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:
🛒 All-Star Sports Academy Open For Business
The East Coast baseball and softball facility chain is seeking new acquisitions in the Mid-Atlantic region, according to executive John Adams.
"If you own a facility or travel team organization or know someone who does, and you've/they’ve thought about selling or exploring an exit, I’d like to connect," he wrote on LinkedIn. "We understand this space, we move efficiently, and we know how to transition a business without disrupting the athletes or staff who rely on it."
All-Star currently operates seven facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania with closings pending.
Over 70K lessons annually
Over 15K athletes across 85 teams, camps, programs
Over 200 tournaments operated each year featuring over 1.6K external teams
All-Star CEO Vince Russomagno was on our podcast (watch, listen) this summer and talked about the company’s strategy to fund its own growth from 7 to upwards of 30 facilities up and down the East Coast.
🏟️ Buying Sandlot Summit 2026 Update: Early Bird Ticket Prices Increase In January
Early bird tickets are heavily discounted and will be increasing in January. If you want to lock in some end-of-year tax write-offs and take advantage of early bird pricing, now is the time.
There are less than 10 VIP tickets with access to the on-site hotel rooms available as of this writing. Those are going quick— and we are holding some back for sponsors.
Get early bird tickets right here.
Get VIP tickets right here.
If your organization would like group ticket pricing for 5 or more, or would like our sponsor deck, you can also contact [email protected].
📺 Thoughts On ESPN’s Big HS Football Broadcast
The inaugural Overtime Nationals High School Football Championship was what we expected from an on-field standpoint.
St. Frances rolled to a 37-20 victory over Corner Canyon at Under Armour Stadium in Baltimore.
Not a surprise — SFA was effectively playing a home game, is a consensus top-5 team nationally and Corner Canyon is a powerhouse in Utah, but more of a top-30 to top-50 squad (and was a fill-in after IMG Academy said no).
But the bigger story — at least for us here — was everything around the game, a partnership by Overtime and Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions along with the worldwide leader in sports.
Some thoughts:
ESPN was all-in: It had a big-name broadcast team — Joe Tessitore and Dan Orlovsky. Both were excited to be there, passionate about high school football and knowledgeable about the teams. NFL scoop king Adam Schefter blasted out a tweet promoting the game to his over 11M followers.
Overtime’s contributions were far less polished: It felt like there was some sort of technical issue or awkward change in energy each time Tessitore and Orlovsky threw the broadcast to field reporter “Overtime” Tom Weingarten, the platform’s chief growth officer. Nothing against him, but an ESPN reporter should have been working the sidelines.
Features felt out of place: The event was billed as a national title game. But the in-game player interviews, halftime commitment ceremony (very clunky) and celebration throne gave more of an all-star game vibe. Ditto for the gimmicky “onsides play.” Overtime is geared toward Gen-Z and will want to incorporate that approach into its events, but it is tricky when the bulk of the broadcast is presented like a college or NFL game, not TikTok.
🏈 Flag50 Partners With Oakley Icon Alliance
The flag football tech platform will provide live scoring and real-time data solutions for this weekend’s Oakley Icon Alliance event at the Las Vegas Raiders’ facility in Henderson, Nevada.
The two-day showcase will feature top girls teams from the western part of the country.
Flag50’s live scoring infrastructure delivers real-time updates for fans while streamlining officiating and ensuring accuracy. The firm will also power data tracking during the event and a scoring-to-livestream integration system syncing match data, scores and the game clock directly to streams.
Love Flag50.
Full disclosure: They will be a sponsor of Buying Sandlot next week, but I first came across Jeran - Flag50’s founder and CEO - this summer and found what he was building to be a unique example of the sport-specific tech we talk about so often here— effectively GameChanger, but for flag football. They are leading with live scoring, with plans to push down the stack into registrations and team management.
It makes a ton of sense on several levels: flag is the fastest growing youth sport, there aren’t many existing purpose-built solutions for it, and stats and scoring are decidedly different than tackle football. Not his first rodeo either.
🐊 Updated On Proposed Florida Facility
We wrote about plans to build a massive youth sports complex on the site of a former landfill in St. Petersburg back in July — a Sports Facilities Companies project with a projected price tag of $150M to $200M.
20 baseball/softball fields
17 multipurpose fields for football/lacrosse/soccer
24 pickleball courts
12 sand volleyball courts
Fairground and festival space
Over 2K parking spots
And now it could conceivably get even bigger.
Pinellas County received a $15M state grant to cover remediation costs earlier this year, but officials are now considering spending a separate $250K to explore below the surface of the 275-acre lot and determine how much usable land there is.
Officials said they believe there is at least 95 acres to work with, but that could grow if they dig deeper. The facility is currently projected to generate $350M in local economic impact over its first five years.
🥇IOC: Let Russian Youth Athletes Back In
Russia and client state Belarus have been banned by the International Olympic Committee since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But the IOC now wants to lift the prohibition for youth athletes and allow them to compete at international events under their national flags.
The recommendation will now be taken up by various international federations ahead of next year’s Youth Olympics in Dakar, Senegal. The IOC is also looking to allow Belarus, but not Russia, to host events again.
This is not the first step toward softening such bans.
A handful of Belarusian and Russian athletes will compete as neutral athletes in the Winter Games next year.
Belarus was allowed to participate in World Cup qualifying, albeit only at neutral venues with no spectators present.
⚽️ Telemundo Launches Youth World Cup Initiative
Telemundo’s Next Play -- or "Tu Momento. Tu Jugada." -- kicked off yesterday.
The initiative will visit eight of the World Cup host cities in the U.S. and offer youth sports clinics, mentorship sessions, local festivals and public viewing events.
The Spanish language network will also partner with the U.S. Soccer Foundation to expand the Yes, Coach! program with a bilingual platform and public service campaign.
Remember: A joint report by McKinsey and Telemundo found Latino youth sports participation growth was double that of non-Latino youth over the last five years. And Latino fans are 27% more likely to attend sporting events than non-Latino fans. So the World Cup represents a massive opportunity.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.