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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:
🏀 A New High-Profile Partnership
Fastbreak AI keeps making moves.
The youth sports tech platform has formed a strategic partnership with P32Sports Inc, a New Balance-backed elite youth basketball circuit.
Fastbreak will be P32’s official digital registration and ticketing partner — its 80th operator partnership.
Digital registration
Automated scheduling, scoring
Web display
Fan ticketing, gate revenue optimization
Over 1.5K events were on Fastbreak’s connected platform last year.
“Fastbreak’s platform is an entire operating system for youth sports,” co-founder and CEO John Stewart told Buying Sandlot. “I think we bring unique capabilities to the table … a unified and secure data stack. If you think about all the different software that organizations have to use to do everything we can do in a single login, that’s the real value we bring to the table.”
P32 operates divisions for boys and girls ranging from developmental age to high school age. It regularly runs events with over 150 teams in attendance.
The partnership will launch this year. Stewart said Fastbreak will also handle travel management for P32 starting in 2027.
“We continue to add enhanced capabilities, so we’ll be able to grow with them and meet more of their needs,” Stewart said.
An example: Stewart said Fastbreak will roll out facial recognition technology this summer. Organizations can use the tech for ticketing — Stewart said it will eliminate re-entry issues for venues — or as a safety and security measure.
Stewart said an optional feature available to youth sports operators will be the ability to upload photos from publicly-available sex offender and predator databases to bar those individuals from entering events.
📆 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
🏟️ Get Your Buying Sandlot Summit Tickets Now
The full Buying Sandlot Summit agenda is now available on the event website. There are still 1-2 panels and some moderators we are working through, so please be mindful that times are subject to change slightly.
Ticket prices increase to $749 at the end of the month, so get them now!
🎥 Ascent Sports Group Closes On LiveBarn
The new youth sports tech company has finalized a reported $400M deal for the hockey-focused analytics and streaming platform.
Ray Giroux will be LiveBarn’s new CEO; he previously served as its COO. Founder Farrel Miller will join Ascent’s board of directors.
It is a splashy first acquisition for Ascent, which launched in January as a partnership between GTCR and former Match Group COO Gary Swidler.
LiveBarn has cameras in over 2K venues in the U.S. and Canada covering 49 states and 10 provinces. The subscription-based platform offers live games, on-demand replays and various AI-powered tools — analysis, highlights, live tagging — through Sportslogiq, which was acquired by Teamworks earlier this year.
Ascent said it “plans to deepen LiveBarn's capabilities in hockey while selectively expanding in additional sports.” Some LiveBarn venues already stream other sports.
🏈 Hudl Hosts NIL Summit For Top Recruits
The youth sports tech platform will host some of the nation’s best high school football players at its Lincoln, Nebraska, headquarters this weekend.
The three-day Hudl Futures Forum Presented by Chase kicks off on Friday; the summit "provides recruits and their families with the technical and financial tools required to navigate high-stakes collegiate recruitment."
The event will focus on financial health, media training, brand strategy, athlete safety and analysis and scouting.
Chase was named Hudl’s official financial education partner earlier this month. The Chase Money Skills financial literacy tool is available to athletes and families through both Chase and Hudl channels and platforms.
Hudl VP of Media Adam Gouttiere discussed the partnership on the Buying Sandlot podcast.
🤝 BASE Sports Group Teams With Allionce Group
The organizations have launched a strategic partnership to establish a “comprehensive family entertainment marketing platform.”
The pact combines BASE’s youth sports rights and sponsorships work with Allionce’s specialization connecting brands to aquariums and zoos, providing brands with a unified platform spanning both family-focused industries.
🏛️ HS Sports Scheduling Bill Kerfuffle
A youth sports controversy in Kansas appears to have ended about as quickly as it started.
Legislative negotiators have reportedly agreed to abandon a bill amendment banning high school sports games and practices on Wednesday nights in the state; the amendment also attempted to created a moratorium period around Easter.
State Sen. Chase Blasi, the upper chamber’s majority leader, attached the amendment to proposed legislation allowing homeschooled athletes to compete for private schools in the state (they can already play for public schools). He cited “family and faith” as his motivation.
But critics accused him of failing to consider all religions and argued the law would push families toward club sports.
The KSHSAA already prohibits activities on Sundays and has dark periods around Christmas and July 4.
👨⚖️ A New Title IX Challenge
The Pacific Legal Foundation — a conservative/libertarian public interest law firm — and the American Sports Council have filed a petition challenging the U.S. Education Department’s 1979 Title IX policy interpretation, arguing it has disproportionately harmed male college athletes and teams.
The interpretation allows schools to demonstrate compliance with Title IX in athletics by, among other options, showing that athletic participation is “substantially proportionate” to the student body’s male-female enrollment ratio. In practice, this proportionality requirement functions as a sex-based quota. Rather than investing in new women’s programs, many schools have found it easier — and cheaper — to cut men’s teams or cap roster sizes to hit the numbers.
The petition comes after Cal Baptist became the latest D1 school to drop the axe, recently cutting three men’s programs (and generating an avalanche of bad publicity for its ham-handed handling of the wrestling program).
The petition is an undoubtedly a long shot. But it also comes amid an interesting situation that could make its way into PLF’s playbook.
Marshall University cut its women’s swimming and diving program last month and announced plans to start a women’s stunt program. But it has since backtracked, reinstating the swim program while remaining committed to adding stunt.
The reversal came after swim athletes filed a lawsuit citing an internal audit that concluded Marshall was struggling to be Title IX compliant before their program was cut. AD Gerald Harrison conceded cutting the swim program "could potentially place our university outside the safe harbor framework of Title IX.”
Where this gets interesting — and potentially relevant for PLF — is the context.
Marshall said it could not afford to sustain the swim team’s annual $820K budget or upgrade its facilities to meet NCAA competition standards.
Stunt, on the other hand, projected to have a $320K annual budget and the potential to have double the roster size of the swim team.
But now Marshall is going to spend a combined $1.1M a year (plus facilities upgrades?) with headcount seemingly the driving reason. And it’s not hard to envision a men’s sport team — or teams — could be in the danger zone as a result.
💼 Youth Sports Transactions Wire
Devon Arnold was named D1 Training’s VP of Development and Construction.
Arnold has been with the athletic performance franchise since 2022 and has assisted with over 100 location openings nationwide. She will “lead the broader strategy and execution behind franchisee facility development across the U.S.” in her new role.
D1 — a past Buying Sandlot sponsor — is reportedly for sale. The Nashville-based company has about 170 locations to start the year and said it plans to have about 200 locations by the end of 2026. It also plans to expand its youth sports camps.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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