☕ Youth Sports Brew

Editor’s note

Good morning. Rev up the minivan and prep those orange slices, because it’s time to talk youth sports. In today’s special edition, we’ll discuss how private equity is transforming the industry, shine a spotlight on girls flag football, debate the best kids sports movies, and much more. Whether you’re a parent of a young athlete or just want to relive your glory years as a 12-year-old baseball player who was totally going to make it to the majors, there’s something for everyone in Youth Sports Brew.

How much for an orange slice?!

Getty Images

When news broke that Kim Kardashian would produce a TV show following the parents of elite teen baseball players, the internet’s broad reaction was: This is the last thing kids need right now.

Over the past two decades, private equity has transformed youth sports into an industrial complex that’s cutthroat enough to cause a shortage of willing umpires and referees, and expensive enough to break the bank.

Case study: One Florida parent who recalls playing rec sports for $80 per season as a child now spends $8,000 per year on her 12-year-old son’s club baseball practices, tournaments, and equipment, she told the Washington Post. She’s in good company:

• Family spending on youth sports leaped by 46% from 2019 to 2024 to make it a $40 billion-a-year industry—more than the combined annual revenue of the NFL and NBA, according to the Aspen Institute.
• Financial strain has caused 1 in 5 parents to limit or end their kids’ participation in youth sports, according to a New York Life survey from last year.

How did we get here?

When parks and recreation departments suffered budget cuts after the 2008 financial crisis and again during the pandemic, it exacerbated longstanding public funding issues and left gaps for investors to plug.

And private equity has been on a spree—snatching up teams, facilities, software, training camps, apparel, and media rights. Major PE-funded entities include:

• Black Bear Sports Group, the nation’s largest hockey rink owner-operator, which charges up to $37 per month to stream kids’ games, and prohibits parents from livestreaming or broadcasting the matches themselves.
• Varsity Brands, the KKR-owned cheerleading and sports apparel behemoth that ballooned in valuation from $1.5 billion in 2014 to $4.5 billion in 2024—the same year it settled anticompetitive allegations for $82.5 million.
• Unrivaled Sports, a new venture from the owner of the NFL’s Washington Commanders that seeks to dominate the burgeoning youth flag football space.

The promise of PE-funded leagues is that they’ll help turn your kid into the next Cristiano Ronaldo or Paige Bueckers, but there’s little evidence to support this. In fact, some studies suggest that sports specialization at a young age increases an athlete’s risk of injuries into adulthood. Nonetheless, parents who want their kids to excel on the field increasingly feel like they don’t have a choice but to opt for pay-to-play leagues that start stealing players from community teams as early as kindergarten.

Looking ahead…youth sports privatization could be a 2028 election issue. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy—identified by The Atlantic as a potential Democratic presidential nominee—is pushing a bill that would limit private equity’s place in kids’ sports.—ML

      

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green flag

Adobe Stock

Girls flag football is a hit. Not literally, of course, since it doesn’t allow tackling. But it’s one of the fastest-growing sports in the US, especially at the high school level. According to a survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations:

• Around 102,000 high school girls participated in flag football last year—up from less than 16,000 four years earlier.
• The number of schools reporting participation went from 2,736 last year to 3,990 this year.

The little ones are playing, too. The number of girls age 6 to 12 playing flag football increased by 283% between 2015 and 2024, according to USA Football. Meanwhile, about 500,000 girls age 6 to 17 play on organized flag football teams in the US, per the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, which has partnered with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons (of which Blank is majority owner) to champion the sport’s growth.

Green flag: According to Amanda Dinkel, the Falcons’ senior director for community relations, flag football “provides gender equality and builds girls’ leadership skills…and 50% of the girls who decide to play flag have never played a sport before.”

Flags of the world: The NFL estimates that more than 20 million people play flag football in 100+ countries. The sport will make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028.—BC

      

wait, what?

Yes, you can bet on Little League baseball games

Emilee Chinn/Getty Images

Did you have a hunch about who would win the Little League World Series? Well, we have good news for next year if you feel comfortable betting money on children via websites outside of the US.

While wagering on the outcomes of games involving 12-year-olds is too taboo even for US-based sportsbooks and the prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket, you can put money down via offshore websites like BetOnline. The sportsbook located in Panama and the youth sports organization have different viewpoints:

• BetOnline brand manager Dave Mason said there’s “massive demand” for LLWS markets, and the handle is greater than pro markets like WNBA and golf during the two-week tournament.
• A statement from Little League International said, “No one should be exploiting the success and failures of children.”

Bottom line: In case you were curious, a $100 bet on Curaçao to win it all would’ve paid $1,500 and made you the star of an even seedier version of Uncut Gems.—DL

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LEVELING UP THE PLAYING FIELD

Allen Independent School District

Many young athletes today aren’t forced to do drills on the steps of their local art museum. That’s because real estate developers are going all in on the youth sports boom by building state-of-the-art training grounds that Rocky would envy.

One facility owner told Bloomberg that youth sports buildings are “recession-proof,” since parents spending on the dream of their kids going pro is among the last things they will cut back on.

Here are just a few places where children train like elite athletes:

• The Program NYC is a 12,500-square-foot basketball training center for players 6 and older in Brooklyn offering weight training and recovery amenities, including a sauna, cold plunge, and air compression massage. Youth Membership costs $500 per month or $4,500 for an annual commitment. It also offers the Platinum Membership, a “basketball concierge service for the Middle, High School, College or Pro player looking to to take the next step in his/her basketball journey,” for $2,500 per month.
• The growing bougie basketball court chain Shoot360 has 50 locations worldwide, offering AI-enabled training with instant analytic feedback.
• Travel baseball teams at the Ballparks of America in Missouri play in replicas of famous MLB stadiums and stay in on-site dorms.
• The $125 million AdventHealth Sports Park in Kansas opened in 2024 with an NHL-regulation ice rink, basketball courts that convert to accommodate pickleball or volleyball, and a recovery center with a hydrotherapy pool.
• The $60 million Eagle Stadium in Allen, TX, (pictured above) has 18,000 seats, a jumbotron, a weightlifting room, and a luxury suite for VIP spectators. It serves as the home field for a local high school football team.

The upshot: Athletics administrators told Bloomberg that the pricey private facilities are sprouting up amid disinvestment from free public courts and fields, making sports participation less affordable.—SK

      

PLACE TO BE

The US hobby horse championships

Rod Soule/USHHC

Last month, 400+ stick horse enthusiasts and 800+ spectators gathered in a Michigan sports complex—having outgrown the middle school gym they competed in last year—to show off their very niche agility skills. Hobby horsing is a sport dominated by girls and young women and has been gaining fans and participants rapidly over the last few years. Finland has become a hobby horse powerhouse, hosting championship tournaments since 2012. The US’ first national competition, meanwhile, was started in 2024 by four Midwest tweens.

How do you compete? The “classes” are similar to real-life equestrian events, with jumping events that focus on speed and precision, dressage that blends choreography and gymnastics, and rodeo events like barrel racing. But instead of riding real horses, riders straddle...fake ones. There’s even a grand finale puissance event where riders try to clear the highest jump possible. The world record is 4'7".—MM

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debate club

What’s the best kids sports movie?

A scene from ‘Little Giants.’ Warner Bros. Pictures

Everyone has a sports movie from childhood that’s near and dear to them. The Brew team got together to pitch their favorites. Let us know who made the best case.

Little Giants: The Rick Moranis, Ed O’Neill, John Madden collab you didn’t know you needed. This endlessly quotable underdog comedy perfectly captures the spirit of 1990s Pee-Wee football, taught us “the annexation of Puerto Rico,” and accurately predicted a future where the Cowboys can’t win the big game.—BC

Little Big League: The Sandlot gets more buzz, but the best baseball movie of the ’90s is Little Big League, in which a 12-year-old inherits ownership of the Minnesota Twins and does what any 12-year-old would do in that situation—makes himself the manager. The film has a ton of great cameos from MLB legends like Ken Griffey Jr., and it features some of the best sports montages you’ll ever see. Better yet, the cast is mostly real baseball players, so it looks like they actually know what they’re doing.—AE

Hoosiers: As far as the best youth basketball movie goes, it’s either this or Air Bud. Seriously—a golden retriever getting buckets on children who can’t defend a dog made it a close call. Ultimately, though, Norman Dale (played by Gene Hackman) saying his team is on the floor, a doing-his-best-to-stay-sober Shooter taking over coaching duties, and Jimmy Chitwood becoming the original Damian Lillard buzzer-beater king was too good to knock from the top spot.—DL

Kicking and Screaming: It’s not just a vehicle for Will Ferrell to go buckwild with improv and physical comedy, this soccer movie gets at the true meaning of a sports film: making your dad proud. This movie is full of the most random guys you love, like Steven Anthony Lawrence (“Beans” from Even Stevens) and Phil Lewis (Mr. Moseby from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody). There’s also a 1995 Noah Baumbach film by the same name if you want to have an insane double feature.—MM

The Mighty Ducks: Is there a youth sports move more powerful than the Flying V? I think not. This hockey flick, in which a post-Brat Pack Emilio Estevez goes from soulless corporate jerk to reconnecting with and healing his inner child via court-ordered coaching of a ragtag group of kids, eventually spawned two sequels for a reason: It’s good. Plus, it’s Disney’s finest anticapitalist film (with apologies to Newsies), and the only one to have inspired the creation of its own IRL NHL franchise—which at one point was reportedly responsible for 80% of the league’s $1 billion in merchandise revenue.—AR

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