Tyrre Burks is a former athlete and founder of Players Health, a company he established to address the challenges he experienced as an athlete playing on a Division II football team while attending Winona State University as well as in Europe and the Canadian Football League (CFL).
According to him, he suffered from an injury that left him temporarily paralyzed. At a point, he even thought that was the end of his career because he felt he would not be able to walk again.
Guided by this dark experience, in addition to other inconsistent safety measures, he got inspired to create a platform that focuses on the well-being of athletes. His platform offers services like insurance, injury management tools, abuse prevention programs, and resources for name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities.
According to Peopleofcolorintech, the company has partnered with over 40,000 sports organizations, protecting 5.5 million athletes since its launch 10 years ago. Its customer base includes organizations such as USA Softball, 3-Step Sports, RCX Sports, American Youth Soccer Organization, and Orangetheory.
The company recently secured $60 million in Series C funding to expand its mission of providing athlete safety and sports insurance solutions.
The funding round was led by Bluestone Equity Partners and also included Mosaic General Partners, RPM Ventures, SiriusPoint, and TriplePoint Capital, bringing the total raised by Players Health to over $100 million.
In a release, Players Health said it will use the funding “to accelerate its growth on several fronts, including advancement of its AI-powered product personalization, strategic M&A to broaden its market reach and expand capabilities, and expansion of its workforce to meet increasing consumer demand for its growing portfolio of specialized products and services.”
“With more than 440,000 amateur sports organizations and over 60 million people playing organized sports in the United States, the need to prioritize and enhance the safety and well-being of athletes has never been greater,” Burks stated.
“This funding round underscores the need and opportunity to build the necessary advisory infrastructure to unify and streamline the fragmentation of vendors and services in today’s sports insurance market,” said Bluestone Equity Partners’ founder Bobby Sharma.
“This investment will enable us to continue expanding Players Health’s nationwide reach, fostering a safer, more supportive ecosystem for athletes at every level,” Burks said.
As a part of this investment, Bluestone’s Walker Brumskine and Jake Harris will join the Players Health Board of Directors.
