This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
LakePoint Sports hosted the National Youth Sports Summit yesterday. While we were not on the ground in Georgia, we were able to tune in to the entire event on SportsEngine Play, so much of today’s send will touch on what we learned.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
🎥 3 Interesting Streaming Takes From NYSS
1) Personal Clips Are The Future
SportsEngine video operations VP Nick Busto believes personalization is the future of youth sports streaming with a focus on personal clips and reels for each kid at scale.
“We strive to create an experience of whether you’re at the game, you’re watching a live stream or maybe you are stuck in traffic coming home, you have the highlights from the person you care about the most delivered directly to your phone in real-time. Are we there yet? No. But when you think about personalization and content in youth sports, while we live for the long-form and live stream, personal highlights are kind of the currency. That’s where we’re going.”
2) Media Hype Is Overblown
PlayOn streaming and coaching tools president David Rudolph - the company’s former CEO - doubts youth sports, which is “fundamentally a local, hyper-personalized product,” will ever break through and become mainstream media properties beyond exceptions like the Little League World Series and uniquely captivating stories.
“It’s really difficult to build a business — and a scaled business — on these one-off moments because they are so unpredictable. I think you have to build your foundation of the business on the long tail, on the hyper-personalized and then try to take advantage when you have things and storylines that break through.”
3) Live Streaming Remains Difficult
We have written much about youth sports streaming's growth potential and why that upside is not being maximized.
We may be overlooking a simple reason -- the pairing of two complicated and often chaotic things.
“I think with all the discussion around the youth sports industry, one thing that gets left out is really how messy it is,” Busto said. “Youth sports are messy. Taking a couple hundred games in a weekend for one event, doing that dozens of times over thousands of games over the course of a weekend is hard. And live sports are hard. Putting live sports and youth sports together is really challenging.”
I wrote last week that PlayOn is “a media company.” So it’s interesting to hear the company’s founder and former CEO - who recently transitioned out of the role and into leading PlayOn’s streaming and analytics division - pour some cold water on the hype surrounding youth sports as a large-scale media play.
More interesting is that the new CEO, Perkins Miller, has an extensive media background. He was described in a press release as having two decades of experience at the intersection of “sports, media, and commerce” and that he is responsible for “positioning the company for its next phase across streaming, ticketing, and media”.
I’ve also noted this change in how PlayOn described itself previously in press releases (this one in May, 2025), and how it described itself in its most recent releases.
“PlayOn is the all-in-one fan engagement platform for schools, dedicated to covering every team, every game, and every player. With PlayOn, school administrators save time to focus on what matters: the game, the fans, and the athletes. Best known for operating GoFan, MaxPreps, and the NFHS Network, PlayOn creates immersive digital experiences for fans to watch, attend, promote, and recap high school events so they never miss a moment. For more information, visit playonsports.com.”
“PlayOn is redefining the way schools, fans, and teams connect through live streaming, digital ticketing, and sports media. With a focus on fan engagement and community experience, PlayOn creates technology that brings every game closer to the people who care most. The company’s family of brands includes GoFan, MaxPreps, and NFHS Network, each working together to enhance how high school sports are experienced, shared, and celebrated nationwide. For more information, visit playonsports.com.”
It certainly seems like there’s a shift from a products and services company to a media company.
To be clear, nothing here is at odds with Rudolph’s comments on the panel. You can be a media company that scales through a network of localized eyeballs and not national broadcasts like the LLWS. I just detect a shift in the way the former and current CEOs are positioning the company.
🔉 NEW PODCAST: Hudl COO Matt Mueller
We are upping our podcast game big-time, and we have a good one here with Hudl COO Matt Mueller. This is a great episode— HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
Here are 5 quick takes from the interview:
1) AI is transforming analytics
Matt talked about how the company Hudl just acquired - Athletic Data Innovations - figured out how to track athlete speed and load when players aren’t running in a straight line. That has been something, so far, which has been difficult for wearables and GPS systems to accurately track. But it creates a fuller picture.
2) Pro tech → youth tech
Matt joins Fastbreak AI founder John Stewart (upcoming podcast) in talking about how tech developed for elite pro clubs, like FC Barcelona and Real Madrid - what a flex - in the case of Hudl, can be brought down to the youth level and made available for parent volunteer coaches.
3) Education is important
Hudl works with program directors to do training en masse to show coaches how to use this cutting-edge tech, but it remains a challenge and an opportunity to make all the exciting tech in the space useful to coaches and players at the rec level.
4) 100 million eyeballs coming to their platform
For every argument that youth and high school sports are not a great scaled media play, there’s a counter.
5) Is Hudl going public?
“[The rumors have been] a great compliment. We've been doing this for nearly 20 years and, you know, we've been building tools that keep helping move the sport forward,” he said. “And we're always open to finding opportunities that help us, you know, continue to deliver the ability for every athlete to get the shot they deserve. But we don't publicly comment on funding. That's just not what we do.”
The ol’ no comment. Love it!
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🗂️ The Next Big Thing?
Ex-ESPN sports business reporter Darren Rovell made the case for youth sports collectibles being the next hot trend during one of the panel discussions at NYSS.
His take: They have wide appeal — kids, parents, family and friends, collectors — and consumer habits show people will pay significant money for quality products that are meaningful to them and tell a story.
But, Rovell joked, the collectibles that already exist have not evolved much from his own little league trading cards made with a dot matrix printer and rubber cement decades ago.
“There is an opportunity now to bring the quality of youth sports collectibles to what we see now reflected in the regular market,” said Rovell, who founded Cllct -- a collectibles- and memorabilia-focused media company last year.
"You could actually have game-used patch cards, things from the tournament that if they’re not in the kids’ room, it’s in the parents’ room.”
I think sports cards and collectibles are in a bubble the way crypto and NFTs were in 2021. Full stop. You have one company - Fanatics - that now largely controls the supply in the card market, not unlike the way the Federal Reserve controls money supply. Its incentives to sell more cards are fundamentally at odds with the notion that scarcity creates value.
Still, some collectibles and game-used items will always retain value, much the way rare paintings hold their value, even if their worth ebbs and flows over time.
How does this translate to youth sports? Rovell is talking his book, to be sure, but I do think there is a need (or a want) for professional-quality sports cards and memorabilia in youth sports. It just won’t have the open-market value pro items do. To me, that feels like a “product” opportunity - i.e. better sports cards or items from a winning game or tournament - not a collectible opportunity.
TBH? I could think of 700 other interesting people to have on a youth sports panel before Darren Rovell.
🤔 A Consolidation Wake-Up Call
Rudolph brought the heat, as you would expect from a guy who stopped being a CEO a few days ago.
On the push to address industry fragmentation and roll-up the cornucopia of different platforms and tools youth sports families must use: “I think it’s a great thesis posed by investors who have little experience operating.”
This is something he echoed in our podcast interview with him this summer.
Rudolph expects some consolidation and integration, most likely within sports. But he does not envision a magic app that replaces a dozen others.
“It’s a lot easier to put (it) on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper than it is to execute it. Just putting companies together doesn’t do very much. You have to integrate the technology, integrate the consumer experience. Otherwise you make it a clunky experience for fans and that’s not going to work well.”
Three stats mentioned during the conference:
Industry deal volume is up 68% through Q2 of 2025
M&A activity is up almost 48%
An estimated 670+ startups currently operate in the youth sports ecosystem
💰 Private Equity’s Positive Impacts
Almost all media attention paid to private equity’s involvement in youth sports dwells not even on actual negative impacts, but potential ones.
Very little credence is given to the good PE capital can accomplish. Case in point: Dave Smith, the executive director of the Atlanta-based NASA Tophat soccer club, said they have to turn away over 1K athletes each year due to limits on fields and practice spaces.
But that is an issue PE can help fix with proper management and oversight responsibilities.
“If it’s handled the right way, it’s going to be fantastic,” Smith said. “More money, more kids can play, more fields.”
Also: If you ever wondered about PE’s interest being overblown … Smith said NASA Tophat fields about a half-dozen calls from PE each week.
🧢 Worth Noting Re: Specialization
The average youth sports participant plays at least 2 sports, according to data presented by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association at the summit.
SFIA found participants ages 6-12 play 1.9 sports on average, and kids 13-17 play 2.0. And both figures have increased since 2019.
Overall youth sports participation has grown 12% since the pandemic, according to SFIA.
🏈 Texas Punts On HS Girls Flag Again
The UIL said it needs to further study proposals for the sport during its annual legislative council meeting on Monday, declining to grant it varsity status for the second time in five months.
Texas does have high school girls flag — the Cowboys and Texans back about 160 teams statewide, according to The Dallas Morning News. And NFL Flag does consider it one of the 21 states with pilot programs.
But the UIL sanctioning it as a varsity sport would effectively be throwing jet fuel on an (already massive) fire.
Girls flag is a varsity sport in 17 states. That number figures to keep growing especially after the NFHS established a uniform rulebook — the national organization is a north star for many state governing bodies.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.