This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
I scouted venues for our youth sports business conference in Philly next spring. Oh my, do we have some ideal potential settings in the City of Brotherly Love next year. Details soon.
In the email today:
🏐 Why Youth Volleyball Could Become Even Bigger
Fastbreak AI SVP of Marketing Tom Kuhr published an op-ed in Sports Business Journal this week examining NIL’s impact on youth sports — and making the case that college volleyball could grow to be on par with basketball and football in terms of investment.
Kuhr is also a member of Buying Sandlot’s premium community. So I (James) hopped into the subscriber-only Slack channel and connected with him to expand on his thoughts and go deeper.
Here is a condensed version of our conversation in Q+A format:
Your take on volleyball surprised me at first, but it makes sense when you step back. Are people just missing how fast volleyball is coming on in terms of breaking through to the mainstream?
It’s becoming a revenue-generating sport. Women’s college volleyball is really popular. Students want to attend, fans come to attend, and I’m seeing NIL deals for volleyball, just like football and I think more than (women’s) basketball.
(Case in point: Friend of Buying Sandlot Matt Brown opined today the next college sports video game could be volleyball in his Extra Points newsletter)
We have three professional leagues (LOVB, PVF, and Unrivaled) that all appear to be viable, plus the Los Angeles Olympics coming — does that just supercharge this?
Volleyball is unique because it’s centrally organized by USA Volleyball. Even though there are three competing (pro) leagues, no other youth sport has the structure that they’ve put into place where everyone has to be registered with USA Volleyball to play. Because of that, the tournament structure, the way the leagues work, the seeding is just so much more organized. I think they have an advantage in that it’s highly organized and there is a pyramid structure.
Even though these leagues are competing against each other, they are all very similar in a way. It comes down to who is running a more efficient business, which is how businesses should compete. I think that is only improving the chances that volleyball can be a more mainstream sport.
You also touched on the need to protect Olympic or non-revenue college sports. If colleges won’t pay for them, what is the fix — the IMG proposal, USOC and governing body funding, federal funding, pro league involvement?
I think it’s a combination. Pro teams and pro leagues supporting youth sports makes a lot of sense. You can see small programs everywhere, but they’re very small scale. If they devoted eight times or 10 times the budget, that’s probably the appropriate amount to start seeding these programs.
But the other problem is who should they support on the club side? Because these sports are so fractured. It’s hard to put your money somewhere and bet on this.
It’s hard with Olympic sports because each of these NGBs is not really well-funded itself. Some are better than others, but they are not getting a lot of money. If we don’t fund those programs, our Olympics are going to suck in eight years. We are going to lose every event because no one is paying for development. People just cannot afford that quality of development themselves.
What happens if, two or three years from now, the Supreme Court rules the House settlement/uneven revenue share violates Title IX? No one seems to be even considering the possibility, which boggles my mind.
I think creating a system based on one lawsuit is ridiculous. This has created so much stuff that is going to have to be torn down again because it is being erected so quickly just to plug holes.
No one is thinking about this from a strategic perspective. It’s all reactionary, there are too many people involved now, it’s all money-grabbing. The college conferences actually have the most control, and I think they will generally evolve together. But it’s going to take a while because they’re not prepared for this kind of stuff either.
I think the 2 topics that will dominate youth (and college) sports discussion over the next 6 months are:
1) The future of Olympic sports
2) NIL
Kuhr’s SBJ op-ed focused on the potential harms to kids who are only incentivized to play a handful of high-earnings-potential sports thanks to the House vs. NCAA settlement, but that outcome is inextricably linked to NIL opportunities of any given sport. Ergo, two major, connected talking points. There are also just too many powerful entities with too much at stake if Olympic sports become less desirable.
We double-clicked on his volleyball comments because 1) Opendorse already pegs women’s volleyball as a top 5 NIL sport, and 2) it’s an example of non-major sport positioned to capitalize on fragmented, athlete-centric attention.
I wrote in May about how youth sports will be impacted by $2 billion in direct payments to college athletes, and I felt that things could go one of 3 ways with regard to direct payments and NIL:
“Way 1: A total and prolonged free-for-all where money cascades down from football in this order - with Olympic sports getting cut or moving to the club model.
Way 2: Lawsuits and an eventual more equitable distribution of these funds— with Olympic and women’s sports benefitting slightly but operating at a loss. More lawsuits and frustrated athletic departments.
Way 3: Some hybrid model where Olympic sports are forced to get creative, acting as small media companies. Athletes leverage their micro-influencer status to get NIL and brand deals so they can stay in college to train while getting compensated.”
Maybe there’s a fourth way, though, where a highly-structured and centralized sport can look holistically at the problem and raise the tide for all of its constituent boats.
Next week, I have a podcast with the founder of StudentAthleteScore.com, Brent Wall, where we go deep into the strategic opportunities around NIL.
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Reps will be able to assist operators utilizing Zorts ID with Flash Biometrics with any issues or questions, ensuring the platform is positioned to safeguard events with its background checks and age-verification software.
Top customers will have their own rep and there is no call too small.
Find out how your platform can offer this class-leading feature to your customers right here.
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⚾️ GameChanger To Stream UA Next All-America Game
Tomorrow’s UA Next All-America Game baseball showcase will be live streamed on GameChanger.
The event — presented by Under Armour and Unrivaled Sports’ Baseball Factory — will be played at Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Ripken Baseball co-founder Billy Ripken will be part of the game broadcast.
Recall: GameChanger parent company Dick’s Sporting Goods invested in Unrivaled and got a board seat back in May as part of a $120M funding round that valued Unrivaled at over $650M.
🌎 The Sports Parent Economy
The way I (Kyle) see it, there are 5 ways to serve sports parents— a captive audience and literally billions of attendance instances and hours.
1) Food
The numbers spell it out— families are eating out, and it’s often not healthy. Offering better, family-friendly options would have almost immediate uptake.
2) Convenience
Busy parents, little time, and demanding schedules mean any product or service that helps parents navigate this world could see rapid adoption.
3) Comfort
Making parents more comfortable at practices and games— plain and simple. Easy to implement on the local level, difficult to scale.
4) Productivity
Connectivity and quiet spaces to work.
5) Finance
Payments, insurance, and credit cards are difficult businesses with high barriers to entry, but they are substantially scalable.
We go in-depth on all of these, and provide concrete ideas on how to attack the biggest opportunities in our Sports Parent Economy deep dive right here.
📻 National Youth Sports Radio Show Debuts Tomorrow
Project NIL will air on Fox Sports Radio every Saturday from 5-6 a.m. ET starting this weekend.
The show will “explore the evolving intersection of youth sports and name, image, and likeness (NIL) in today’s athletic landscape.”
Longtime Philadelphia sports talk host Anthony Gargano will co-host with Daniel DiBerardinis, the athletics director at Philly’s Penn Charter High.
🏒 Wild Youth Hockey Lawsuit
Play Hockey USA has filed a lawsuit in a Minnesota district court claiming a former events director engaged in a civil conspiracy and violated the state’s trade secrets law after intentionally harming the company while still employed.
Play Hockey was co-founded by a Canadian venture capitalists and operates in the U.S., Canada and six European nations.
The club alleges the ex-employee made adverse business decisions and moves in the months before he resigned as he plotted to start a rival club (and benefit from the subterfuge).
The lawsuit says he scrapped that plan, joined Northand Hockey and divulged proprietary information including customer and vendor lists, future tournament schedules and venue contracts.
The ex-employee denies the charges — and claims that even if they were true, they would not be illegal since the information in question is public knowledge.
📰 Youth Sports News & Notes
A lawmaker in Pennsylvania has proposed allowing sports parents in the state up to $3K in youth sports-related tax credits. For-profit endeavors would be eligible for the credit — a difference from the PLAY Act that has been introduced in the U.S. House.
The Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center in New Jersey will attempt to break the world record for the biggest game of catch on Sept. 21 to mark what would have been the baseball great's 100th birthday. They will need at least 973 pairs to pull it off. I (James) would make the short drive over but I will be coming back from a wedding in Boston.
The NHL’s Washington Capitals and MLB’s Washington Nationals have collaborated on a special baseball-inspired hockey jersey. They will be auctioned off to raise funds for the teams’ youth sports charitable activities.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.