🥎 Making Elite Youth Sports Events More Accessible

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

Let’s get to it.

Perfect Game’s WWBA National Championship — arguably the biggest summer youth baseball event — has traditionally been confined to team-only entries.

That will change this June thanks to a new PG initiative — Individual Player Entry. The program will debut at the WWBA Nationals, allowing athletes to compete without a team entered.

“We saw the opportunity for kids to get the exposure and be able to attend the tournaments they want to attend whether their team is attending the event or not,” PG senior operations director Gary Wilson said on the Buying Sandlot podcast. “If they want to get somewhere and they don’t have a way of getting there with a team, we want to make sure they can attend it as an individual.”

Wilson said WWBA Nationals — a six-day event in Marietta, Georgia, — is currently the only tournament with IPE planned. But that could change over time. He said PG has seen a mild trend of travel teams staying closer to home, which has generated demand for individual entries.

PG plans to eventually color-code all Team PGs squads by graduation year for scouting purposes. Each Team PG side will also be guaranteed at least one WWBA game at the main field where PG’s social media team mainly operates.

Wilson said PG will not vet IPE athletes at WWBA Nationals for ability.

“This is a high-quality, high-level event. But if they want to go play in this event and they’re willing to do what it takes, we want to have them,” Wilson said. “They’re more than welcome. We’re not looking to put out the best teams in the world. We also don’t expect that. It would be awesome if we could create that, but at the end of the day we want to give the opportunity to any player that wants to be there.”

The youth baseball and event management company has purchased Play9 Sports, a tournament operator in the Midwest.

CSG launched in January when the Prep Baseball/Bullpen Tournaments merger was finalized. The Top Tier travel baseball program is also under its umbrella.

CSG said the deal adds 73 fields in six markets across Illinois and Missouri to its portfolio; Play9’s base is the St. Louis metropolitan area.

CSG is currently baseball-focused, but expects to expand into other sports eventually. It said it aims to operate about 150 diamonds by the end of the year.

The sprawling Grand Park Sports Campus mega-complex in Westfield, Indiana, will partner with Skylake Adventures.

Skylake is new all-year destination with beaches, a water park, ropes courses and snow tubing about five miles away in Sheridan. The venue is set to open this summer.

Grand Park will host the NFL Flag Championships in July — the event is billed as the largest flag tournament in the world.

We may have gotten our answer about who should be sent to Los Angeles in 2028.

The U.S. men’s national team steamrolled the Fanatics Flag Classic on Saturday. Team USA beat two teams of current and former NFL players and celebrities by a combined score of 82-30 in the event’s round robin series before a narrower 10-point victory in the title game.

It will be interesting to see where this goes next.

Team USA’s Darnell “Housh” Doucette — the event’s MVP — caused waves a few years ago when he said he was a better flag QB than Patrick Mahomes. It turns out he had a point, because the national team was clearly head and shoulders above the pros when it comes to playing flag.

But there are some caveats. Team USA was only added to the event after organizers had to move it to LA from Saudi Arabia due to the war in Iran. So who knows how prepared the pro players were. And obviously guys like Logan Paul and iShowSpeed won’t be taking up roster spots at the Olympics.

Don’t close the book entirely on NFL players trying to make the team in two years — assuming they are willing to train for it.

Speaking of which: Tom Brady looked pretty good during the event and then put out a cryptic “Gets you thinking …” post on X. And Hall of Famer Darrell Green just attended a national team tryout at age 66.

Indian outlet YourStory recently reported on Sports For Life, a national youth sports tech platform that raised over $2.5M in its Series A round.

CEO and co-founder Sourjyendu Medda previously helmed Dealshare when the e-commerce company reached unicorn status.

SFL currently operates two sports academies with about 1.5K students. It also operates competitions and tournaments and provides academy management tech, a family-focused app with athlete profiles and communications and tournament operations tech with AI-powered capabilities — live streaming, stats, performance metrics.

Future growth areas include AI coaching tools and plans for a Hudl-like scouting platform.

Medda said SFL wants to be in about 30 cities and offer 15-17 sports long-term; he believes youth sports can become a $5B industry in India within five years despite the fragmentation (!) in the space.

Quick Take: India has 1.5B people and about 42% of them are under 25. It is also generally a friendly market for U.S. and European businesses to operate in. It feels inevitable it will be the next great frontier for the industry at some point.

Perfect Game also announced its global expansion will move to Australia next.

The baseball and softball development platform has partnered with Oz Ball Tournaments Pty to operate PG-branded showcases and tournaments across the country as its Pacific Rim initiative grows.

The events will meet PG’s protocols and standards; PG will integrate its tech into the events, including DiamondKast live scoring and video when possible. PG will also provide global marketing and own participant data, media content, etc.

PG previously expanded its presence in Japan and laid out a multi-year strategy for the 15U Pacific Baseball Championship as it seeks to incorporate international athletes into its ecosystem.

A Connecticut youth basketball coach pleaded guilty to second-degree assault after hitting a parent with his car last year. Sentencing is pending; his plea deal currently calls for 60 days in jail.

The parent was also charged criminally because he was considered the aggressor prior to the vehicular assault; his case has not been resolved yet. That man allegedly confronted the coach in a parking lot after their daughters had a verbal altercation during a game.

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Good game.