This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
⚾️ Perfect Game Reveals International Event’s Future
The baseball development platform announced a four-year plan for the Pacific Baseball Championship — a global 15U all-star tournament.
The U.S. team won the inaugural event in Japan earlier this year with teams from Japan, Australia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan also participating.
2026, 2028 events will be held on the West Coast
2027, 2029 events will be in Japan
Tournament will move from to December from August
PG will begin Team USA selection process at the 14U National All-State Select Championships this weekend
Worth noting: The 15U age group is not covered by MLB’s new amateur scouting dead period, which includes December.
🏟️ The Shopify of Youth Sports Tournaments*
There are only a handful of companies that deserve the moniker: The Shopify of [X].
That’s because it’s rare when one platform can cover all of a business’ needs in a single interface.
EventConnect is the Shopify of sports tournaments.
It’s the leading no-cost platform built specifically for organizers who juggle schedules and hotel blocks in the same breath.
registration
rostering
payments
real-time performance reports
lodging and more
Their proprietary HousingConnect tech bolts room blocking and booking straight onto checkout, delivering the best online group rates while parents still have their credit cards out.
This means up to:
30% more room night reservations
24% savings on team hotel costs
EventConnect already powers 9,000 events, taps 30,000 hotels across 800 destinations, and backs it all with class-leading customer support.
Want to join them?
*Sponsor
✏️ Sluggball Launches Programming For HS Athletes
We’ll start with what you are likely thinking: Sluggball?
It is a baseball competition platform where small teams compete against each other in a series of batting practice rounds that emphasize bat control and situational hitting with scoring, officials, etc.
Former Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. is a co-founder, and ex-big leaguer Kenny Lofton is an advisor.
Sluggball launched earlier this year with a series of events for adults and it will expand into high school baseball with a demo in New Jersey next week and a tournament in December — both events will be held at Centercourt Lawrence's regulation indoor field.
Sluggball has drawn a lot of understandable comparisons to TopGolf.
But I would argue it should also be compared to Shoot 360, which is why I think it is such a fascinating concept and business.
The TopGolf angle: I wanted to organize a full-fledged batting practice for my bachelor party. It was impossible to pull off.
There was too much red tape (or too little availability) with high school and municipal fields and minor league parks either want no part of it or have hefty event fees.
But Sluggball makes it possible to do something that 95% of baseball players never get to do after high school and 99% would be over the moon for if given the chance — take swings on an actual field again. And if you can shag fly balls too, even better.
The Shoot 360 angle: You are gamifying real training that will help athletes hone their skills.
Serious high school players need to be able to go to the opposite field or up the middle, move the runner over, lift the ball to get a run in, etc. And Sluggball can help speed up that developmental process.
🏨 SportsEngine Teams Up With HotelPlanner
Talk about the youth sports circle of life: Mom and Dad can now get a hotel for the tournament within the same app Grandma and Grandpa will stream the games.
SportsEngine has integrated HotelPlanner’s booking technology into its platform with a white-label product. The move will allow customer organizations to build customized bookings and room blocks for competitions.
This is notable given the sheer scale of SportsEngine’s platform. Adding hotels and lodging makes SE a more compelling option for events.
That said, HotelPlanner is a horizontal SaaS company working across a range of industries and use-cases. Meanwhile, you have EventConnect (our sponsor today!), which is a full-stack vertical SaaS company purpose-built for youth sports tournaments and offering a much more robust feature set for this purpose.
Ironically, HotelPlanner owns unrelated, Australian-based EventConnect[dot]com.
And yet, not a spacebar to be found between words.
⚽️ Touchlynk Partners With Major N.J. Soccer Club
The Dallas-based sports tech firm announced a partnership with PSC Academy, one of the Garden State’s top development platforms.
Touchlynk will be PSC’s exclusive performance analytics and video highlights provider.
Teams upload game video — it works with all recording tools and files — and Touchlynk’s engine identifies every touch, analyzes each play and tags the relevant players — creating analytic data, statistics and searchable highlights by athlete.
Chairman and CEO Scott Ticer said Touchlynk’s accuracy is over 97% and the system is designed to address any errors. The platform utilizes AI, but athlete tagging is, notably, done manually.
“This is not a pilot program, this is a full-fledged rollout,” Ticer said. “We’re going to have hundreds of players, parents, family members and fans using this service. And we’re pumped.”
🚨 Report: Feds Probing MLBPA’s Youth Baseball Org
Players Way — a for-profit entity operated by the MLBPA — is under federal investigation, according to ESPN.
Players Way has generated “barely” six figures in revenue since its 2019 founding while receiving close to $10M in funding from the union, according to the report.
The organization was cited in an anonymous whistleblower complaint against MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark last year, accusing the ex-big leaguer of self-dealing and other malfeasance.
Clark has not been charged with a crime— he and the union have denied the claims.
Also in the ESPN report:
Players Way paid “six-figure” annual salaries to executives and consultants; some were former big leaguers and had had full-time jobs outside MLBPA
MLBPA declined to detail how Players Way was funded and budgeted; officials told ESPN the organization did not follow standard accounting practices
The organization’s listed headquarters is a PO Box at a UPS store in Florida
Players Way has held limited events with low attendance in its history, but activity has increased since the probe began — including a partnership with US Sports Camps this year
🧱 Youth Sports Facilities News
The Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation has pledged up to $2M in matching funds for a planned youth sports complex in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.
The Josh Gibson Foundation — named after the legendary Negro Leagues slugger — is renovating the Boys and Girls Club building in the Pittsburgh suburb.
The facility will have a gymnasium, educational spaces and a Miracle League baseball field.
Also: Ground has broken on the 100K-square-foot Cedar Valley CourtWorks facility in Waterloo, Iowa. The venue will have eight basketball courts that convert to 16 volleyball courts with a projected local economic impact of $10-15M. The complex will open in 2027; Waterloo is an hour from Cedar Rapids and two from Des Moines and Rochester, Minnesota.
🧢 The Houses That Youth Sports Help Build
More on the Dick’s front … CNBC recently examined how the company is zigging while everyone else zags and investing in its massive House of Sport locations.
Youth sports is one of the reasons, of course.
The report did not dive deep — no GameChanger or Unrivaled Sports mentions — but credited 12 straight quarters of comparable sales growth in part to youth sports families.
Executive Chairman Edward Stack said youth sports consumers help insulate Dick’s from macroeconomic pressures; trends like baseball drip are also mentioned as revenue drivers.
💰 U.S. Soccer Foundation Receives Major Grant
MetLife Foundation has pledged $1.7M toward initiatives that will benefit 220K youth athletes nationally.
2-year program training coaches and teachers on mentorship in MetLife cities through USSF programming
Construction of 6 new mini-pitches nationwide
Mini-pitches in Dallas and Philadelphia open this year; fields in California, Georgia, New Jersey and New York are planned for next year
MetLife also recently pledged $9M to be a founding donor of FIFA’s Global Citizen Education Fund
📝 Youth Sports News + Notes
Hockey Quebec has released a video series — Do You Recognize Yourself? — in an effort to promote positive youth sports parenting. The short videos (all in French) highlight poor spectator conduct, interactions with kids in the car after a game and official abuse.
The Girls Academy League announced a three-year extension of its partnership with Veo. The video technology will also be utilized by the newly-launched Girls Academy Aspire League.
Signature Athletics is launching a merchandise line with NHL player Liam O’Brien that will benefit youth hockey — 10% of all proceeds from the “Spicy Tuna” line will go to programs.
New to the youth sports franchise scene: Kung Fu Kids. The martial arts chain launched in San Francisco in 2003 and grew to four locations before going the franchise route this year— its first two franchise locations will open by Q2 next year with a goal of 12 by the end of 2026.
This is an interesting academic report from professors at Canada’s Western University on the “demonstration effect” for girls in youth sports. It concludes that the rise in stature of elite female athletes and competitions can lead to participation spikes, but only if communities are prepared to take advantage of those opportunities.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.