This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
On Tuesday, we will launch our first in a series of surveys targeted at specific segments within youth sports to surface key benchmarking data in the highly-fragmented industry.
First up?
Facility owners and operators
Anyone who selected "facility owner or operator” in our new subscriber survey will receive a link to complete the survey— the results of which will be completely anonymized and presented in a premium report to subscribers.
If you would like to participate in that or future segment-specific surveys, make sure you complete our general subscriber survey so we can know which part or parts of the industry you work in.
In the email today:
📺 SportsEngine Play, Pixellot Extend Streaming Deal
NBC SportsEngine Play and AI-driven Pixellot have reached a new multi-year deal continuing their partnership helping youth sports facilities nationwide establish free streaming. The program is already up and running in over 10K complexes.
What Pixellot’s tech brings to the table:
Automated live coverage of every game
All angles captured
Live video integrated with the SportsEngine Play streaming solution
This partnership won the “Partnership of the Year” award at the 2025 Sports Technology Awards in London, and was selected as finalist for “Best Technology Collaboration” by Sports Business Journal’s annual Sports Business Awards: Tech.
Cool.
My take:
AI video and live streaming is a 🔥 hot space. By offering streaming to SportsEngine’s partners, Pixellot locks in market share and opens up the door to upsell other video offerings like analytics, and creates a firehose of data upon which to train AI.
🏨 Kalamazoo Hotels Agree To Youth Sports Tax
We told you roughly a month ago about the Michigan city’s plan to fund a proposed $40M sports complex by adding a 4% occupancy assessment to nearby hotels, with the revenues covering a 30-year bond.
The unique wrinkle: Lawmakers wouldn’t make the call on the tax, hotel owners would. And the latter are officially on board, overwhelmingly approving the plan in a special hotel operator referendum this week.
The measure received 82% support when the threshold to pass was only 60%.
Officials will now form a group to study and choose the best location for the complex among several potential spots.
My take:
Kalamazoo already has a 5% occupancy tax for hotels, so the all-in rate will climb to 9%. But even then the fact the referendum passed in a landslide should not surprise anyone.
The hotel industry knows just how good youth sports are for them, even if they have to sacrifice a little up front — the new assessment is not a direct tax on visitors - something a Kalamazoo official made very clear to us 😭 - so each hotel has to decide whether it will pass the costs to consumers or not.
It is also a reminder there are many ways to generate significant youth sports revenues through hotels than just stay-to-play practices.
And even if those are eventually deemed illegal, lawmakers will still utilize hotel taxes as a way to get facilities built and catalyze economic growth while having families, mainly from out of town, shoulder a good amount.
🏢 Other Youth Sports Facility News
Greenwich, Connecticut: Remember how we mentioned the idea of “IMG everywhere” in our deep-dive send on college revenue sharing earlier this week? Well, here you go.
The all-boys Brunswick School wants to build a 74K square foot indoor facility on its campus in the posh town. It would be primarily used by the school, but there would be limited access granted to youth teams and other schools in the region. The project reportedly faces zoning hurdles.
Judging by the rendering, it may also face some design hurdles.
Ocoee, Florida: Montierre Development has received approval to build a $1B -- yes, with a b -- complex on 150 acres in the Orlando suburb.
The plans include:
16 multi-purpose fields
Over 1K on-site hotel rooms
300K square feet of dining, entertainment and retail space
150K square feet of indoor sports facilities
You have to appreciate how developers figured out how to perfectly position baseball diamonds to maximize space— like Dave Thomas and square patties on the grill.
Ocala, Florida: A proposal to add a youth sports and entertainment complex to the World Equestrian Center’s grounds is under review. It would include multiple fields, an indoor facility, a restaurant and additional hotel rooms.
🤼♂️ An Inside Look At New Wrestling Training App
Most new apps aim to solve one problem, but BuFu addresses several more than that.
The platform — founded by Joe Kania, a former college wrestler with extensive marketing and media experience — allows wrestlers to connect with training partners, identify private coaches and locate available mat space at participating facilities.
The app has dating-style swiping functions, but it is also effectively a gym network.
Kania said he was driven to create it as a fix to the issues he used to encounter when he was a high school athlete in his native New Jersey.
The app is free to download, but membership is $100 a month.
Wrestling clubs and gyms can list themselves on the app with open availabilities for their facilities; members get unlimited access to all locations
Athletes can link up to work out together or hire private coaches (who they pay outside the app)
Each time there is a “check-in” for training within a mile of a participating facility, that facility is compensated by BuFu; coaches do not need to pay rent to provide private instruction
The app already has over 1K organic downloads — a milestone only about 2% of apps hit, Kania said — but the focus now is on athlete density. BuFu currently has 54 participating gyms in 21 states and the United Kingdom— Kania said sign-ups have ranged from D1 coaches and All-Americans to youth wrestlers.
The platform is sponsoring a clinic in Iowa next weekend hosted by Spencer Lee, a three-time NCAA champion who won a silver medal at the Paris Olympics.
My take:
©®TREND WATCH™: We’re doing a deep dive on these dating-style matchmaking apps in sports. Everyone needs a partner, or a coach. We’ll have more on these in the coming weeks.
📺 CNBC Covering Youth Sports Opportunity
CNBC's Brian Sullivan talks with Ariel Project Level's head of investments Jason Wright about the financial opportunities he sees in women's and youth sports.
“This is certainly not a social impact fund— this is about commercial return for our investors.”
Good interview — showing youth sports investment going mainstream.
🍁 Assessing The Industry’s Northern Exposure
We have already established how tariffs can impact youth sports families from an economic standpoint.
But how about culturally?
That is a question a recent report by The Globe and Mail tackles.
Specifically: There is typically constant back-and-forth by youth sports leagues and teams that will travel to the U.S. or Canada for competitions. But what about now in the era of tariffs, currency weakness, the “51st state” discourse, surging Canadian nationalism, fears of border agent harassment and myriad other factors?
There are definitely Canadian families, teams and organizations opting to boycott or skip U.S. competitions for both economic and political reasons, the report found. But there are also others that are forging forward as usual.
Canadian tournaments seem to be filling up faster, some observers said, while U.S. organizers have not seen significant drop-offs of Canadian entrants. Many American organizers feel they may be unfairly getting the brunt of frustration for things they have no control over
Elite Canadian athletes — those looking to earn D1 scholarships — are almost all business as usual, as they feel they cannot pass up opportunities for exposure in America.
🚔 Youth Sports Orgs Victimized By Thefts
In Minnesota: Eight men face felony racketeering charges for allegedly stealing close to $200K in pull top charitable gambling funds from over two dozen bars and restaurants. The money was earmarked for youth sports and other community activities.
In Maryland: Thieves stole copper wiring from light structures at two fields in Carroll County, the latest in a series of similar crimes in the state. The repairs will cost about $18K and the facilities are now off-limits when the sun goes down, wreaking havoc on league schedules.
In Pennsylvania: An Anderson County softball field’s concession stand was vandalized. Money was stolen, a microwave and water dispenser were destroyed and a fire extinguisher was emptied all over the stands.
🔗 More Youth Sports Links
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Good game.