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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: |
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🏛️ Youth Sports A Major Focus In Congress |
 | "Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future" |
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The House Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee held a hearing on youth sports yesterday. |
The hearing's title was a tad dramatic — "Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future" — but the content was pretty substantive as things tend to go in Washington these days. |
Four witnesses fielded questions from a group of backbenchers for a little over 90 minutes: |
Tom Farrey, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program Steve Boyle, 2-4-1 Sports Katherine Van Dyck, American Economic Liberties John O'Sullivan, Changing the Game Project
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The main topics of discussion: Youth sports participation rates, access barriers, rising costs and private equity's involvement in the space. |
Some quick highlights and takeaways: |
Van Dyck was the most forceful witness. An FTC attorney during the Biden Administration, she came in guns blazing against PE's youth sports involvement and called on Congress to curb PE with existing and new antitrust laws. |
She said there should be a ban on vertical integration and consolidation in the space, name-checking Black Bear Sports Group as an example. Van Dyck also suggested platforms that sell exposure to college coaches and recruiters could be making illegal claims. |
The other witnesses expressed some reservation about PE and its role, but their broad strokes take was gaps and shortfalls in the traditional youth sports model have created vacuums that PE has filled. They mainly focused on the benefits of youth sports and ways to fund recreational and school sports to create opportunities, improve experiences and grow participation in line with the campaign to reach 63% participation by 2030. |
Farrey also played a big role in the hearing. He reiterated his idea to use federal sports betting tax revenues to fund youth sports. He also said there is a need for more federal data on youth sports so the information can trickle down and inform decisions and strategies at the state and local levels. |
Another interesting idea from Farrey: All youth sports organizations — not just ones that fall under a NGB's umbrella — should be required to register with U.S. Center for SafeSport and to adhere to its compliance and safety measures. He said only about a third of orgs currently sit under an NGB and registration would be incentivized with offerings like subsidized background checks. |
Farrey also implored Congress to consider the youth sports impacts of any legislative measures addressing college sports. |
The hearing was undeniably politicized at points. Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) referred to Van Dyck as "the Democratic witness" and the liberal committee members grooved her several fastballs in their questioning. Farrey had to weave around a question about transgender athletes in girls sports from Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.). |
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🤝 Ankored, Players Health Launch Partnership |
Ankored's compliance and safety automation will be provided to the entirety of the Players Health network, the companies announced. |
The strategic partnership is being billed as an integrated platform to manage all compliance and safety functions in real time. |
Background checks Training Safety education Forms and waivers Age/grade verification Health data Compliance tracking
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Ankored said pairing its platform with Players Health's risk and mitigation practices will provide operators with "a significant reduction in administrative burden and a clearer path to meeting safety and insurance standards." |
"Ankored gives everyone in youth sports a single source of truth for real-time safety and compliance — so organizations can protect kids, reduce risk, and operate with total confidence. This partnership with Players Health is a unique opportunity to help organizations close safety gaps with a 360 degree approach. -- Seth Lieberman, Ankored CEO |
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Quick Take: The selling points here echo those of Tourney Direct, who we featured in a co-branded report recently — taking the un-sexy, but incredibly essential, back-house operations and streamlining them in one central platform rather than relying on piecemeal services and tactics. |
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⛹️♀️ There Is a New Way to Play It Safe in Youth Sports* |
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Pomi can be a great teammate for sports parents, youth sports operators, and sports registration sites. They're focused on helping protect families from the financial burden that comes when young athletes are unexpectedly forced to the sideline. |
Pomi stands for "peace of mind insurance" and they provide two important youth sports coverages for parents: |
With Season Saver, parents can recoup up to $25,000 in nonrefundable team registration fees if their child misses all or a portion of the season due to injury or illness. |
With Player Protect, parents can get help with medical costs from sports injuries with up to $10,000 in gap medical coverage to address costs primary health insurance does not cover. |
For e-commerce and registration sites: Pomi's tech can seamlessly embed into your purchase path as a one-click add-on that can serve your customers, add more value and generate more revenue for your business. |
For leagues and teams: Pomi can work directly with you to help protect your budget and reduce workload. Coverage can replace your existing refund policy saving you time and headaches — parents can be refunded, but not at your expense. |
For sports parents: Checkout is simple whether you're purchasing through your league registration or directly on getpomi.com. Sign up is fast, easy, starts at just $10* and can be done even after the season starts. |
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Pomi is underwritten by Great American Insurance Company, which has an "A+" (Superior) rating from AM Best so you know they're one of the best. |
Millions of sports injuries happen every year. Help protect your athletes' finances with pomi. It can be a win-win for everyone. |
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*Sponsor |
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🏟️ Buying Sandlot Summit 2026 Speakers Unveiled | 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. | First up: John Stewart, CEO of Fastbreak AI | | One of our best podcast guests of the year, John just raised $40M in the second-largest Series A round ever in the youth sports industry for his less than 5-year-old tech company. In summarizing that news, I (Kyle) wrote: "That guy's gonna be a billionaire." Maybe so. What we do know for certain is that he'll be on stage in Philly April 14-15, 2026. | Want to join him? | Get early bird tickets right here. | Get VIP tickets right here. | If your organization would like group ticket pricing for 5 or more, or would like our sponsor deck, you can also contact dana@buyingsandlot.com. |
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📸 Flash Biometrics Teams Up With Oakley, Flag50 |
The facial recognition technology firm — a sister company of Zorts, a Buying Sandlot sponsor — will handle athlete and coach check-ins at the Oakley Icon Alliance Championships in February. |
The girls flag event, being held in conjunction with Flag50 — another one of our sponsors — will be held at the Los Angeles Chargers' practice facility. |
To keep the synergies going… |
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🔉 New Podcast: Flag50 CEO Jeran Fraser |
 | Building the GameChanger of Flag Football: Jeran Fraser, Founder of Flag50 |
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Jeran is the founder and CEO of Flag50, which aims to be the GameChanger for flag football. What does that mean? Easy, sport-specific scoring interface, deeper league and team management features, stats and data. |
Here are my (Kyle) 3 quick takes from the interview: |
1) Flying with a tailwind |
I watched a YouTube video last night about the sky highways across the North Atlantic that airlines try to predict will have the biggest tailwind for international flights. Pick the right lane, and the wind will literally carry you to London, saving time and money. |
That's how I feel about anyone building in flag football right now. Huge tailwind, with tons of open ocean ahead. Given the relative new-ness of the organized version the sport (especially amongst girls), the ecosystem is less developed than many other sports. Combined with rising participation rates and an incoming wave of interest (Olympics), small fortunes of the 8-figure variety will be made here. |
2) Sport-specific vs. sport-agnostic |
Maybe my biggest trend of the year in youth sports, at all levels: Is it better to build, buy or consolidate in one sport, or across sports? In other words, sports verticalization? Everyone has a different answer. What's fascinating is that the companies and platforms that started as sport-specific - as examples: GameChanger in tech, NY Empire Baseball in club - view the next leg of growth as going multi-sport. Meanwhile, the multi-sport companies - think Fastbreak or Hudl - see their tech and AI as powerful enough to address sport-specific needs. And then you have Flag50 and Pioneer Sports (soccer) who are like, nope, we're going to own the whole sport and go 10 miles deep. |
3) Collect verifiable data |
Another huge trend is athlete data— from personal info, to stats and other raw attribute measurement. It lives in 100 different silos right now, which is a problem that needs solving, but more important is how accurate it is. Having officials run the scoring app (vs. a parent or coach) inherently gives more legitimacy to the stats. Perfect? No. But as youth stats become increasingly important as part of the overall recruiting picture, having data you can trust will be a paramount. I expect lots of development in this space next year. |
You can listen and subscribe to the Buying Sandlot podcast with the following links: |
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🦚 On The SportsEngine Beat |
Matt Hong — the president of USA Sports, which will be Versant's sports rights wing — was interviewed on Puck sports media reporter John Ourand's "The Varsity" podcast. |
The subject of SportsEngine and/or the sale scuttlebutt was never broached. But Hong reiterated the Comcast cable network spinoff expects big things from its digital brands (which includes SE) and discussed how a high rate of crossover between golf viewers and participants has fueled the synergistic success of Golf Channel, GolfNow and GolfPass. |
Hong conceded that outcome may not be as robust with other assets/sports in the portfolio. But he also talked up Versant's deal with LOVB, and SE is a major youth volleyball platform, and LOVB is literally a youth volleyball business. |
We should create a SportsEngine Sale-O-Meter graphic for future sends. |
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🔗 Youth Sports Links |
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Good game. |
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