This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
⚾️ Dick’s, PG Expand Partnership
DSG’s presence among premier youth sports platforms continues to grow.
The sporting goods giant has extended and expanded its partnership with PG, headlined by a big move: Naming rights at one of the baseball development platform’s top facilities.
The East Cobb Complex in Marietta, Georgia, will now be known as Dick’s Sporting Goods Park at East Cobb. PG will holds its 11U and 12U Select Festivals at the venue this weekend; it renovated the facility in 2021 after striking a long-term agreement with it a year prior.
DSG will also support branded improvement and on-site enhancements at the facility and continue as the PG All-American Classic presenting sponsor through next year — this year’s event is next weekend in Philadelphia.
Also part of the new deal:
Integrated retail promotions
Event activations
Digital content
Community-focused initiatives
For those keeping score: DSG — and owned-and-operated GameChanger — continues to build and strengthen its ties to major youth sports industry players — Little League International, Unrivaled Sports, USA Baseball and the Jr. WNBA.
Investor Watch™: Also, in lieu of breaking down Dick’s next earnings call, we might just post this video of Lionel Messi walking out of their store with his sons as our sole investment analysis:
How can you not be long Dick’s after a video like this?
Naming Rights: The biggest sponsorship opportunity in youth sports.
Why?
Well, for starters, it’s happened in pro and college sports. Stadiums and jerseys are the highest profile sponsorable assets. Meanwhile, jersey sponsorship has happened in youth sports forever, and recently, as we see here, large tournament facility naming rights are becoming a thing.
Great!
But there are two assets that are higher profile than venues or jerseys: League and Team names.
Quick sketch!
I’m talking going much further than the local pizza shop paying a couple hundred bucks to get their name on the back of a jersey, or such and such event “presented by” some brand. I’m talking the actual name.
In pro and college sports these names are the brand. Therefore, in most cases they can’t sell away those naming rights or else the damn Yankees stop being the damn Yankees, or the f*$%%g Dodgers stop being the f*$%%g Dodgers.
But for the vast majority of youth sports leagues, teams and clubs? Virtually zero commercial brand value. There is little to be lost and much to be gained - for the sponsors, leagues and clubs, and players through potentially subsidized participation costs - if brands were to own the naming rights for entire leagues or clubs.
Example: A local car dealer ownership group buys the naming rights to its local rec baseball leagues for $10k for each age group and teams are named after different vehicles.
League: Chapman Auto Group Spring Baseball League
Teams: F150s, Wranglers, Rams, Mustangs, Broncos, so on
Or, even better as consolidation occurs and enables clubs to tap into Fortune 500 brand spend: Starbucks sponsors 400 clubs and each age group is named after a different drink. Pumpkin Spice 8U. Guess what color their jerseys would be… pumpkin colored. You think every mom on that team isn’t ripping 42 oz. lattes on the sideline in her limited edition Starbucks tumbler and matching custom orange sweater with a froth collar?
In either case, the logos take care of themselves. The league or club can charge parents less. The kids will think it’s cool. And mom will be fully caffeinated.
Bottom line: For 98% of leagues and clubs, there simply isn’t enough sponsorable inventory to make a dent. Lots of people say live stream ads or jersey sponsorship can subsidize costs or generate more profit, but fail to recognize that those assets yield like $500 worth of visibility for any given collection of 12-15 families over the course of a season (I questioned this math on Reeplayer’s Linkedin post about live stream sponsorships “ENDING PAY TO PLAY” in youth sports). In other words, I simply don’t think most of these low-visibility sponsorships work and function more as donations than having any real ROI.
But every parent and kid in town seeing a brand’s products on their calendar and wearing their logo front and center? There’s enough value there to drive meaningful sponsorship revenue both in the aggregate and for individual clubs.
📆 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
🗣️ Youth Soccer Talking Season Continues
The Athletic’s latest report — “How U.S. Soccer wants to ‘challenge’ and rebuild America’s youth soccer system” — has some newsworthy nuggets.
USSF is focused on four major areas, according to the piece — alignment across the ecosystem, coaching, costs and facilities/infrastructure.
One area of reported consensus: Reducing travel.
[USSF COO Dan] Helfrich outlined a reconfigured landscape where “the structure of competitive soccer between the ages of 11 and 15 has a different, more joined-up, more local and regional organization to it.”
That, and less national competition, “then significantly reduces what you recently called ‘soccer tourism,’” Helfrich explained. “It should significantly reduce the volume of travel required to grow and develop,” which would cut down costs, because travel has been the primary driver of skyrocketing costs for families in pre-teen and early-teenage years.
Other anticipated or potential moves:
A "future youth soccer vision and structure document" is in the works and is expected within months
USSF wants a program where it or other parties will fund recurring coaching/training for high-potential athletes in the ages 11-15 group, regardless of what league they are in
USSF is targeting initiatives in schools to grow participation; CEO JT Batson said “governments need to step up” on funding alongside the NGB, MLS and commercial partners
There is potential for a nationally centralized talent ID platform and a program that trains former players to coach
More specifically on the latter point: Helfrich floated the idea of a setup similar to the Peace Corps or Teach for America that provides access to certification and employment for coaches while placing them into communities.
🏐 AVCA Launches New App With VolleyStation
The Polish volleyball data and tech company will power the new AVCA StatsApp.
The app is designed for high schools and is free with membership.
Live stats with intuitive tracking
One-click sync to MaxPreps
Centralized video hub
Free match film storage connected to stats
VS made its first big splash in the U.S. youth ecosystem earlier this year when it integrated with Otto Sport AI’s SportWrench volleyball management platform. Otto will also integrated VS into its University Athlete recruiting platform.
VS is well-established at the collegiate, professional and international levels; it also offers has analytics and scouting tools, broadcast integrations, website construction and other tools.
Quick Take: Volleyball — like flag football — is a sport where the infrastructure and technology often does not meet the participation demand and interest. But major investments are being made across the landscape and VolleyStation is one of the big names to watch.
🤝 NJCAA Makes Recruiting Move
The major governing body for junior college athletics has tabbed FieldLevel as its official recruiting network.
FL is a free recruiting social platform for athletes and coaches; it covers 46 sports and has been in business since 2008.
The partnership will expand access to recruiting and placement tools for NJCAA
member colleges and student-athletes, supporting the important role two-year programs play in helping athletes develop, gain visibility, and pursue four-year and professional pathways.
(…)
Through the partnership, FieldLevel will work with the NJCAA to strengthen connections between two-year college coaches, prospective student-athletes, and four-year programs. The collaboration is designed to support both sides of the two-year college pathway: helping NJCAA programs recruit student-athletes into their programs and helping those student-athletes gain visibility for future four-year and professional opportunities.
The NJCAA says it has over 500 member schools across 44 states and over 60K athletes competing each year — and that over 60% of its schools have a coach that has used FieldLevel in the last 90 days.
Quick Take: The NJCAA obviously wants to position itself as playing an important role in developing college athletes, especially as the transfer portal and rule changes narrow opportunities for hight school athletes. But as long as player movement remains relatively free-flowing, our guess is more kids with D1 aspirations look to start at D2 or D3 programs than go the junior college route, academics permitting.
🐊 Florida City’s Budget Crunch Causes Youth Sports Panic
All politics are local.
And local youth sports briefly got quite political in the Sunshine State.
The proposal is now off the table after significant constituent backlash. But Cape Coral — a city of about 235K and a suburb of Fort Myers — was briefly considering hiking parks and recreation fees as much as 80% to account for a projected $1.6M FY27 budget shortfall, accusing to WINK-TV.
The proposal — which the mayor said he opposed and blamed on the city manager spitballing about ways to make up the difference — would have been devastating, parents and local league operators said.
Some organizations claimed their costs would jump five digits overnight and force them to double registration costs.
Another cost-saving option involved abandoning an existing plan to replace field lighting at a softball complex in town — it’s not clear if that is also no longer being considered.
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