Youth Sports Facilities Interest Is Not Slowing Down: Takeaways From Capacity Sports Group CEO

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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.

"It's not in every corner of America like baseball or basketball or soccer. There's a lot of opportunity as lacrosse continues to grow. It's becoming an Olympic sport and it's going to get a lot more eyeballs on it."

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.

"There are a lot of mom and pop tournament companies out there that would benefit from being with us, and we'd benefit to have them too. In every part of this country, there are good, hard-working operators that run events that we would love to add to our our system and then provide better experiences back to the consumer and the parents."

Kocher's take on private equity and youth sports:

"The experience factor in youth sports hasn't really been awesome throughout the years. Private equity, if it does anything, it's going to professionalize the industry a little bit, which I think is better for the athlete. Youth sports has been really fragmented and anybody can get in, anybody can do whatever they want. By professionalizing, I think it will be ultimately better for the athlete and the families, and definitely for the communities."

Listen to the full interview: