MBA Voices: From London Business School To The World Fencing League: Why I Chose To Launch A Sports Venture

A few months ago, I stood on the floor of a sold-out Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles, watching fencers compete in front of a live crowd. It was the debut event of World Fencing League (WFL), something my team and I had spent months building from scratch. I do not think I fully processed the moment until later. But standing there, surrounded by the noise, pressure, and energy of it all, I remember thinking: This is what I came here to do.

Today, I am the CEO of the World Fencing League (WFL), a new sports entertainment venture built around one of the world’s oldest Olympic sports. The ambition is clear: to reimagine fencing for modern fans without losing what makes the sport special.

It is the kind of leap that can look bold from the outside. But for me, it feels like the natural next chapter of a journey that began long before WFL. It started in the swimming pools of Singapore, where competing in sport at a high level taught me discipline and resilience. It continued in my first full-time career at BCG in consulting, where I learned how to structure complex problems and operate under pressure. However, London Business School was where that path became real. Over two years, I found the confidence to move from advising companies to building one myself.

STARTING A CLUB WAS GOOD PRACTICE FOR STARTING A VENTURE

When I arrived at LBS, I did not want the MBA to be something that happened to me. I wanted to participate fully in it. I wanted to build community and take on responsibility. Most of all, I wanted to see what could happen when I acted on an idea instead of waiting for the perfect moment.

That instinct led me to found the Southeast Asia Club and serve as its President. In the beginning, it was not much more than a group of students who believed there should be a stronger community for the region at LBS. We had to persuade people to show up before there was momentum, create events before there was a template, and give students from very different Southeast Asian cultures a reason to feel part of the same story.

Sometimes, leadership starts before you feel ready. You book the room before you know if people will come; ask classmates for help before everything is figured out; and adjust as the idea takes shape. Today, as the Southeast Asia Club enters its third year, it has grown into a vibrant community of more than 300 members.

That same lesson carried into sport at LBS.

In 2024, I had the privilege of leading LBS to victory at MBAT, the MBA Tournament, for the first time in nine years. For those outside the MBA world, MBAT brings together business schools from across Europe for a weekend of competition at HEC Paris.

Winning mattered? Of course it did. I’m an athlete after all.

But what stayed with me was not just the result. It was seeing classmates organize teams across sports they barely knew, travel together, cheer for people they had only just met, and slowly turn a tournament into a shared school mission. That is when I started to understand something I still believe deeply today: sport is one of the most powerful community-building tools we have.

PEOPLE AND ACCOUNTABILITY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

The following year, as President of the Student Association (SA), I saw leadership from a different angle. I learned that institutions do not move forward because someone has a good idea. They move forward when someone takes responsibility for turning that idea into reality.

That was the spirit behind Battle of the Streams, an event we launched with the SA team during my tenure. The idea was to create a new school-wide sports competition that would bring together the different LBS streams across business programs in a format that felt competitive and fun. It started as an experiment. Today, it has become a flagship LBS event.

Just as important, LBS gave me people. That may be the most underrated part of the MBA experience. Three of my classmates are now instrumental team members in building the WFL. Many others have supported the journey in ways both visible and quiet: making introductions, offering advice, or simply believing in the idea before it was obvious.

AMID AI, SPORTS MEANS MORE THAN EVER

After LBS, I could have followed a more conventional path. I had spent several years in consulting before business school, and it was a natural path back.

But the bridge into sports came through Chiron Sports Group, where I now also work as an incubation director. Chiron gave me the platform to move from being interested in sports as a former athlete and fan to actually building in the industry. It exposed me to the realities of sports entrepreneurship — the ambition, the uncertainty, the commercial complexity, and the need to create something people can believe in before the world has fully validated it.

Leaving a more established path was not easy, and I had to ask myself uncomfortable questions. Was I ready to take this risk? Was I willing to trade certainty for ownership?

The answer, eventually, was yes.

Part of my conviction is personal; another part of it is commercial. Sport is one of the most exciting industries in the world right now. The global sports ecosystem is valued at roughly $2.5-trillion. Not surprisingly, capital is following it quickly, with firms like Ares, Apollo, and CVC investing behind teams, leagues, and new sports platforms. There is a reason for that.

Sport is scarce. Sport is emotional. Sport is live. In an age where so much content can be generated, replicated, optimized, and automated, live human competition remains stubbornly irreplaceable. AI cannot manufacture the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of live competition. It cannot replace the human desire to witness courage, rivalry, failure, comeback, and excellence in real time.

The more digital the world becomes, the more valuable real human moments become.

AN UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITY

For me, fencing is one of the great untapped opportunities in that landscape. It has history, speed, drama, and global Olympic relevance. It involves extraordinary athletes with stories worth telling. But like many Olympic sports, it has not yet been packaged consistently for the modern fan.

That is the opportunity we are chasing with the World Fencing League.

We want to make the sport easier to understand, more compelling to watch, and more commercially powerful for athletes, fans, sponsors, and the wider fencing ecosystem. We want to create a product that respects the sport’s tradition, while giving it the stage, storytelling, and energy it deserves.

I also know I would not have had the courage to take this path without the people closest to me. Entrepreneurship can look exciting from the outside, but it asks a lot from the people around you. My family, and especially my wife, have given me the support to take a less certain road.

When I look at where I am now, I see the through line clearly: the student clubs, the tournaments, the late nights, the hard conversations, the people who showed up, and the moments when an idea became real. It was all because enough people believed in it.

I went to London Business School to grow as a leader. I left ready to build.

Zhen Ren Teo is a London Business School MBA 2025 alumnus, Co-Founder and CEO of World Fencing League, and Incubation Director at Chiron Sports Group. He previously served as President of the LBS Student Association and sat on the LBS Governing Body. Before business school, Zhen Ren was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Born and raised in Singapore, he represented Singapore as a national swimmer.

Special thanks to our founder Miles Chamley-Watson, and fellow co-founders, Leo Rifkind and Karl Flick, for their ambition in bringing the World Fencing League to life. Building something new is never easy, and I am fortunate to be doing it with partners who believe deeply in what this sport can become.

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