This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
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In the email today:
🔍 New Study Casts More Doubt On Specialization
Courtesy of Science
The debate and discourse about youth sports specialization and talent identification and development systems never ends — we probably touch on those and related topics at least once a week.
But while there are many compelling philosophies and strongly-held opinions throughout the industry, they are often just that — educated and rational takes, but often based more on anecdotes and common sense than hard data.
That is changing.
A pediatric orthopedic surgeon concluded professional athletes who played several sports as kids may have a greater chance at success than single-sport peers in research released in August.
Now a new study — “Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance” — is generating so much buzz that both the WSJ and NY Times hammered out spot news stories.
A quartet of American and European researchers examined the development of over 34K top adult performers worldwide across a variety of disciplines — sports, music, Nobel Prize winners, etc. — and found:
Young exceptional performers and adult world-class performers are mostly two different populations over time
Early exceptional performance is associated with extensive specialization practices and fast gains at a young age in a single discipline
Adult world-class performers tended to participate in multiple activities and disciplines as kids and gradually progressed to an elite level in their chosen discipline
Across the highest adult performance levels, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance.
Per the study:
International-level youth athletes and later international-level adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals
Higher early performance in a domain is associated with larger amounts of discipline-specific practice, smaller amounts of multidisciplinary practice, and faster early discipline-specific performance progress. By contrast, across high levels of adult performance, world-class performance in a domain is associated with smaller amounts of discipline-specific practice, larger amounts of early multidisciplinary practice, and more gradual early discipline-specific performance progress. These predictor effects are closely correlated with one another, suggesting a robust pattern.
Some caveats: Researchers did not conduct their own randomized studies — i.e. assign and control what participating kids did — and relied on already-existing prospective and retrospective studies.
A un-involved Harvard researcher also told the NYT she would be curious to see the separated results of the data. She hypothesized that while most child prodigies do not reach the top of their field, most top adult performers were likely considered elite to some extent as kids — in other words, a subset of early high performers doesn’t burn out and continues to grow.
My favorite anecdote on the subject comes from Bryce Harper - one of the most celebrated major-sport youth athletes in American history, who lived up to the hype - on a Phillies podcast (36:11 mark):
His thoughts have been echoed by LeBron James and countless others.
Besides the parenting and child development aspects of this (the most important), what does this growing body of research mean for the industry?
2 things:
1) I think we’ve now moved beyond the Tiger Woods-ification of youth athleticism. It’s clear that sort of rigor and focus from such a young age doesn’t create the next world-class superstar. For every Tiger Woods there are 100,000 miserable kids and 1 miserable Tiger Woods.
As this concept begins to take root with parents, those in the industry who have benefited from specialization should consider offering other sports lest they risk losing participation hours.
This is why I’m bullish on club expansion that includes adding more sports. As examples, NY Empire Baseball and True Lacrosse have taken on capital to expand both geographically and into new sports. It turns out that if you can run a solid club business based around principles, you can probably hire quality coaches to offer more than one sport. Sure, there might not be much, if any, cross-over among the athletes in these examples, but I can certainly see a world where multi-sport programs that encourage participation in more than one sport surpass single-sport clubs. Ironically, it sounds like I’m describing rec programs and schools, go figure.
2) Expect cost of participation and specialization, in that order, to be the two topics that dominate youth sports discussion in 2026. These are the narratives that will threaten pockets of the industry.
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All of that being said, evidence from the study found that it’s OK to have a main thing, but that two having additional activities might be the “sweet spot”. So perhaps the answer is acknowledging the difference between “focus” and “specialization.”
🏟️ Buying Sandlot Summit Speaker Unveil
Each newsletter, we’re going to unveil a speaker, as we aim to put together the most compelling list of speakers and panelists in the history of the youth sports industry.
This is probably the perfect day - given the last section - to introduce our next speaker: Jason Sacks, CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance.
Jason took over as CEO of the non-profit in February, and has been with the organization for more than 18 years. During that time, he has created partnerships across all of youth sports including with major brands and organizations like: Curry Brand/Under Armour, ESPN, National Women’s Soccer League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, Little League International, US Soccer Federation, and many more.
He will be joined at the event by previously announced speakers: John Stewart (CEO, Fastbreak AI), Aman Loomba (SVP Product, GameChanger), and Jordan Baltimore (CEO, NY Empire Baseball).
Early bird tickets will be available into January, but if you’re looking for a last-minute tax write-off, you can get yours right here.
And only a small number of VIP tickets with on-site hotel access remain right here.
If your organization would like group ticket pricing for 5 or more, or would like our sponsor deck, you can also contact [email protected].
🎥 Zorts Sports Teams With GAME Network
The sports technology platform (and Buying Sandlot sponsor) announced a partnership with Game Network, which bills itself as "a rapidly growing sports-streaming and athlete-driven content network."
The deal pairs Zorts’ event and tournament management offerings — including Flash facial recognition — with Game Network’s live-streaming and digital distribution.
Quick Take: Partnership-driven unified platforms where operators can do everything in one spot have emerged as a major trend as we head into 2026. We just saw a similar move with Ankored and Players Health. The question now is who and when everything gets married — back of the house needs, front-facing management, #content, etc.
🧢 An Interesting Nugget From Project Play
This stat stood out from the State of Play 2025 report, which was published last week:
Only 23% of youth sports parents with kids ages 6-10 said equal playing time is “the right policy” for their child’s age group and competitive level.
In other words: Over 75% of youth sports parents think playing time should be dictated by ability to some extent starting in kindergarten!?!
Even more striking: The 23% is not that far off where parents of kids ages 11-14 (19%) and ages 15-18 (17%) fall on equal playing time.
🏥 Dr. Lyle Micheli: 1940-2025
Dr. Lyle Micheli, considered a pioneer of youth sports medicine, has died. He was 85.
Micheli founded the Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention at Boston Children’s Hospital. He was also the Boston Ballet Company’s attending physician and lead finish-line medical coverage at the Boston Marathon; he is credited for helping save scores of severely injured people when the 2013 race was bombed by terrorists. He was also an Air Force veteran and a member of the Rugby Hall of Fame.
🦚 On The SportsEngine Beat
A notable move by Versant as it continues to shop the youth sports management and streaming platform — the Comcast spinoff company will launch a joint production house venture with star golfer Rory McIlroy.
Firethorn Productions will "produce original content and experiences that celebrate Rory’s world and the modern golf lifestyle," according to the Hollywood Reporter, with Golf Channel, GolfNow and GolfPass being leveraged. McIlroy is a GolfPass co-founder and extended his partnership with the platform through 2038.
Documentaries and long-form content were mentioned in the report as the direction the venture will go — something that could be duplicated with LOVB, which meshes well with SportsEngine.
Or it could be a sign that Versant’s plans to grow its digital businesses and embrace synergies are going to be a bit bigger than what SportsEngine provides, making a sale more likely.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.