Buying Sandlot
Posts
How Pottstown Scout Is Redefining The Future of Travel Baseball

How Pottstown Scout Is Redefining The Future of Travel Baseball

🥎 Creator-led teams can become big business

Kyle Scott
April 08, 2025

I am obsessed with Pottstown Scout.

And I think they could represent the future of competitive youth sports.

But first off, what is Pottstown Scout?

🧢 What You Need To Know About Pottstown Scout

Pottstown Scout is a youth travel baseball tournament team created by the folks behind the popular CS99TV baseball-centric YouTube channel.

The team started as a playful nod to a fake university for which the channel pretended to scout at travel tournaments— it then evolved into a legit tournament team, playing in and dominating Perfect Game tournaments.

CS99TV, which launched on YouTube in 2020, has 1.3M subscribers, with 1.7 BILLION views.

Oh, and 3.2M followers on TikTok.

Some of the best 12U-15U players from around the country apply to play for them through social media.

The channel’s founders select for both talent and entertainment value.

CS99TV covers tournament entry, travel (presumably), and high-end uniforms.

Players also get free equipment, swag and drip— much of it from sponsors like Evoshield, Wilson and DeMarini.

Players and coaches are mic’d up and filmed during practices and games, with footage then edited into compelling tournament recaps and short-form social content.

In just a couple of years, Pottstown Scout has become wildly popular among young baseball fans and players.

While entertainment is a focus, Pottstown selects from some of the highest-rated young players in the country, many with D1 prospects. And the team wins a lot— the 14U Pottstown Scout team went undefeated in the Perfect Game Youth World Championships in 2023.

？ So Why Do Players Want To Play For Pottstown Scout?

There are several reasons:

Entry into high-profile tournaments on highly-competitive teams, which is both fun and gets them exposure in front of college and potentially pro scouts
Videos get literally millions of impressions, which is undeniably cool
The uniforms and drip provided are high-end and often custom
It seems like a great overall experience

One of the critiques of travel culture and the professionalization of youth sports is that it is inaccessible to many.

Travel, tournament fees, and equipment are expensive, and some players simply will never have access to this type of pro-level experience.

Pottstown Scout, meanwhile, democratizes access based on talent and personality, not means.

But the cool factor plays A LARGE part.

Just look at this drip:

Depending on your age, you may or may not like all of this, but this stuff is very much right down the middle for kids (and younger pro players).

💳 NIL Money Filters Down

I think we are just seeing the first-order effects of NIL.

Besides the obvious impact on college students, NIL and upcoming direct payments to NCAA athletes means two things for younger athletes:

THING 1: The number of “pro” sports jobs just increased exponentially.

With a “salary cap” of around $20M per school, and at least 69 schools in power conferences automatically participating (with likely many more opting in), you’re talking about BILLIONS in payments to college athletes, likely starting this year.

That means more high school and youth families will invest in training and exposure, because the likelihood of a payoff beyond just a college scholarship is increased.

For this generation, social media will be the way players seek publicity.

THING 2: NCAA eligibility requirements no longer act as a gatekeeper to high school or even middle school athletes earning money or benefits. And most states say it’s OK for them to do so.

We're in a whole new world, and young athletes don't have a playbook for tapping into these new opportunities and resources. But that's where Pottstown Scout's platform comes in.

Players could also earn money directly or share in the revenue generated from videos, either by working with creators or by being creators themselves.

And that brings us to…

👩‍🎤 + 🏟️ Creators + Sports

There is a trend of influencers and athletes moving in both directions— from creator to athlete, and athlete to creator.

The lines are blurring:

Jake Paul becoming a quasi-legitimate boxer is a great example.

The creator-led Sidemen Charity Soccer Match filled Wembley Stadium(!) and received over 18 million views on YouTube. It featured the likes of Mr. Beast, Mark Rober and Logan Paul.

And even the Savannah Bananas are showing what’s possible when you blend sports and entertainment.

Pottstown Scout has blended the model in a new way, though.

Rather than the athlete becoming the creator (think: the Kelces), or the creator becoming the athlete (Jake Paul), CS99TV is using its platform to elevate “amateur” athletes— much the same way TV elevates “pro” athletes.

[I’m using quotes here because the lines are blurring rapidly.]

All of these examples are part of a larger trend.

As parents and players…

… invest more time and money in youth sports…

… and seek exposure for their skills…

… so they can get one of those new “college jobs”…

… all while wanting to become influencers…

… and maybe earn some money or benefits on along the way…

… the creator-led model opens up the floodgates in all directions.

🏋 How Everyone Benefits

We already touched on what the players get out of this. Let’s talk about everyone else in the stack.

Tournament Operators and Facility Owners

Pottstown Scout plays in Perfect Game tournaments, cementing the concept that PG tournaments are the place to be for serious young baseball players.

Perfect Game further amplifies the reach— they created a video for their 233k subscribers, which as of writing this has over 417k views:

We’ll have more on the operators’ view on these types of partnerships in an upcoming email.

Creators

Millions of people watch the Little League World Series.

There are 14-year-olds in the Olympics.

There is demand for consumption of youth and amateur sports.

While most people won’t sit down and watch two hours of a 14U game if their kid isn’t involved, there are tens of millions of fans of [X sport] out there who want to consume content that is on their level.

Creators are filling this void and opening up a whole new sphere of sports influence.

Old model: Kids look up to the star players in their town or at their school— “the cool kids”

New model: Kids look up to the BEST players, at their level, in the country— “the coolest kids”

The coolest kids play for Pottstown Scout.

It’s much easier for a kid to relate to an ostensible peer than it is to, say, Bryce Harper.

This means creators can rack up crazy views and - even better - garner influence with their audience.

And that brings us to…

Brands

There’s a reason why Wilson, Evoshield and DeMarini reached out to form collaborations with CS99TV after they posted their first Pottstown Scout video.

The memetic desire that comes from watching the videos means Pottstown can make products relevant, necessary and cool to their audience.

I’d go a step further and say that Pottstown Scout is more influential over its audience than Major League Baseball is over its fans (on a per view basis).

Brands covet this sort of organic reach. And it’s much more cost effective to work with a handful of creators than it is to sponsor a nationally televised MLB game… which often gets less viewers than a Pottstown Scout video.

💸 So What’s the Opportunity?

Content can now be used to drive significant attention for facilities, tournament operators, and brands.

NIL allows for the alignment of incentives between these types of businesses and athletes.

Smart operators will figure out ways to arbitrage the cost of participation and logistics against attention, the way CS99TV is.

It looks like this:

Quick math*: Maybe CS99TV spends $30k to produce a video between tournament fees, travel, lodging and production.

*Numbers may not be exact, but I think they are directionally accurate.

At ~1 million views, $20,000 in just simple YouTube ad revenue is possible ($20 CPM), before other brand partnerships and merch sales.

In other words, with its existing following, CS99TV might have been break-even or better on Video 1.

The benefits compound over time as creators form deeper partnerships with sponsors, or launch their own brands and collabs.

Video 5 will cost roughly the same (or less, as you gain more leverage over partners), but it will generally garner more views, generate more ad revenue, and sell more products and services.

That’s the model if you’re a creator.

This works even better for brands.

What if CS99TV was Evoshield?

How many elbow and shin guards have the 20-or-so full-length Pottstown Scout videos on YouTube sold?

What’s the profit margin on those?

What’s it worth to Evoshield, or Bruce Bolt, to become the most coveted brand among the 10 million+ youth baseball players in the US?

You get the point.

Before, brands had to go to the pros for sponsorship, because that’s where the attention was (and since they couldn’t sponsor Billy High School Senior because of the NCAA).

That is a very expensive route.

Now, there is substantial attention lower in the funnel.

This means the barrier to entry for new brands, like Smackin’ Seeds, is lower.

It’s bottoms-up, not top-down.