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In the email today:
⚽️ U.S. Soccer Takes Over U.S. Youth Soccer
The U.S. Soccer Federation effectively absorbed U.S Youth Soccer over the weekend — a development that has received almost universal praise despite few specifics on what happens next.
USYS’ state associations voted to integrate with USSF during their annual meeting in Dallas on Saturday — a move first rumored a few weeks before the World Cup kicked off.
USSF is now the sole voting member of USYS. A two-year integration process begins tomorrow. And that’s about all we know for sure about what USSF CEO JT Batson called “a defining moment for the future of soccer in America” as the federation continues its Pathway Strategy.
A joint release also said USYS’ state associations will play a key role and pledged that “no matter where a player or family lives or where they are in their soccer journey, this integration will create easier ways to find, play and stay in the game.”
Over time, greater alignment between U.S. Soccer, USYS, State Associations and the broader soccer community will:
Create more access to play through investments in growing the game in communities across the country.
Make soccer easier to navigate so families can find the experience that is right for them.
Bring more resources to local soccer and the organizations serving players every day.
Better support coaches, referees, clubs and leagues with the tools and resources they need to deliver great soccer experiences.
Create clearer opportunities for players to develop and reach their potential in the game.
Better connect the organizations across American soccer so more time and resources can be focused on serving and growing the game.
“This is, directionally, a really good step,” said Brian Enge, the COO of Pioneer Sports — the parent company of both Surf Soccer and Rush Soccer. He expands:
“But it is just directional. It’s the governing body basically saying, ‘We should take a bigger role in the youth sports system,’ Which they have, over the last many years, completely been irresponsible in that position. They sort of just let the youth soccer landscape be the wild, wild west without any sort of — I would use the term parental control, or parental oversight. … This is them standing up and saying they’re going to be more responsible parents. That is a really good thing, and it’s the first time in a long time they have said they feel like they have a role and they should take a role.”
Digging in on some of the main discussion points:
1) There will be a lot of talk about the “broader soccer community,” specifically U.S. Club Soccer, ECNL, Girls Academy and MLS/MLSNext. That is where most of the elite infrastructure resides. It’s also where tabs are getting run up the most.
The USCS/USYS dynamic may be the most interesting. The platforms have competed against each other and roughly split the youth soccer ecosystem into two markets, Enge said, with USCS emerging as the dominant player thanks to its ties to ECNL.
There is already collaboration on the books. USCS and USYS previously agreed to merge their top leagues. USCS also entered a shared services agreement for backend operations with USSF in January, and there is some sense the federation has or will have more sporting control over USCS than initially signaled.
Still: A lot of people and interests have to get on the same page for, well, the first time ever. Which is why Enge said he was not surprised with the lack of initial details.
“I always say, the dumbest thing we do in youth sports is to fight against each other in the name of developing great kids,” Enge said. “Having done stuff like this, it’s hard enough to get two groups that have their own fiefdoms together, and then laying out all the specifics usually sort of ruins it. I wouldn’t expect any more (information) in this first step than what they’ve already done, with a lot more to come.”
MLS is also a factor to watch. The league has to be at the table, but its main focus is developing elite players and making money.
2) What happens to the state associations? There are 54 of them — California, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas have two — and many (but not all) have seen their influence wane in recent years. So if you wonder why so many people voted for something without much information — it may have been just about the chance to have a future as what that future looks like.
How the state associations function as arms of USSF is unclear. Consolidation also seems likely. USA Hockey is not a perfect comparison for several reasons, but it only has 34 affiliate associations, some of which cover multiple states.
3) A lot of people remember how USSF abruptly bailed on the Development Academy league in 2020 and caused chaos. And reviews on the efficacy of USSF’s involvement in youth soccer were mixed at best before then. What is the “sweet spot,” as Enge put it, for a federation that is not known for being terribly inclusive or progressive and has already given up control once.
“These guys (current USSF leadership) have shown they want to move into a new era, but how far will they go?” Enge said. “And how good will they be at it?”
4) Nothing about youth soccer in the U.S. got cheaper over the weekend. Sure, more resource pooling, shared services and eliminated redundancies will impact the bottom line. But it is not going to lower costs considerably. There have been reports USSF wants to reduce travel and make competition more regionalized and that other stakeholders are on board, but no specifics have been offered.
5) Last one for the road. MLS, GA and USYS are partnered with Adidas. USCS is partnered with Nike. Pioneer’s Surf and Rush are both Nike partners. And USSF is partnered with Nike. That could speak to the latter’s recent push into youth soccer — the tie likely goes to the Swoosh.
📆 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
🎥 Veo CEO On Camera Maker’s Future Plans
GameChanger is currently the only major industry player that is publicly traded via parent company Dick’s Sporting Goods.
But the IPOs are coming. Hudl has been rumored to be going public for months. Varsity Brands has signaled it will likely go public. And now you can add camera maker Veo to the mix.
“We just want to continue building a large company and ultimately take the company public,” CEO and co-founder Henrik Teisbaek said on the Buying Sandlot podcast.
Teisbaek also discussed Veo’s origins, its new Analytics 2 platform, his thoughts on cameras, streaming and more.
BUYING SANDLOT: THE BUSINESS OF YOUTH SPORTS
Veo CEO on AI, Youth Sports Streaming & the Future of Sports Video
📺 That’s A Big Number
I remain convinced that Texas high school football would be huge on Netflix.
These numbers are also the latest sign that high-level youth sports are fast becoming a popular, and valuable, media property.
Perfect Game maxed out at 362K live viewers with its National Showcase stream. The NFL Flag Championships were a big draw for ABC and ESPN. We don’t have Little League World Series numbers yet, but we know the regionals averaged over 630K viewers — up 22% YoY and the most-watched in 17 years.
There is genuine mainstream appeal — and numbers that are better than a lot of what cable is putting up.
🏛️ Let Kids Play Act Update
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has signaled what Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) told us — the LKPA is going to see revisions.
Murphy told Semafor he believes he will be able to recruit Republican support for a bipartisan bill after the midterm elections, comparing youth sports costs to the movement against data centers.
Quick Take: The legislation as currently written immediately bans all private equity from the industry. But the recent messaging claiming LKPA targets practices more than capital structure (which is not the case) has felt like marking the bill up in real-time.
Ironically, Murphy is comparing the overly simplistic pushback against Big Youth Sports™®® to the pushback against data centers, which itself been played by misinformation and exaggerated claims about water usage, electricity bills, noise and so on.
As with data centers, there’s reason for scrutiny and conversation, but to date the latter has lacked nuance and often ignores the realities on the field… such as the fact that youth sports needs private capital in the absence of large scale government funding.
🏒Minnesota Is Becoming The New Norway
New York Magazine’s recent report on the youth sports industry — “The Pay-To-Play Childhood” — appears to be having the same sort of large-scale resonance we saw last year with The New York Times’ “Youth Sports Are a $40 Billion Business. Private Equity Is Taking Notice.”
Case in point: Reporter Caitlin Moscatello, who wrote the piece, appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition to rehash her report, including singling out Minnesota’s hockey landscape as an example to emulate.
“The good news is that we do have a model for this. So Minnesota Ice Hockey is a nonprofit organization that's centered around a network of 250 public rinks. And this statewide program has 60,000 athletes in it. Most families pay between, you know, $200 and $400 a season. Kids play with other kids from their community. And, you know, there's proof that this really works. Minnesota produces more Division-1 men's and women's ice hockey players than any other state in the country.” — Moscatello to NPR
We also saw Minnesota’s public rinks praised in the task force report produced by lawmakers in Massachusetts, so this is clearly becoming a talking point.
It is also beginning to feel like the Norway conversation — an oversimplified assessment of a situation that deserves immense praise, but is also far more nuanced than most people acknowledge or realize.
Minnesota has spent decades investing hundreds of millions of public and private dollars into community ice venues — a system not much more portable than Norway infusing $400M of gaming revenues into a country the size of South Carolina each year.
And even then, many of the same issues remain. Moscatello mentioned affordable registration fees for younger age groups, but a recent column in The Duluth News Tribune pegged the actual costs as being much higher — and similar to everywhere else — when adding in equipment, ice time, higher competition, etc. The facilities are not immune, either — the National Sports Center’s Super Rink desperately needs over $20M in deferred maintenance.
No one is arguing that Minnesota (and Norway) do not have tremendous youth sports ecosystems that demonstrate potential solutions to improve the industry. But they are also unique cases that are not necessarily easily replicated and are certainly more complex than is being presented.
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