Sports data firm Opta to be sold to Perform Sam Hamadeh, chief executive of PrivCo, a company that investigates privately held businesses, said Opta's days with Albion were numbered as soon as that deal was done. "Albion has been actively making new investments, but its job for the portfolio it inherited is to seek an exit at a fair price as quickly as possible," he told The Daily Telegraph. That's standard for a venture-capital assuming a former venture-capital firm's legacy portfolio. The inherited start-ups are treated a bit like stepchildren. Albion's task then was to quickly dress up Opta for sale, primarily by cutting expenses and forcing it to break even. A deal with Perform would mark the latest in a string of deals for the listed media business. In 2011, the company acquired online football portal Goal.com, from a consortium including Bessemer Venture Partners. Last year it acquired Runningball, another sports data company, for €120m. Mr Russell also operates news website Sports.com, and website and app design company, Coreware. He could not be reached for comment. Albion and Perform both declined to comment.