This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
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In the email today:
🎽 New Youth Sports Sponsorship Data
Youth sports uniforms are where brands want to be.
That is one of the big takeaways from the new Priority Partnerships Youth Sports Sponsorship Study, which was published Wednesday.
The report is a partnership between Priority — a Portland-based sponsorship company specializing in youth sports — and YouGov Sport. You can find the full study here.
Some highlights:
Youth sports tops all marketing channels: 68% of respondents said they are likely to build trust with a brand that sponsors their child’s youth sports program. That is about 20 points better than college and pro team sponsorships and TV/streaming commercials and nearly 2x more impactful than influence posts and out-of-home signage.
Uniforms are big: 76% of parents said they would view a brand that sponsors their child’s uniform as “a good community partner” and 77% would be more likely to remember their kid’s uniform sponsor than the brand that sponsors the uniform of a pro team they follow. And 64% said they would notice the sponsor’s brand more often elsewhere, including in advertising and stores.
Being an ‘official partner’ matters: 71% of parents say they would consider a brand when they need what it sells if it was endorsed by their youth sports program. Parents’ feelings about those brands also outpace feelings about official partners in pro sports by double-digits in most areas.
Big impacts with younger families: Parents ages 25-34 are particularly responsive to brand sponsorships in youth sports.
77% likely to trust a brand
77% will go out of their way to buy from a sponsor
75% will try a company they’ve never used before
74% will join loyalty/reward program
68% will share email
But you have to sustain it: 70% of younger parents say they are likely to view a one-season sponsorship as “just trying to sell me something.” That view is 63% among parents ages 35-44 and just 49% among parents ages 45-54.
The big picture: 63% of all parents said they "would go out of their way to buy from a brand that sponsors their child’s sports program when they need what it sells."
Some other notable figures from the survey:
65% said national brand feels local with youth sports sponsorship
64% more likely to trial brand that sponsors youth sports
78% of parents will redeem brand discount/offer sent through child’s program
62% will join brand sponsor’s loyalty/rewards program
We are going to catch up with Priority president Dan Scheinman later this week and should have more in Friday’s send.
🤝 Built For The Business Behind Youth Sports*
Youth sports doesn’t need another company trying to own everything. It needs great companies that work together.
For more than a decade, EventConnect has powered the group travel, housing and data behind some of the largest events in youth sports.
But our vision is bigger than another all-in-one platform.
We’re leading the way in open integrations, technology built around your brand, better data, stronger partnerships, and the flexibility to work within the systems you already use.
You shouldn’t have to move your business into our ecosystem to work with us. We’ll meet you in yours.
Sometimes that looks like EventConnect. Sometimes it doesn’t look like us at all.
The future of youth sports won’t be built by one company. It will be built by an industry that works better together.
*Sponsor
📊 Breaking Down Latest Participation Numbers
Project Play published its takeaways from SFIA’s 2025 data.
The full rundown is here. Some of the big points:
Everything continues to appear on pace to reach the consensus industry goal of 63% youth sports participation by 2030. We will probably get there before 2030, if we had to guess. Girls participation is higher than it has been in over a decade
Golf and tennis have experienced massive participation surges while flag football also continues to experience substantial growth. A caveat with golf and tennis: There is definitely growth, as we have documented in both sports. But SFIA uses participation figures provided by the National Golf Foundation and USTA, and those organizations often have a broader view on what constitutes participation compared to the traditional bookkeeping with all other sports.
SFIA says the number of youth coaches and the level of training available for youth coaches continues to decrease.
On the cost of youth sports front: Project Play says the household income “divide widened sharply in 2025.”
While regular participation for kids ages 6-12 in households earning $100,000 or more grew by 7% over one year, participation for youth in households earning $25,000 or less dropped by 7%. In 2022, the participation gap between the highest- and lowest-income tiers stood at 14.5 percentage points. By 2025, that gap expanded to 24.8 percentage points. U.S. Census Bureau data estimates that 11% of children ages 6-17 (5.4 million) live in households earning $25,000 or less.
“A 7% single-year drop is stunning and bad,” said Linda Flanagan, author of the book “Take Back the Game” that documents challenges in youth sports. “Is it a warning sign? It should be for public health officials, as this low-income, low-activity demographic desperately needs sports and exercise. State and local officials are going to have to start funding sports options for kids in these communities as the private options are increasingly out of sight.”
We have noted our issues with SFIA’s use of the under-$25K bracket in the past. Those still stand here. But more glaring is that Project Play’s take conflicts with its own past work.
The 2019 State of Play report said "in 2018, 22% of kids ages 6 to 12 in households with incomes under $25,000 played sports on a regular basis, compared to 43% of kids from homes earning $100,000 or more."
In other words: Participation in the lowest household income group is basically flat — up 1%, actually — over the last seven years and not at “historic lows,” as the Project Play chart above claims. And the gap between the lowest and highest groups has grown only about four points in that span.
Also keep in mind: The federal poverty level for a household of four in 2018 was $25,100. It was $32,150 in 2025. So that flat participation comes despite the income group going from at FPL to well below it.
Not to mention the fact there are roughly 22M more households in the U.S. making $100K now than did in 2018 (none of these figures are adjusted for inflation) while the sub-$25K group continually gets smaller in overall size.
Census records we looked at suggested the group has shrunk by close to 25% in recent years. We could not replicate the figure of 5.4M kids living in these households, and the records suggest that may be a significant overestimation. But there are myriad forms and ways to analyze census data. There are obviously also surveying challenges involved with such a low income group as well.
This is misleading.
Linda Flanagan’s quote helps Project Play fuel a narrative about lower-income participation that is only partly true at best. This narrative (intentionally or otherwise) vilifies most everyone in the for-profit side of youth sports, and it has led directly to misguided proposed policy.
Project Play routinely interprets SFIA and other data in a manner that furthers this narrative, and, I suspect, supports a need for more funding. Most of their comparisons for SFIA data date back to 2018 or even 2012. So why compare income brackets from only 2022?
Because it tells the worst possible story— the end of Covid year when pandemic-era supports were still propping up low-income households and pandemic worries still impacted participation rates in many activities.
I recreated their chart with the 2018 figures from their own 2019 report, and it tells us a much different story:
AI updated version of Project Play’s chart to include 2018 comparison
And most important here is that $25,000 remains a fixed number despite inflation moving the federal poverty line up substantially.
In 2018, the federal poverty line was roughly $25k for a family of four. In 2025, it was around $32k— an increase of around 28%.
So households in 2025 under $25,000 represent a much poorer cohort— only 78% of the federal poverty line. Which means none of these rate changes represent a true apples-to-apples comparison. And yet, despite the failure to change the threshold, participation is actually UP SLIGHTLY since 2018 among now even poorer households. Never mind that the increase among households over $100k - which, in 2025, represent more middle-class households than in 2018 - is less dramatic.
In other words, choosing 2022 as a comparison point portrays the most extreme version of participation gaps, and implies a decline among the poorest cohort, which likely isn’t even the case.
So is this really “stunning and bad?” The answer is probably not. As we’ve pointed out before, participation and spend is increasing among wealthier families, but it doesn’t mean participation among poor families is collapsing.
🐙 OTTO Sport AI Stays On Rebranding Grind
The volleyball-focused youth sports management startup has rechristened its volleyball recruiting platform as OTTO Prep. OP was formerly known as University Athlete.
AI Fit Finder that helps athletes ID schools that fit them
Camps and clinics finder for exposure opportunities
New recruiting tools for club directors
More accurate rosters, competition information, athlete info for colleges
Otto said 95% of college volleyball programs are connected to the platform, which generates over 5M athlete profile interactions annually.
The rebrand move comes a few weeks after SportWrench became Otto Event. And Otto Sport is the company’s club platform.
🧦 Unrivaled Sports Takes On Beantown
Unrivaled Flag will host a three-day event at Fenway Park next month — Fenway Flag Bowl IV.
15 age groups across boys, girls
3-game guaranteed minimum per team
2 tickets to Wasabi Fenway Bowl
Team photo in front of Green Monster
New England Flag Football League is one of the flag brands under Unrivaled’s umbrella.
🤠 Facilities Arms Race: Texas, Again
RBI Austin — a nonprofit organization that serves over 1.7K kids — has broken ground on a 33-acre campus.
Outdoor baseball/softball field with dugouts, seating
Over 30K-square-foot indoor training facility
Headquarters building with classrooms, weight room, offices
The org is affiliated with MLB’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program.
The project is expected to cost about $15M; RBI Austin has raised about half of that so far. Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan and his foundation are involved in the project.
You are likely aware of the internet firestorm surrounding a very talented 3-year-old striker and an i9 Sports league in Florida, which reached a crescendo Monday right as we were wrapping up the newsletter. We have a full explainer here.
📊 Poll: How Do You Use AI?
Where is AI actually showing up in your youth sports business?
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.