🥎 Localizing The Elite Youth Sports Academy

This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.

The narrative in youth sports is that club teams are driving up the cost of participation for all athletes and families, but this isn’t fully supported by the data. So we’d like to separate fact from fiction. Take our first-ever youth sports club cost survey and see how your club stacks up— full results will also be available to premium members.

Let’s get to it.

Steve Sanders spent several years building Spire Academy into one of the nation's top sports academies.

Now he is working to bring that experience to athletes and families that aren't looking to leave home. The former Spire CEO was recently named TPH Academy's chief growth officer as the hockey-focused academics and athletics platform looks to expand its on-ice footprint while expanding into other sports.

"Not every kid wants to go to a boarding environment," Sanders said during a wide-ranging interview with Buying Sandlot. "Kids don't want to leave their hometown. They may really love their club program, or they've been in high school for a couple of years, have friends and aren't ready to make that transition.

“This model really allows kids to stay home, stay with your parents. It's a lower barrier to entry from a cost perspective. And it's not a big difference from a training, scheduling, pacing, recovery and performance perspective. We've integrated all of those elements and just done it at the local level."

TPH -- which is tied to Total Package Hockey -- currently has 22 locations across the U.S., Canada and Spain. Sanders said there are plans to grow to 27-30 over the next year.

TPH is club agnostic; the academy is considered a voucher-eligible charter/private school in some states and is classified as a homeschool in others, which means athletes can also compete for their local high schools while training with a club. TPH can take students as young as fifth grade, but focuses on the core middle and high school years.

TPH will partners directly with a club, providing academic infrastructure to its established operations. Or, more prominently, it teams with facility operators.

"That's where the pitch is pretty simple," Sanders said. "You go to any facility across the country and you go, 'Hey, what do you do Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.?' And the answer is absolutely nothing. And it's like, well, what if we could plug in a very large revenue stream into this model, partner with the clubs that already rent out your facilities, and help bring in training, academics, performance and education to help fill that space."

TPH secures lease agreements to facilities during school hours. The goal is to make it feel like athletes are attending a traditional school -- separate entrances, classrooms, locker rooms.

TPH utilizes the Subject ed tech platform, which is AI-assisted, but it still has certified teachers instructing athletes. The school day runs 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is a combination of academics and athletics; TPH usually follows a Monday-Thursday schedule with Fridays a flex day for athletes depending on their need -- more tutoring, training, traveling to competitions with their club.

The format condenses what would be a 12-hour day of school and sports into an eight-hour day, Sanders said -- creating more free time for athletes and families while working to prevent burnout and overuse.

Sanders said TPH is seeing the most non-hockey traction with soccer -- it now has an academy in St. Louis. Basketball is another growth area, as is lacrosse. Sanders expects TPH will also move into flag football as the sport matures and grows at the collegiate level.

"It's a really low barrier to entry and a fair price point in the market," Sanders said. "It's definitely accessible from an academy perspective. It's a great product. There's definitely a market need as this industry continues to evolve. And I think as the club scene really starts to professionalize, this day model to be able to plug in is something that's gonna be very attractive."

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Filming youth sports has come a long way from Dad taping wobbly video with his camcorder from behind the backstop.

The expectation of clubs, coaches, athletes and family is high-quality live streaming.

Youth sports organizations can create new revenue streams from live broadcasts using the same products as professional teams. A hockey club in Michigan can use the same camera that the NHL uses behind the goal. And a baseball facility in California can afford and work with the same cameras Disney used to shoot the latest Marvel movie.

Blackmagic Design makes it possible. Whether you are a sports facility, club, school or coach, Blackmagic Design allows high quality, affordable and easy to learn multi-camera streaming and filming.

Youth sports clubs and facilities around the world already use Blackmagic Design products daily, including:

For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

*Sponsor

The brand-building, data and NIL platform announced it will now work with IMG Academy:

The collaboration will also help evaluate how data and educational tools may support future learning opportunities for student-athletes in a responsible and meaningful way.

Spire Academy recently named SAS its official athlete brand development partner.

Overtime’s 7-on-7 football platform will have its two-day championship event broadcast on NBC and Peacock tomorrow and Sunday.

Overtime, the All-American Bowl and NBC struck a partnership earlier this year. The broadcasts will start at 2 p.m. ET both days; the eight-team event is taking place at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The A-A Bowl, NBC and Overtime also announced plans to launch the All-American Girls Flag Football initiative, including a flag competition during next year’s OT7 championship weekend.

Quick Take: NBC has put the popular John Fanta on play-by-play — a sign it is invested in the partnership, similar to ESPN having Joe Tessitore and Dan Orlovsky work the high school football national title showcase game it put on with Overtime last fall.

The Indianapolis suburb of Fishers announced plans to build a $65M, 180K-square-foot fieldhouse in its upcoming culinary and entertainment hub.

The Fishers Fieldhouse will include:

JD North America — the parent company of JD Sports and Finish Line — will move its North American HQ to Fishers as well.

Dillon Blake is EventPipe’s new chief revenue officer as the event hotel booking software platform “accelerates growth in its core youth sports market and expands well beyond it.”

EventPipe said youth sports housing will remain its core focus, but it is also moving into associations, cultural festivals, weddings and more.

Blake was most recently Everway’s SVP of revenue operations. He spent over a decade at Motus before that.

The FHSAA will institute an Open Division for football, basketball, baseball and other major team sports starting with the upcoming calendar year.

The teams will be solely determined by MaxPreps rankings; the governing body will no longer modify the rankings for seeds and selections.

The objective is to cordon off each sport’s powerhouse programs into one bracket to determine a true overall state champion and then play out the traditional classifications, giving more schools a viable path to a title.

A Michigan woman pleaded no contest to embezzling between $20K and $50K from a youth sports organization over a six-year period.

She was previously charged with stealing $50K to $100K, and initial estimates of her ill-gotten gains had been projected as high as $180K.

The woman will be sentenced next month.

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Good game.