Has youth sports lost the plot?

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