This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
A big THANK YOU to everyone who attended the Buying Sandlot Summit, and especially our speakers and sponsors. It was truly an amazing week in Philly, and we look forward to running it back next year.
We will have our BIG TAKEAWAYS from the event next week, and full-length panel videos and podcasts will be available to event attendees and premium members. So for those of you who weren’t able to make it, you’ll be able to view the whole event on-demand.
For now, we’re making our Tech Heavy Hitters Keynote Panel available to all on our YouTube channel and as a podcast:
Big day today. Lots of news— some of it broken at the Summit.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
💰 BASE Sports Group Closes Funding Round
Base Sports Group has completed a strategic funding round led by Balius Partners and its Primetime Acquisitions holding company.
Balius reportedly invested $1.5M in the community and youth sports sponsorship sales agency — the total raise for the round was $2.5M.
“We have a view that youth sports is institutionalizing and the sponsorship opportunity is a great way to bring new partners into the ecosystem,” Balius managing partner Chris Goulakos told Buying Sandlot. “The pressure on families and parents and the price of admission is getting a lot higher, so why not bring in folks who can subsidize and create new revenue streams to offset some of those stresses and pressures.
“What [Base co-founders Mark Dvoroznak and Carrie Gamper] have built so far is probably the most scaled, nationally-leveraged platform in the sponsorship space. We think that allows access to not just local partners, but regional and national. And we can bring in big partners faster.”
Other investors were former Learfield CEO Greg Brown and COO/CFO Temple Weiss, former Cleveland Cavaliers CEO Len Komoroski and College Hunks Hauling Junk founder Omar Soliman.
"We are entering an era where millennial parents and their families are the most coveted, yet hardest-to-reach consumer segment," Dvoroznak said. "By applying the same rigorous capital budgeting and data analytics used in professional leagues to the amateur level, we enable national brands to enter the youth sports ecosystem with precision and authenticity that will not only unlock unmatched ROI but will support local facilities and improve the community experience.”
📆 EventConnect Exists To End Tournament Chaos— For Organizers And Families*
Tournament weekends have become mini supply chains: teams register, rosters change, schedules shift, hotels fill, and parents scramble.
Too many events still run things on spreadsheets, portals, and last-minute calls.
What we do (and why it’s different):
Centralize the weekend workflow: registration, rostering, payments, lodging, and real-time reporting.
Organizers can run end-to-end on EventConnect or integrate the systems they already use— no rip-and-replace required.
Either way, the data lands in one place so operators aren’t stitching together reports from multiple tools.
The “moment that changes outcomes”:
HousingConnect embeds hotel booking directly into checkout— capturing rooms at peak intent instead of sending families to a separate portal later.
Results can be up to 30% more room-night reservations and 24% savings on team hotel costs.
Proof of scale:
EventConnect powers 5,000 events and connects 30,000 hotels across 800 destinations.
Learn more about how EventConnect can help power your tournament right here.
*Sponsor
🧢 Capacity Sports Group’s Big Splash
The youth sports platform has expanded significantly with four acquisitions — a pair of facilities in Pennsylvania and two tournament operators.
Entering the CSC fold:
United Sports: 218K-square-foot indoor/outdoor complex in Downingtown with 11 fields and 91K-square-foot indoor facility.
YSC Sports: 90K-square-foot complex in Wayne that serves over 1.5K teams and 7.5K individual registrations annually
Sideline Sports Solutions (S3): Operates over 40 soccer tournaments each year, including FC Europa Turf Cup and FC Delco Players Cup with over 850 teams, 14K players
Flag Football Life: Operates NFL Flag leagues at over 25 locations, national tournament across over 15 states and Canada; operated by United Sports and has plans for significant expansion
Terms were not disclosed. YSC and S3 were previously under the Striker Partners umbrella. Striker is under the family office of Richie Graham, a Philadelphia Union partner who is a prolific investor across sports, media, healthcare and business.
CSC launched in January when scouting content and events platform Prep Baseball merged with Bullpen Tournaments, an events and facilities manager and operator.
CSC previously said it planned to host over 300 tournaments this year across about 150 fields with 20M visitors. Prep Baseball held over 1.6K events in 2025 in 47 states, Canada and Taiwan.
Fortified Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to United Sports, YSC Sports, S3 and FFL on the sale. DLA Piper, Duane Morris LLP and Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry served as legal counsel to the sellers. Ropes & Gray LLP served as legal counsel to Capacity Sports Group.
TeamSnap COO Greg Ludke - on our Tech Heavy Hitters Panel at the Summit - said the following about consolidation in the industry:
“[It] needs to do it in a way that actually creates integration versus just creating rollups. So for all of those who are looking at investing in this space right you need to think about really investing in such a way creating consolidation that brings together a connected experience versus just let's just go pull together a whole bunch of companies under a portfolio.”
He was speaking generally, and not about this deal. But I immediately thought of the quote when I read the press release here. CSG came out of the gates with an integrated approach in baseball through its merger of Prep Baseball and Bullpen tournaments, with facility management as a main focus. It hinted that it would expand into other sports. It now layers in Philly-centric soccer assets and facilities, and flag football tournaments. This is a robust and impressive network already, and there are plenty of synergies here, especially on the back-end. But in the context of Ludke’s quote at least, I don’t exactly see how ownership of YSC creates a “connected experience” with Prep Baseball Showcases and rankings. Maybe the back-end integration B2B story is enough.
A good example of what this looks like on the consumer end would be Unrivaled Sports, which owns baseball-heavy assets and is now leaning harder into flag football. I’d point to what Unrivaled CMO Erin Clift said at the Summit about wanting the Unrivaled brand to signify elite, premium experiences regardless of sport or individual venue. They are certainly being thoughtful about creating a youth sports platform through venue and tournament ownership rather than just a facility rollup.
Unrivaled website: “Our growing network of premier youth sports venues and programming enables athletes to develop the building blocks for success by delivering experiences that are inclusive & premium, competitive & developmental, inspiring & memory-making.”
CSG website: “Venue management is hard. We can help. We run it. We fill it. We measure it. All powered by one unified technology platform.”
This isn’t to say that one positioning is right or wrong, but to point out that there is a difference in how to message control (through ownership or management) of facilities and tournaments. It’s also worth noting CSG is effectively brand new, so the messaging will evolve.
⚾️ Perfect Game Partners With Youth Prospects
The baseball and softball developmental platform has struck a media deal with the youth baseball content company — and CEO Rob Ponger broke the news at the summit on Wednesday.
YP gets broadcast rights to select games at premier PG events
WWBA World Championship is part of deal
Content collaboration, additional access to games
Integrated content for brand partners, joint activations
“It’s a unique deal,” Ponger told Buying Sandlot. “It’s an inside look at everything that’s PG. Our teams, our players will continue to be promoted. It’s very similar to what the (professional) leagues do with their broadcast rights.”
🎾 USTA Goes All-In With Fastbreak AI
The tennis governing body will deploy the sports tech platform’s software while its USTA Ventures arm has also invested in Fastbreak.
USTA said it will use Fastbreak’s scheduling tools for its leagues, which feature over 300K athletes and millions of matches each year. A pilot program will operate in 2026 across select leagues before widespread use in 2027.
The NGB said it currently dedicates hundreds of staff members and thousands of hours toward scheduling; it hopes to "rededicate those resources toward directly growing the game" by using Fastbreak's automated systems.
🏈 New National HS Girls Flag Tourney
MaxPreps and iFlag will team up on the MaxPreps Flag Football Showdown, which aims to "establish the first rankings-backed, media-scaled championship stage for high school flag football."
The first event will be Sept. 11-12 in Chula Vista, California. MaxPreps said a follow-up event will happen on the East Coast during the spring of 2027.
The tournament will be a “merit-based invitational” that leans on MaxPreps’ national high school rankings, as well as season performance and resumes. iFlag will handle tournaments operations.
MaxPreps — now owned by PlayOn Sports — said there are plans to expand the calendar and geographic footprint in 2027. The high school sports information platform also said it plans to beef up its girls flag coverage.
🥍 USA Lacrosse, NCSI Extend Partnership
The National Center for Safety Initiatives -- a youth safety advocacy group owned by SportsEngine and Versant -- will remain USA Lax's official background screening partner following a multi-year extension.
Over 30K adult coaches and volunteers have been screened since 2018 across each two-year cycle. NCSI goes beyond basic database checks and is used by thousands of organizations.
“For decades, NCSI has been committed to advancing athlete safety, and USA Lacrosse's unwavering dedication to protecting its communities and raising the bar for safety standards makes this a natural and meaningful partnership," said SportsEngine/NCSI VP of Enterprise & Safety Kate Quattlebaum. "We are proud to continue supporting an elite organization that keeps athlete safety at the forefront of the game.”
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