Jeff Webb, who died on Thursday at the age of 76, two weeks after suffering a head injury during a game of pickleball, was the kind of American entrepreneur whose biography reads like a fable missing its moral. He took a sideline school activity — cheerleading — and transformed it into a $4.75 billion global industry, built an empire that touched millions of young athletes, survived three private equity flips, weathered $126 million in antitrust and sexual abuse settlements, and then, in a two-hour interview with the New York Times Magazine in 2024, could not articulate what he wanted his epitaph to say [1][2].

The silence is worth sitting with. A man who spent fifty years constructing a legacy, who spoke publicly about running for the U.S. Senate, who wrote a book called American Restoration: How to Unshackle the Great Middle Class, who founded the International Cheer Union to put cheerleading in the Olympics — this man, when asked directly about how he wished to be remembered, reportedly struggled to produce a response [1].

Webb began in 1974, working from his apartment in Memphis with one other person. He had been a collegiate sideline cheerleader at the University of Oklahoma, and he saw what no one else at the time thought to see: a business. Not in the cheering itself — the pom-poms and fight songs and school spirit — but in the infrastructure around it. The training camps, the competitions, the uniforms, the music, the choreography, the travel. Every element of cheerleading that required money, Webb intended to collect [2].

The company he founded, initially called the Universal Cheerleading Association, became Varsity Spirit, and Varsity Spirit became, through aggressive acquisition and vertical integration, the dominant force in American cheerleading. If your daughter attended a cheer camp, Webb's company ran it. If she competed at nationals, Webb's company organized it. If she wore a uniform, Webb's company likely supplied it. The market dominance was so complete that it eventually attracted the attention of antitrust lawyers [1].

The first private equity sale came in 2011, when Webb sold to Herff Jones and stayed on as CEO. The combined entity rebranded as Varsity Brands and acquired BSN Sports, expanding into athletic apparel. Charlesbank Capital Partners bought the company in 2014 for $1.5 billion. Webb reportedly pocketed $34.8 million and remained as chairman of the cheerleading division. Bain Capital purchased it in 2018 for $2.5 billion. KKR bought it in 2024 for $4.75 billion, including debt. Webb made nine figures across the transactions [1].

"Once you are on that treadmill," he told the New York Times Magazine, "it's almost impossible to go back."

The treadmill metaphor is apt. Private equity ownership imposed the logic of quarterly returns on an enterprise that involved, at its base, teenage girls and boys performing athletic feats. The pressure to grow revenue — more camps, more competitions, more merchandise, higher prices — created the conditions that critics would later describe as monopolistic. In 2024, Varsity and Bain settled a class-action antitrust case, Jones v. Bain, for $82.5 million. A separate lawsuit settled for $43.5 million. The plaintiffs — indirect cheerleading purchasers, meaning the parents — alleged that Varsity had suppressed competition and inflated prices [1].

Webb defended himself. "Has Varsity made mistakes? Of course. This was a company that started from zero," he told Sportico in 2021. But the defense coexisted with something darker [1].

Dozens of separate lawsuits alleged the sexual abuse of cheerleaders — a number of them minors — by coaches affiliated with Varsity-sponsored gyms or events. The company eventually settled these cases as well. Webb himself was never personally accused of abuse, but the lawsuits raised questions about the oversight structures, or lack thereof, within the empire he built. When your company controls the camps, the competitions, the coaching certifications, and the insurance, and abuse occurs within that ecosystem, the question of institutional responsibility is not hypothetical [1][2].

Webb officially cut all ties with Varsity in December 2020. "I'm leaving Varsity Spirit, but I'm not leaving cheerleading," he announced on Twitter. He continued to pursue his long-held ambition of Olympic recognition for the sport through the International Cheer Union, which he had founded and led as president. The effort bore fruit: the International Olympic Committee granted cheerleading provisional recognition in 2021. Two years later, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee recognized Varsity-backed USA Cheer as an affiliate organization [1].

He also entered politics, becoming co-publisher of the conservative outlet Human Events and mentoring Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who called Webb a "future president." A documentary about Webb was reportedly in production, with his full cooperation. Its current status is unclear [1][2].

Webb was twice divorced, had two children with his second wife, and was most recently living in a condominium next to the Memphis Country Club. He died as he had lived — in motion, on a court, playing a game that did not exist as a competitive sport when he was young, in a country whose appetite for organized athletics he understood better than almost anyone.

The International Cheer Union described him as having spent his life "transforming what was just a sideline school activity into one of the fastest growing sports in the world." This is true. It is also true that the empire he built settled nine figures in lawsuits, that dozens of young athletes were harmed within systems he controlled, and that when a journalist asked him how he wished to be remembered, he could not find the words.

Perhaps the epitaph writes itself: Jeff Webb made cheerleading into a business, and the business became too large for one man to govern, and the ungovernable parts did what ungovernable parts always do, and in the end, a pickleball court in Memphis did what no antitrust lawyer, no sexual abuse plaintiff, and no private equity treadmill ever managed. It stopped him.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos