🥎 NFL Keeps Investing In Flag Football's Future

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

Lots of good stuff today, including much more from our interview with Capacity Sports Group CEO Ken Kocher, who, until now, has remained largely behind the scenes gobbling up a wide swath of facilities and assets.

Let’s get to it.

The NFL is developing a tech platform that will address gaps in flag football coaching, officiating, strategy and training.

Brian Flinn — the league’s SVP for global flag — made the reveal last week at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference:

Flinn told the conference he expects the platform will be up and running “at scale” in 3-4 months. That would make it live right in time for the spring season, which is when many of the states that have sanctioned the sport at the high school level compete.

Along these lines: RC Football — a free, AI-powered play design tool for coaches — recently published a mid-year report that said 51% of its users are designing flag (5v5) plays. And another 20% are drawing plays for 6v6 and 7v7 competitions.

Quick Take: Flag is the Wild West right now. The ecosystem lacks structure and many are just trying to figure it out. Tech solutions like Flag50, Blitz Board Stats, and others are seeing early traction with scoring and stats solutions. GameChanger has indicated that a heavier flag effort is in the cards after a big push (a shove?) into basketball this year. GameBreaker is leading in protective headwear and making a push into jerseys and other ecosystem solutions. And while RCX Sports holds the NFL license, most of the programming is left to local operators. It will be interesting to see just how much effort the league puts into structure. We continue to believe major U.S. pro sports would benefit from a homegrown player rule like MLS'. That would give teams a real reason to develop local talent, not just for the good of the game or philanthropy, but for competitive and financial reasons. It's a long shot with the draft and the players' unions in place, but it's the kind of incentive that would compel leagues and teams to actually build structure and invest in talent development, rather than outsourcing it to colleges, event circuits, and clubs.

High school football is religion in Texas.

Clear Life Media brings it into living rooms with the help of Blackmagic Design.

The Lone Star State-based company produces high quality, multi-camera live streams for its “Game of the Week” productions, as well as youth and adult grappling competitions for its “Clear Life Combat” on-demand channel, using Blackmagic’s workflow and suite of affordable solutions including:

All stakeholders in the youth sports industry expect top-notch live streaming. Blackmagic Design makes it possible using the same products as professional teams, allowing high quality, affordable and easy to learn multi-camera streaming and filming.

For more information, visit Blackmagic Design.

*Sponsor

The sports education brand has launched the IMG Academy+ digital platform, which will provide direct global access to its “holistic development methodology”:

Content will start at age 8. There are three options:

IMG said 25% of open college roster spots in the 2025-26 class were filled by athletes who used its recruiting services.

The announcement is the latest expansion move by IMG, which has paired a facilities and programs boom on its Bradenton, Florida, campus with a slew of digital offerings that give access to its programming outside of its student body.

Background: Think of this as the consumer subscription version of IMG’s Elevate curriculum, which is distributed to schools and other programs so teachers and coaches can impart IMG’s developmental methods to students and athletes.

A new youth sports complex is proposed somewhere in America almost every day.

At some point the market is going to get oversaturated, right?

"We're not even close," Capacity Sports Group CEO Ken Kocher said during his recent appearance on the Buying Sandlot podcast.

"The appetite is still big for cities and municipalities. Everyone wants that as part of their community. They're all trying to figure out ways to get it done."

But Kocher does see the space shifting a bit. He does not expect many more sprawling venues like CSG's Grand Park Sports Campus outside of Indianapolis to pop up. But demand for local and/or regional/statewide complexes — like LakePoint Sports outside of Atlanta — will continue as more families look to compete closer to home.

"There are going to be less people wanting to travel long distances to get basically the same experiences they could locally or regionally," Kocher said. "I think that's happening already."

The typical venue size to look for: 6-8 diamond fields, 3-6 rectangular fields and a modest indoor facility for court sports, Kocher said.

Some other takeaways from the wide-ranging conversation:

A sport to watch: Lacrosse is typically not considered in the same “emerging” vein as flag football. But maybe it should be considering half the country has yet to sanction either sport at the high school level. Kocher made the argument that lacrosse is "still infant" in many ways -- and that CSG sees tremendous upside. As do other big industry players, like TeamSnap.

Not done dealing: It sounds like CSG plans to make more operator acquisitions. The goal is to add more tournament brands/content and sports-specific expertise under its umbrella.

Kocher's take on private equity and youth sports:

Listen to the full interview:

An 35-year-old man and a 6-year-old boy were killed when a truck was driven through a youth soccer game at a facility in Wichita.

The deceased were from the same town, but are not related. Ten others were hurt — five adults and five kids. Police said some injuries were serious, but none were life-threatening. Another adult was also hospitalized for non-traumatic medical reasons.

The cause of the incident at the city-owned Scheels Stryker Sports Complex has not been made public. The driver — a 34-year-old woman — was released from police custody last night. She had two kids in her vehicle and another child playing on a different field.

Initial findings are reportedly expected sometime this week. The complex is currently closed.

Youth sports parents in the United Kingdom spend over $1.6K a year on gas to take their kids to games and practices, according to a survey by budget car maker Chery UK.

(Note: A U.S. gallon’s worth of gas is about $8.80 in the UK.)

Some other numbers from the survey:

Of particular note: The survey found the vast majority of UK youth sports travel is local, with most parents driving 50 miles or less for a full week of activities. It’s also worth noting that $1,600 is more than the oft-maligned $1,016 US families spend on their child’s primary sport, and in line with the $1,500-$2,000 US families spend per year per child.

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Good game.