We can officially retire the Sale-o-Meter.
LeagueApps has acquired background screening platform National Center for Safety Initiatives from Versant. The deal comes two months after the Comcast cable spinoff company sold SportsEngine to PlayMetrics.
Terms were not disclosed. NCSI will operate as a separate division, LeagueApps President Jeremy Goldberg said, and retain the leadership team helmed by VP of Safety Kate Quattlebaum.
NCSI is the only provider named in U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee policy. It works with over 50 NGBs and thousands of youth sports organizations. Buying Sandlot previously reported that NCSI was a profitable part of SportsEngine prior to Versant selling the registration platform to PlayMetrics.
NCSI’s services will still be available to customers that do not utilize the LeagueApps platform.
"We've had a longstanding belief and conviction about safety and making youth sports better, as well as making it easier for things to be safe by supporting operators.
“We're really excited to be able to team up together with Kate and her team. They're providing critical background checks and safety solutions to organizations in the youth sports space and have really established industry leadership in that regard.
“The fact that they're trusted by the USOPC and work with over 90% of the sports national governing bodies, I think is a real signal of the kind of great work they do to manage those checks and provide those safety solutions." — LeagueApps President Jeremy Goldberg
Compliance is, like many things in youth sports, extremely fragmented, with varying standards by state, NGB, organization, etc. And the consequences for failures can be significant — safety is not an area where trying your best is sufficient, Goldberg said.
“If you don't do the right thing, that those could be ending factors for your organization based on the liability that you may face,” he added. “Especially with a lot of the things that have happened in the youth sports insurance markets. This is an opportunity to do the right thing, but also it allows those organizations to mitigate the risk that would change that to question the very viability of what it is that they want to do.”
Goldberg and Quattlebaum said NCSI and LeagueApps, which is backed by Accel-KKR, will invest in capabilities and technology. There will be a focus on improving background screening management and workflows for operators, as well as education on proper practices.
LeagueApps and NCSI will also help underwrite screenings for organizations that receive FundPlay Foundation grants.
"We are the one [consumer reporting agency] in the industry that is so deeply rooted in sport that we understand the complexities of national governing bodies all the way down to the grassroots level," Quattlebaum said. "We've seen how this space has changed, how the topic of safety has changed over the past two decades. And there's so much more that still needs to be done."
Lazard was Versant’s exclusive financial advisor on the deal.
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