David Faulk played soccer for his high school, shown here, as well as for club teams before transitioning to football. His family paid thousands each year for his sports, a cost that approached $20,000 during his final years of high school. The money that families pour into youth sports has made it increasingly attractive to private investors, including private equity firms. (Photo courtesy of Tiffany Whitlow)
Courtney Hamby and her husband spend close to $6,000 per year for their daughter Ellie’s cheer and tumbling classes, competition fees and uniforms.
That doesn’t include their travel expenses for multiple out-of-town competitions, including hotel rooms, gas, meals, and sometimes even flights.
“This should be something that everyone gets to play, and it shouldn’t be only the people who can afford it,” said Hamby, who lives in Madison, Alabama. “But if you don’t have money, you’re not doing competitive cheer.”
Youth sports is now a $40 billion industry. It’s a sprawling, commercialized ecosystem where parents pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars each year for club teams, elite camps, out-of-state tournaments, private coaching sessions, professional-level uniforms and equipment, recruiting events, and even streaming subscription services to watch their kids play.
The amount of money involved — nearly double the annual revenue of the NFL — has made youth sports increasingly attractive to private investors, including private equity firms. State regulators are starting to take notice.
In April, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, began investigating possible anticompetitive practices in youth hockey, with a focus on the privately owned Black Bear Sports Group, the largest owner-operator of ice rinks in the United States. The company was the focus of an earlier investigation from USA Today for using its control of rinks, teams, leagues and even streaming services to create a youth hockey system that critics say have raised costs and limited choices for families.
“The Attorney General is looking into the matter concerning Black Bear Sports Group out of concern for the risk of consumer harm — including higher prices and reduced service quality — that can arise from diminished access to community and recreational services,” Danny Wimmer, Nessel’s press secretary, wrote in an email. He declined to offer further comment on the investigation.
A spokesperson for Black Bear Sports said the company is committed to growing the sport of hockey, and offers a free youth program for kids who’ve not previously participated in organized hockey.
“We’ve also saved community rinks that would otherwise have been lost: In Southern Michigan alone, five have closed since 2019, and the only one slated to reopen is a Kalamazoo rink Black Bear saved from closure,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office opened its own investigation into anticompetitive business practices in youth hockey last November. It centered on the privately owned Dallas Stars, a National Hockey League team whose board includes private equity executives. Another USA Today investigation detailed how the team used tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to corner the youth hockey market in Texas.
Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit news outlet, last year explored so-called “stay-to-play” schemes, a common tactic in youth sports in which kids whose teams travel for a tournament must stay in one of the tournament’s partner hotels in order to play.
This should be something that everyone gets to play, and it shouldn’t be only the people who can afford it.
– Courtney Hamby, a Madison, Alabama, mother whose daughter participates in competitive cheerleading.
Consolidating smaller leagues and facilities under one company can lock families into the only game in town. Then those youth sports monopolies can cut deals with related industries, such as tournament-specific hotels or elite sports camps.
Many cheer competitions like the ones Hamby’s daughter attends are run by Varsity Brands, a sports conglomerate acquired by private equity giant KKR for $4.5 billion in 2024 from investment giant Bain Capital, which acquired it in 2018 from two other private equity firms.
Varsity Brands has been mired in antitrust lawsuits for the past several years, including a confidential settlement in May over allegations it was involved in illegal price-fixing and a separate $82.5 million class action settlement in 2024. In that suit, cheer athletes’ families in 35 states said Varsity artificially inflated the costs of cheerleading camps, competitions and apparel. The company did not admit any wrongdoing.
Private investment can provide the capital that allows sports companies and youth leagues to respond to market demand for higher-quality coaching and services. And it can stand in the gap where public investment in recreation has fallen in recent decades, said Anthony Delli Paoli, director of the Rutgers University Youth Sports Research Council.
However, Delli Paoli said, it’s a problem when families “have to take out a second mortgage or max out their credit cards in order to participate in sport.”
“There’s no good justification for locking in parents and families and driving up the costs,” he said. “That’s clearly an antitrust issue.”
Consumed
Hamby, like many parents who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, remembers playing on sports teams as a kid in rec center gymnasiums and on neighborhood ballfields, coached by volunteers who often had more enthusiasm than experience.
Those days are mostly gone.
The average U.S. sports household spent $1,016 on its child’s primary sport in 2024, a 46% increase since 2019, according to The Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative.
Several parents who spoke with Stateline across multiple youth sports reported spending far more than that, from $2,000 to nearly $20,000 annually.
Multiple parents told Stateline they knew other families who had taken on extra work to pay their kids’ team fees, or had to make a choice between paying the fees or paying a household bill.
“It’s very easy to get lost in the travel (sports) world and make it your whole life. I see so many people do it,” said Hillary Harris, another Madison mom whose 14-year-old son plays travel baseball.
“You get consumed with it because you’re thinking, ‘My kid’s going to go to (a Division 1 school) and play baseball, and this is how they’re going to get there.’”
Many parents are willing, or feel compelled, to spend thousands to help their kid be successful in a sport they love, to keep them from lagging behind their peers, or as an investment in a potential college or professional sports career.
That captive customer base is increasingly attractive to private investors.
In 2024, two of the world’s most prominent private equity investors rolled up their youth sports properties under a new parent company, Unrivaled Sports, which manages facilities and tournaments for baseball, softball, flag football and other sports, including partnerships with MLB Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. and Olympic skateboarder Shaun White.
Former NFL quarterback Eli Manning’s private equity firm Brand Velocity Group acquired RCX Sports in June; RCX manages the licenses of the official youth sports programs of all the major professional sports leagues including the NFL, MLB and the NBA.
Earlier this year, a Chicago-based private equity firm acquired LiveBarn, a subscription-based service that lets family and friends stream amateur hockey and other sports from thousands of venues across the United States and Canada.
And 3STEP Sports, one of the nation’s largest youth sports club organizations, controlling more than 5,000 clubs across all 50 states, has been backed by a Washington, D.C. based private equity firm called Juggernaut Capital since 2019.
In June, congressional lawmakers held a hearing on private equity’s growing role in the commercialization of youth sports, an event they titled “Field of Fees.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, have cosponsored a bill that would ban private equity firms from investing in youth sports unless they can prove they don’t use predatory practices.
“Youth sports should not be a luxury good,” Deluzio told constituents in April at a community hearing he held in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Deluzio said kids get left behind their peers when their parents can’t keep up with the rising costs.
“The big reason for that is that youth sports are getting swallowed up by private equity vulture investors that are seeing dollar signs instead of community,” he said.
Bryan Finnerty, founder and CEO of a 220,000-square-foot sports center in Canton, Michigan, and founder of a Michigan venture capital firm, said in written testimony submitted to Congress that his sports center wouldn’t exist without private investment.
Done right, Finnerty said, such investment can strengthen communities, expand access and create more sports opportunities for children.
But “when short-term financial goals become more important than the children and families those organizations exist to serve, it is appropriate to ask difficult questions,” he said.
‘Well worth it’
Tiffany Whitlow’s son David found the kind of success many sports parents dream of for their kids.
He started playing sports at age 3, eventually specializing in soccer and playing on travel teams. Whitlow estimates the family spent a few thousand dollars a year on sports when he was younger, a number that surpassed $10,000 per year as he grew older and approached $20,000 shortly before he graduated.
During David’s senior year of high school, the school’s football coach came to a soccer practice looking for a kicker. David volunteered. His family invested in extra coaching, gym memberships and training to get him ready to play.
Now he’s a kicker on the football team for Alabama A&M University, a Division I school.
Whitlow said her family’s investment was “well worth it.” She plans to do the same for her younger son, who is 3 and just started tee ball.
“Me and my husband both believe you learn the core competencies for life through sports,” she said. “You learn how to be on time, you learn how to work on a team. Those kinds of things really prepare you to be the best kind of human and adult you can be.”
Hamby said her daughter loves cheer — and she’s good at it. Participating has given her confidence and helped her make close friends, gifts that are hard to measure in dollars.
“It’s finding something that they can be proud of and I love that for her,” Hamby said. “I want her to feel like she’s exceptionally good at something.
“For me, those are good things that you don’t see, but I’m paying for that, too. It comes with the sport.”
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Alabama Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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Author: Anna Claire Vollers