suspected that was an understatement about how the firm arrived at the approach.
4. The Analysis Is the Same
Asked how the firm switches between the owner's hat and the financier's hat, Kotliar said there is nothing to switch.
"The way we underwrite a film library for example is exactly the same regardless of whether we're an owner or a lender." Sometimes the opportunity is to own it; sometimes the rights holder is asking for a loan.
"Yeah, look, again, at the end of the day, it comes down to really understanding the asset and the cash flows and, you know, acting as an owner or at least thinking as an owner regardless of your position."
The work is the cash flows and the chain of title on the intellectual property, and that is identical either way. He added that nobody wants MEP to be the owner of a particular piece of IP.
Being prepared to own it is what keeps the firm from panicking when a deal goes wrong, and he said it lets them migrate from one role to the other fairly seamlessly.
5. Why the Money Arrived
Kayden put it to him that Wall Street used to treat entertainment as a roll of the dice rather than a predictable asset class, and asked what had changed.
Music started it. "It's not a new concept, but really the Wall Street machine didn't really kick in until the last, you know, five, seven years or so in full swing." There is now a vibrant securitization market and a large amount of insurance and pension capital in music royalties.
The underlying change is the same one he described at the start: streaming made the cash flow profile "much more predictable much more recurring."
The cash flows are generally uncorrelated to macroeconomic forces, because people consume music, films and books across different economic cycles, and that has made them a source of diversification in institutional portfolios.
Sports followed, and he ties it to the same capital: long-duration insurance and pension money looking for differentiated returns, buying scarce assets that he says "don't really correlate with macroeconomic forces."
"Now within that certain niches are still available, certain you know pockets are still undercovered," he said, naming music and sports as the two places the larger mega funds have been deploying hardest.
6. The Yankees Deal
Kayden turned to Apollo and the Yankees, and made the point that the headlines are wrong: the buyer is not purchasing a baseball team.
The host described it as a $2.6 billion deal, and Kotliar, limited to what has been disclosed, said first that it is a combination of debt and equity, so the investor holds different positions in the capital structure against different underlying risks.
The company Apollo invested in holds more than the team: the associated television network, a hospitality business and stakes in soccer clubs — "so it's really a diversified portfolio."
Asked whether he reads it as a sports investment or as an investment in the surrounding cash flows, he said an investor managing other people's money underwrites it as the latter, whatever it gets called.
His version of the analysis, as he described it from the outside: "It is that it's looking at the media rights. It's looking at sponsorship revenue. It's looking at you know associated assets like the hospitality business, and you're putting all of that together. You think about what is the sum of the parts."
The questions that follow are whether those revenue lines are correlated with one another — whether the television network keeps paying while the team's performance, or a soccer club's, moves up and down.
He said not many organizations can do deals of that shape, and that Apollo has been on the leading edge of them.
7. Soccer's Derivative Rights
Kotliar had mentioned soccer several times, and Kayden asked where he actually plays in it.
The firm does not compete for franchises: "That's sort of not our game, but we're active in things like factoring player transfer receivables, providing financing against broadcast revenue, lending against sponsorship rights." He called these derivative rights, and said MEP is unlikely to appear on the front pages alongside the buyers of the Lakers.
The mechanics are ordinary receivables finance. A brand paying a club to put its name on a shirt creates a multi-year receivable; a European club selling a player creates another one, and that receivable gets financed.
"Those are more credit oriented deals, the jurisdiction matters," he said. Some pockets are crowded and some are not, depending on the geography — the firm has been active in parts of Europe, Canada and Latin America.
The common thread is size. He looks for deals too small for the largest organizations or for traditional banks, driven by the same underlying economics as the headline transactions.
8. Women's Sports Is Equity
Kayden raised the WNBA All-Star game in Chicago over the summer, the attendance and the viewership, and asked whether the opportunity there is growth or value.
He has looked and has not transacted: "We haven't seen as many interesting credit or value opportunities yet just given the space is you know is still on the rise." He puts women's sports currently in the growth, equity-minded camp.
What he is watching is the media-rights renewals, because that is what creates lendable collateral: those deals create "opportunities for cash flow lending, receivables based lending" and pockets of collateral that clubs could borrow against over time.
"But I'd say for now it's been mostly an equity story versus a credit story in women's sports." He said the firm expects to become more active as those rights deals grow, and that he is confident they will.
9. Buying BondIt
MEP took a majority stake in BondIt Media Capital this year, alongside a $100 million credit facility intended to expand its lending business. Kayden asked what owning the lender gives him that lending does not.
He said MEP had known the firm for a decade and collaborated with it for years, and that BondIt are deep specialists in film and television.
The track record is the reason: he put BondIt at "400 transactions over more than a decade" with what he called really attractive outcomes.
The strategic logic is specialization. He said going more specialized is an important trend in asset management and that MEP's limited partners expect it, and the deal is his expression of that.
The cultural fit is a shared refusal to pick winners: "You know this is a group collectively that you know is not here to predict you know who wins the box office or who wins the Oscar." That, he said, is more of an equity or venture-capital approach; the combined business is focused on protecting the downside first and delivering risk-adjusted returns.
10. The Boring Cash Flows
Kayden put the combined platform's record to him — more than a billion dollars deployed across 500 film, television, music and experiential projects — and asked what that volume had taught him about how entertainment IP holds its value against how the market prices it.
The libraries last. "They're not going anywhere. They continue to generate a pretty consistent or at least predictable cash flow years, sometimes decades after original release."
He lends against or owns books that are 30 years old and films that are 20, 30 and 40 years old, and they still produce real cash that the firm can reinvest or distribute to investors.
The market's attention is elsewhere, on hits and releases — what happens at the box office, or how a new Grand Theft Auto does in its first week. Those are real risks, he said, but they are the ones "large conglomerates with big balance sheets" are best equipped to take.
They are also the wrong risks for an income investor, which is the gap: a large portion of the industry "isn't talked about" but generates real cash flow, real collateral and real receivables that traditional institutions do not look at.
11. What Isn't on Page One
Asked what the less glamorous parts actually are, Kotliar gave the most concrete answer of the interview.
"Well, I don't know how many documentaries about venomous snakes you've watched, but you know, there's a whole genre of you know, unscripted content" that investigates niche special interests — the poison of snakes, how black holes are created, pockets of World War II history.
That content will not appear in The New York Times or Variety, but he says it is "more likely to generate more consistent income" because it found a direct audience connection and has "retained audiences over years or sometimes decades."
Digital distribution extends the tail. Every piece of consumption now generates some revenue, whether through subscription, advertising or transactions, and he said that has significantly prolonged the tail for all of these niche pockets of content.
He declined to call it unglamorous without qualification, saying that for some people it is the most exciting thing they have ever seen and he does not want to minimize anyone's special interests.
Kayden said she does not sleep much and goes down the rabbit hole on a lot of things, and admitted to having watched content on venomous snakes and black holes.
12. Lending to Creators
Kayden asked how he underwrites fragmentation risk, given that Gen Z and Gen Alpha consume content nothing like her parents do.
The answer is a distinction between the asset and the pipe. The loan is made against the intellectual property itself: "It's not against the distribution method."
His worked example is a travel influencer posting a vacation video on Instagram that gets monetized through a brand placement. The questions are whether that can be analyzed over time, whether it could be licensed to other platforms, and whether you can evidence a tail of monetization — or whether it is here today and gone tomorrow.
"So while the landscape is fragmented and you know your head can be spinning because you need to sort of understand where everything sits and which platform is distributing what," the test reduces to whether a ten-year-old piece of content is still generating diversified revenue today.
Content that passes gets valued higher and financed at a higher advance rate than flash-in-the-pan material inside the same library. He allowed that it is "Not an exact science, but that's sort of how we divide the world."
On what turns a creator's channel into a lendable library: "It really comes down to audience connection and audience retention, that's hard to define and we're not arbiters of people's taste, and time is the other great arbiter."
He has no prescription to give a creator who asks how to build content he would lend against in ten years. A mass-market cook or makeup channel has a wider top of the funnel and more competition: "You have a wider top of the funnel in terms of audience you can reach, but it's naturally more competitive, so, you know, the chances that they will break through the noise are lower even though they're playing in a bigger playground." A narrower subject is a smaller playground with a better chance of sustaining a business.
He called judging a creator at the outset very hard, and said it is much easier to analyze years into the future — which he conceded could be called a lazy answer.
13. The $20M Question
Kayden made him choose: lend $20 million to a creator with 50 to 60 million followers being actively watched today, or against a catalog nobody is watching that throws off $5 million of predictable annual cash flow.
He rejected the framing first — "It wouldn't be producing that level of cash flow. So, somebody has to be watching, but that subset is clearly smaller" — and then took the catalog, on the condition that the $5 million is genuinely recurring rather than a one-time license payment.
The first option is not uninvestable; it is a different instrument. Lending to a creator is lending to an operating business, and it needs the right governance, the right controls and covenants, and active monitoring as a going concern.
The catalog is passive or semi-passive, which is what changes the exposure: the lender ties itself to the revenue and the cash flows and worries less about "the going concern nature of the business" and the people running it.
Bonus Insights
The show closes with a rapid-fire round the host calls the sprint. Kotliar's answers:
Most misunderstood thing about private credit: "Vehicle structure."
Most interesting sports asset nobody is talking about: "Professional bull riding." Kayden said she watches it sometimes and finds it fascinating; he replied that it is "Not that undercover."
Is streaming finally a mature business: "I hope so. Yes"
Netflix, media company or technology company: "Netflix is a media company."
Finance a team or its media rights: "Its media rights."
Could a game become a better financial asset than a movie franchise: "Absolutely, often is"
Creator economy, bubble or durable asset class: "Durable asset class if you focus on the right subsectors."
Would he lend against MrBeast's catalog: "There's a price for everything."
What wins long term, AI-generated content or human-created IP: "Human created IP."
Asked by the show's producer whether he roots for the bull or the rider, he said "I root for the health and safety of the riders and the fan experience. How about that?" Kayden said her own answer could get her canceled: she decides by looking at the bull, the way she picks horses by their looks and the jockey's colors.
Kayden closed with her own reading of the interview. She singled out the flexibility of being both owner and lender, the point that anyone lending has to be prepared to own from day one, the scarcity of the assets, and that in sports the best opportunities are often in the assets around the team rather than the team itself. She also said she is still stuck on professional bull riding as the underappreciated sports investment, and repeated his test: "If something continues to generate revenue and or viewership, that is a signal about its evergreen quality, and that then could make it a potentially good asset."
Kotliar's bottom line is that entertainment and sports are now a credit market rather than a bet on hits, and the lendable collateral is the old, niche, diversified cash flow — the thirty-year-old book, the transfer receivable, the documentary about snakes — rather than the franchise or the release everyone is reading about.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
MEP Capital (Kotliar's firm, which lends against and sometimes owns intellectual property across media, entertainment and sports)
BondIt Media Capital (The film and television financier MEP took a majority stake in this year, alongside a $100 million credit facility; Kotliar says it has done over 400 transactions in more than a decade)
Apollo Global Management and the New York Yankees (The $2.6 billion debt-and-equity deal the host used as the case study; Kotliar says the company invested in also holds the television network, a hospitality business and stakes in soccer clubs)
Centerbridge Partners and Goldman Sachs (Where Kotliar worked before building an IP platform — the distressed-credit training is why he says a lender must be ready to own the asset)
Spotify and Napster (The two ends of the music story he invested through: a 15-year decline after Napster, then streaming making the underlying cash flows predictable enough to securitize)
YouTube and Instagram (The platforms his fragmentation test is aimed at — the loan is against the intellectual property, not against the platform distributing it)
Netflix (Asked in the rapid-fire round whether it is a media or a technology company, he said media)
Grand Theft Auto (His example of the launch-week risk that belongs to conglomerates with big balance sheets rather than to income investors)
MrBeast (Asked whether he would lend against the catalog, he said there is a price for everything)
The WNBA (The All-Star game in Chicago was the host's evidence for rising fandom; Kotliar says the credit opportunity arrives with the media-rights renewals)
Professional bull riding (His pick for the most interesting sports asset nobody is talking about)
Los Angeles Lakers (His shorthand for the headline franchise deals his firm does not compete for)
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The line that matters here is "finance a team or its media rights - its media rights." Institutional money isn't betting on wins, it's buying the boring predictable cash flow around the asset. Same principle scales down to an individual athlete - your highlight reel is the hit, but your NIL contracts, licensing deals and content library are the catalog. Build something that still pays out in 10 years, not just something that trends this week.