Injury Interrupts Athlete’s Season, and His I.P.O.

Some companies cancel initial public offerings over a lack of demand. Others delay them because regulators require more disclosure.

But never before has a company postponed an I.P.O. because of season-ending back surgery â€" until Tuesday.

Fantex, the start-up promoting I.P.O.’s of National Football League stars, said that it was putting off its stock offering of Arian Foster, the running back for the Houston Texans. Mr. Foster was placed on injured reserve and is expected to have surgery to repair a ruptured disk.

“After consideration, we have made the decision to postpone the offering,” Buck French, the chief executive and co-founder of Fantex, said in a statement. “We feel this is a prudent course of action under the current circumstances.”

The decision to delay the Foster deal is a significant blow to Fantex, which unveiled its novel business last month.

Fantex is primarily a sports marketing and management firm that signs athletes and takes a stake in their future earnings, which includes playing contracts and corporate endorsements.

But to finance the payments for those stakes, Fantex plans to create stocks that it hopes to sell to the public. The stocks are so-called tracking stocks that are designed to trade in tandem with the athletes’ economic performance. Ultimately, Fantex wants to build a trading exchange that will allow small investors to buy and sell interests in their favorite players.

In its filing for the “Fantex Series Arian Foster Convertible Tracking Stock,” the company laid out 37 pages of risk factors, including the possibility of a serious injury that could hamper a player’s earnings potential.

“We continue to support Arian and his brand, and we wish him well in his recovery,” Mr. French said. “We will continue to work with him through his recovery and intend to continue with this offering at an appropriate time in the future based on an assessment of these events.”

Now, Fantex will presumably focus its energies on a planned offering for its second client, Vernon Davis, a tight end of the San Francisco 49ers. Fantex has yet to file papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Davis I.P.O. but signaled that it was preparing a deal to sell about $4 million in shares to buy 10 percent of Mr. Davis’s future earnings.

But Mr. Davis has also had a setback. Last Sunday, he left a game in the first half after suffering a concussion and did not return.