This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
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In the email today:
🏟️ Capacity Sports Group Keeps Building
The youth sports platform has acquired West Chester Flag Football and its affiliated leagues.
The move adds six leagues in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware to the CSG fold— the leagues serve boys and girls from pre-K through middle school and were previously owned by Nation Sports LLC.
The acquisition is tied to Flag Football Life, which CSG recently added along with United Sports, its parent facility, as well as YSC Sports and Sideline Sports Solutions.
CSG said its flag programming now impacts over 12K annual participants across dozens of locations in 15 states and Canada.
The new leagues will be integrated into FFL this summer; league structure and leadership will remain in place.
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.
⛪️ Inside A Faith-Based Professional Rec Operation
Upward Sports is a non-profit Christian youth sports organization, but its scale and vertical integration resemble the industry's major for-profit platforms.
“I think we're probably the largest recreation basketball company in the country,” director of market research Travis Vaughn told Buying Sandlot.
Launched in 1995
About 225K participants at 1.5K churches in 47 states
Around 150K kids play hoops
Added close to 300 churches in 2025
Expecting fifth straight year of growth
Perhaps the most notable stat: 51% of participants last year did not belong to a church, Vaughn said. Upward’s leagues also regularly have participants who are agnostic or belong to other religions.
Each church operates its own league, but Upward outfits them with everything needed — custom-built management and registration platforms, apparel distribution, practice and training resources, team pages, a coaching app and ministry content.
Upward collects a per-participant fee to cover its overhead and secures uniforms and gear at low wholesale prices before re-selling them to churches. The organization does not accept donations, Vaughn said.
Each church sets its own fee structure -- some may charge $50 and others $250.
The goal is for a church league to be equivalent to any other high-quality rec league in that area. The typical format is a game and a practice each week. Many churches are able to use their own gyms and fields — a major availability and cost advantage compared to other operators.
Upward has some limits as a non-profit, but Vaughn said it is not afraid to innovate or pivot.
The platform previously operated its own apparel distribution center, but has since contracted with a vendor. Vaughn said he’s had talks with LeagueApps, PlayMetrics and others about outsourcing management operations. And while nothing is planned, the possibility of brand sponsorships or expanding to work with non-profits beyond churches exists.
“We understand that every church is unique, every community is unique, and we build custom solutions for each one of these churches across the country,” Vaughn said. “Soup to nuts, I would say everything that a church could possibly need to run a sports experience — we've done it, we've built it.”
Youth sports parents often tend to get painted as either placing too much pressure on their kids or helpless hostages of the tournament-industrial complex.
But I do not think enough consideration is given to what — at least to me — is a pretty simple reality: Parents get a social life through their kids’ sports, especially when it comes to club and travel ball.
I’ve been at hotels where youth sports parents are closing the bar after putting the kids to bed. I’m sure many of you have too. Plus the sidelines, the pool, the restaurants, etc.
Churches can springboard off that factor, especially as organized religion experiences a bit of a post-pandemic boom period. And they can do it in a way that simplifies the logistics — and perhaps lowers the cost. So I’d expect Upward Sports to keep growing in the years to come.
⚽️ Soccer Shots Teams With Downy Rinse
Another blue-chip brand has jumped into the youth sports sponsorship space.
Downy Rinse is now the official laundry partner of Soccer Shots, the development franchise for kids ages 18 months to 8 years.
The collaboration will "highlight the real-life odor challenges that Downy Rinse is proven to solve" through digital and social media campaigns, with the obvious selling point of the product helping to keep uniforms clean.
Soccer Shots has over 300 locations in the U.S. and Canada and serves over 600K kids annually. It previously landed a partnership with Trust & Will, an online estate planning platform.
🛂 Youth Sports Teams Burned By Bankrupt Travel Firm
Friday’s Buying Sandlot podcast kicked the tires on the growing trend of youth sports teams embarking on foreign competition tours.
The tires just blew out for several of them.
GoPlay Sports — a travel company based in Boston — has abruptly shut down, blaming cancellations and reduced bookings spurred by “the ongoing situation in the Middle East.”
The company reportedly told customers it would file Chapter 7 bankruptcy and a trustee would be appointed to resolve debts (it’s not clear if that has happened).
In the meantime: Families and teams are stranded — some mere days before they were scheduled to head to various European locales. And it seems likely GoPlay’s customers will be out millions when all is said and done.
A slew of news stories add up to at least $700K so far while the Massachusetts attorney general’s office told Boston.com it has received at least 25 complaints against GoPlay and its subsidiaries this year.
Making the situation even more strange: GoPlay CEO Brian Ainscough — a former D1 head soccer coach who previously owned a team in Ireland’s premier league — claims he has no idea how the company failed.
The NCAA recently passed legislation allowing college teams to take a foreign tour every year (it used to be once every four years for D1 programs).
(I’d imagine the ability to get around visa laws with over-the-cap NIL payments to international athletes while abroad helped move the ball there.)
But the more foreign trips that college teams take, the more trickle-down effect it will have on youth sports.
This feels like a major business opportunity for the industry’s various big dogs, all of whom are already eyeing international expansion.
🏛️ Another Politician Weighs In On Youth Sports Cost
Add Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) to the crowd calling on Congress to step in.
“When kids are being cut off from that because teams require all this money to participate, it's concerning … I think it's important that Congress, the role that we got to play is to make sure that we're putting money into afterschool programs. To make sure that we're putting money into community organizations that can be able to put that money where families can use it so that their kids can learn not just the game that they're playing, but the camaraderie, the discipline, the approach to teamwork that comes with playing the sports.”
Menefee — who won his seat in a January special election — is an interesting new voice in the conversation for two reasons:
1) He and his wife recently helped revive a low-cost Little League in the Houston area that had been defunct for years.
2) He could be a case study in how much impact youth sports makes as a campaign trail talking point. Menefee faces a high-profile Democratic primary runoff next month against fellow incumbent Rep. Al Green due to redistricting in the state.
Green has a national profile for numerous clashes with President Trump. He also significantly outperformed polls in the first vote, coming within two points of Menefee.
If Menefee’s youth sports advocacy helps him close out the race, it could inspire other politicians to pick up the baton this fall.
🏈 2 More States Sanction Girls Flag Football
Kansas and Maryland have become the 18th and 19th states to give the sport varsity status at the high school level.
Maryland’s sanctioning does come with a caveat. The MPSSAA only oversees public schools in the state; the IAAM, which oversees girls sports at private schools, has not yet sanctioned flag.
New Jersey will likely become the 20th sanctioned state next month when its vote occurs.
The Kansas City Chiefs pushed hard for Kansas to sanction and are expected to focus on the same goal in Missouri now. The Washington Commanders, who assisted with the effort in Maryland, said they will now push in Virginia and the District of Columbia.
🐯 U. of the Pacific #AddsMoreAthletes
The D1 school is executing the strategy that IMG Academy has campaigned for, adding development teams in men’s and women’s soccer.
"These teams will serve as a bridge between our varsity program and our student body while also providing the opportunity to serve a variety of motivations for potential enrollees at Pacific, from those that aspire to continue improving their skillset and compete to those that are just looking to stay connected to the game and fit." -- Pacific AD Adam Tschuor
The teams will be overseen by Pacific’s varsity coaching staffs and receive “a competitive experience against local and regional teams.”
The school said the teams are a pilot program and development teams could be added for additional sports in the future.
On the other side of the coin: Arkansas cut its men’s and women’s tennis programs over the weekend, citing financial reasons.
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