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:
📚 Schools Provide Proof Of Concept For Sponsorships
Everyone talks about what brand sponsorships could do for youth sports, but the details of how they make a tangible impact can be hazy.
The blueprint may be down the road from the industry in education.
Schools are increasingly embracing sponsorships in everything from high school football games to proms to elementary school field days — partnerships that provide added resources for schools and help brands make authentic connections with communities.
“It’s evolution. People are now so used to advertising on everything. And then it’s the added need — budgets getting cuts in schools, school districts, other community entities and rising costs,” Campus Multimedia founder and CEO Karl Mawhinney told Buying Sandlot.
Campus Multimedia connects regional and national brands to schools to subsidize costs or create value through marketing programs, focusing on the core goals of recognition, resources and revenue.
Over 84K schools are in its network; CM is also beginning to work with youth sports organizations, Mawhinney said.
CM recently conducted a survey of K-12 parents and teens ages 12-17 with YouGov that found:
97% of school leaders said their school is open to community sponsor/brand support
73% of parents, 70% of students wish a brand would “adopt” their school
72% of parents support brand sponsorships in school
71% of parents think brands that support schools are more deserving of business
69% of parents are more likely to buy from brand that supports their kid’s school
“The data shows there is strong support for school-brand partnerships driving trust and purchase intent,” Mawhinney said. “That’s what it’s about. The brands that are now starting to spend in schools or youth sports are the ones that are really going to built trust with a community that is made up of students, parents, staff, teachers.”
Youth sports orgs are beginning to arrive on SponsorPlace, CM’s platform that facilitates connections with brands. CM also works with brands on repeatable activations — often enacted by the schools themselves — and some custom programs. About 50% of CM’s business involves sports.
“We imagine ways that brand like a DoorDash, a Kleenex, a Costco, Jersey Mike’s can embed themselves organically in the school,” Mawhinney said. “It’s not adding stuff, it’s how you can come alongside the school. They’re actually providing something of value that [schools] need anyway.”
The value propositions appear to be the same with youth sports.
“We built our company on brands and K-12 schools,” Mawhinney said. “But the brands that are working with us and want to engage with their communities through schools are really the same brands that want to engage in their communities through youth sports. … Let’s make it easier for them to support them financially and with resources, and make it so the brands that are doing the right things can build trust.”
🤖 Baseline Launches New Operating System
We have written a lot about two major industry trends — club consolidation/growth and facilities.
Baseline brings them together. The management platform is introducing a new AI-first operating system designed for club organizations with multiple locations, Buying Sandlot has learned.
USA Prime — which has over 1K club baseball and softball teams across 48 states — has tabbed Baseline as its preferred operating system in conjunction with the launch.
Facility management
Drag-and-drop tryouts, rostering
Parents can register over text, no login needed
Payment reminder texts, payment builders
AI-created full season structures, custom payment plans
Multi-bank routing
Admin access across different teams, venues
Webpage, marketing resources
Baseline said it processes tens of millions of transactions each month across over 700 facilities; 86% of them also operate their own club teams.
“You either have a facility and then you figure out, ‘I can have my own teams and have better margins because I already have the location,’” Founder and CEO Eli Herrick said. “Or you have hundreds of teams and wonder why you are paying so much to train somewhere, I should choose to open my own facility.”
Herrick, who pitched at Duke, originally launched StatStak — an athlete analytics platform. The company struggled to gain traction, but it identified a small group of subscribers that never churned and were not among its most frequent users.
Herrick said they learned many of those users worked with coaches who leveraged it for development and training purposes — and used it to generate recurring business.
A deeper dive revealed the coaches — and facilities operators — had their own pain points.
“We started spending more time with these coaches and they wanted to use the app we were building for data tracking, but they were so annoyed that they had a separate app for scheduling, for payments, for messaging,” Herrick said. “We said, ‘Oh, we should just go build that. That’s the real problem.’”
Baseline also has a relationship with Showcase Baseball Academy. While baseball and softball are its core sports, about half of Baseline’s net new inbound business is coming from outside that vertical.
Baseline’s first two tiers are completely free; Herrick said 90% of facilities do not pay the company directly. The platform’s scale allows this, allowing it to access more favorable rates on transaction fees. Baseline also benefits from the year-round nature of facilities, which require recurring revenues to remain open.
"Every other platform is acquiring point solutions and bolting them on,” Herrick said. "Those systems were never designed to work together, leaving operators to reconcile databases that do not know about each other. We built one operating system from Day 1. Competitors will need years to ship what we’ve released.”
♨️ SPIRE Academy Teams With Student Athlete Score
Spire named SAS as its official athlete brand development partner yesterday.
The brand-building, data and NIL platform will be integrated into the Cleveland-area elite sports school’s classrooms, advising structure and development models.
This is the first SAS deal with a youth sports partner.
Students will use their own real-world data to learn how to build and market themselves as modern student-athletes, understanding how content, engagement, consistency, and storytelling shape recruiting visibility, NIL opportunities, and long-term career success beyond sports. SPIRE's marketing, sponsorship, and recruitment teams will also gain deeper visibility into the academy's athlete network, supporting a more data-driven approach to athlete development, partnership activation, and outreach.
The deal will also include SAS being featured on Spire’s NASCAR Cup Series car next weekend alongside Vensure HR and other partners.
⚽️ ECNL Expands Partnership With Hudl
The developmental league will be the first youth platform to feed into the Hudl Wyscout database.
ECNL games in the ECNL League Video Exchange will be broken down in the database starting this fall.
Available for U15, U16, U17, U18-19
Permanent, searchable athlete video, data
Access for college, pro scouts
No extra cost for existing ECNL members with Hudl packages
Hudl bills Wyscout as the world’s largest soccer database.
ECNL and Hudl first teamed up in 2021; the relationship covers streaming, highlight reels, analytics, game capture and the video exchanges.
📈 Facilities Arms Race, Part 1: A Sure Bet
The Sacramento Bee recently profiled an effort to institute a new hotel tax in a section of the city to spur development of a large park.
Part of the pitch: The new revenues would help build 10 new soccer fields and tap into what Visit Sacramento CEO and president Mike Testa called the “recession-proof” youth sports tourism market.
🏟️ Facilities Arms Race, Part 2: Small Town, Big Aspirations
Monticello, Minnesota, is swinging for the fences.
The modest-sized city — population of about 15K — approved an updated master plan for a sprawling youth sports complex it hopes will become a regional hub for tournaments and sports tourism.
17 total fields
Baseball/softball diamonds, multi-purpose fields
Pickleball courts, walking trails
Potential for future indoor facility
Almost 1K parking spots
Expanded infrastructure, incluidng concessions
Funded by voter-approved local option sales tax
Monticello is about 40 minutes away from Minneapolis, but Duluth and Rochester are 2-2.5 hours away and Fargo is three hours away.
Officials are aiming to have most of the complex completed by 2029. A total cost was not reported, but the next major construction phase has a $13M price tag.
🏢 More Youth Sports Facilities News
Kalamazoo, Michigan: Organizers said they sold all available bonds to fund a $45M indoor facility. The bonds will be paid back over 30 years via an assessment on local hotels.
Katy, Texas: A developer has bought 18 acres near the Katy Youth Sports Complex with plans to build apartments and retail space.
Shreveport, Louisiana: Caddo Parish officials are working to present a ballot referendum this fall asking for $60M in bonds to build a youth sports complex.
🤦♂️ Parents Behaving Badly
Seminole, Oklahoma: Another Dad vs. Umpire incident, this one in Oklahoma. An 11U coach was arrested after he struck an ump in the face and took him to the ground at a game in Seminole. The altercation started over a confrontation about a call.
Tampa, Florida: A man allegedly stole a combined $263K in his fraudulent operation of a youth hockey organization. Cops said the man took in $178K in fees from parents and also secured $85K in loans, blowing most of the money gambling. He also stiffed the team’s ice venue.
Toledo, Ohio: It’s not always youth sports. A melee broke out at a Catholic school’s kindergarten graduation ceremony over seats.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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