Private equity has started heavily investing in youth sports because parents now pay out their ass for every organized activity their kids do and are made to feel like lesser parents if they don’t.
Private equity has merely noticed and will come in to finish the job.
This as the welath inequality gap increases ,and the middle class evaporates, there's an entire cottage industry that caters to more affluent families, in all areas of childhood development, be it youth sports, schooling and academics , dance and the arts ...
American business are quickly finding it's easier and more profitable to cater to a smaller wealthier group than to offer affordable services to the masse.
They are destroying everything that they touch. Every time the wealthy get more tax cuts, they invest in private equity and they take over another industry, whether it is single-family housing, local veterinary services, youth sports or bankrupting large corporations for profit.
There are recreation leagues and club teams in every sport. Club teams travel the country 5-6 times each summer to play in sponsored tournaments. Club teams in many cases are run by a specific High School coach. They are recruiting the best players to their H.S. program. Thousands of dollars in fees to the club doesn't include travel costs for parents. The carrot is the illusion that college coaches are watching players and you'll get a scholarship. Some top tier club teams don't charge fees to the top team players. The lower teams pay for everything. It's absolute corruption. It's a money printing machine.
I can only speak to my area, but we still have rec leagues for kids to play that don't require anything insane to be a part of. The cost is maybe like $100-150 to sign up for the season, no travel required.
I think an underrated aspect is just how hard it is for people with little money to be able to get their kids to/from everything. Often times they're working odd hours, evenings and weekends, when kids have practices/games. This is especially hard if you're a single parent even if you HAD the money, you don't have the time. If you make under $50,000/year you might not have reliable transportation, or live in a part of town where it's safe for your kids to be at a field for soccer practice, so you have to get them involved in leagues in other areas of town, which continues to complicate everything.
In my hometown almost every park had its own league of 4-8 teams. After two months the top two teams from each park played in a tournament. It was all run by the city but all the kids were geographically separated meaning we could walk or ride our bikes to practice or games until the tournament started.
Now we had to drive our kids 20 minutes to different parks all around town because there aren’t enough kids to field more than 6 teams. The population size is similar but now there are so many activities that kids can choose from and those that are very good are usually on travel teams.
Its deeper than that I think. Parents are constantly being sold this idea that if they dont pay large amounts of money for sports, then their kid is falling behind. And if they pay a large amount of money, then their kid will get a scholarship/go pro, which is nonsense
The other problem is that in blue-chip sports the rec leagues won’t allow them to play the sport in high school or sometimes even middle-school.
Around here, if you want to play baseball in middle and high school, you have to be on a travel team. The rec leaguers are miles behind in development where the travel ball kids are so they have no chance of making the school teams.
So the rec leagues are fine if you just want to kid your kid a chance to play, but they’re useless for making sure your kid is a good enough player to be able to play on school teams.
I 100% understand what you are saying and what the issue is but how do you fix it? People willing to pay will always have access to better coaches and development and in what seems to be be a merit based society (obviously not always true) but the best players will play. Government funding to low income areas of course but we can't get them to house the homeless
The biggest issue w rec leagues are that people barely volunteer. I’ve reffed, coached, etc and 90% of people expect to get through it doing jack squat.
Rich and upper middle class kids are the only ones that can afford to be junior athletes even though whats playing baseball or basketball actually cost like $40 bucks for a bat, a ball, some gloves? It’s the rich and upper middle class parents that turn it into this luxury thing demanding uniforms, upgraded ball fields, travel, etc.
These parents even spend money to coach their kin, send them to summer camps and they know there not kind to be some future athlete, it’s just for fun, but they take a lot of the fun out of it. I’ve seen kids treat sports and dance like they were there careers, ruin their bodies even, kids it’s okay , it’s just a game.
Best part though ? These families will spend all this money and some poor kid from the hood will still come along and beat them to the major leagues. Ahh good times.
Man we really might just be evolving into a morlock/eloi species aren’t we ?
Kids' sports are becoming more and more expensive as a new study found it costs an average of nearly $1,500 per kid in 2024 to be in a sport - up 46 percent from 2019.
This has particularly impacted kids who come from low-income homes.
“Only 2 percent of kids who were playing organized soccer in America came from households that made less than $50,000,” Donovan said in an interview, the day after the epic loss. "Meaning, if you don’t make $50,000, your kid cannot play organized soccer.”
In 2016, my friend kept track of all the expenses for his daughter's travel team. That included the fee for the team, the cost each week to enter a tournament, the hotels, the eating out, the gas, etc. Anything extra they did that they wouldn't do at home.
His excel spreadsheet had the cost at 16k. This was soccer
Travel ball has ruined sports. Think of baseball, where i am it costs 2500 just to be on the team. And then 50-100 each week for the tournament. Then the travel expenses each and every week. Plus the lost time sitting around on the weekends instead of earning or doing something productive on your house.
My kid was a cheerleader for almost 10 years. She did recreational (rec) cheer, school cheer, and All-Star cheer, simultaneously (her choice). Yes, it was insane.
Recently, there was a class action lawsuit against Varsity Brands, the 900 lb. gorilla and almost-monopoly of the cheer world. Depending on how long your athlete cheered and what documentation you could provide, the payouts were ginormous,
I hadn’t saved all of our receipts, so I only got back $6200-ish. One cheer mom reported getting $11K and if memory serves, one parent received $18K.
That should tell you just how expensive cheer is. 😵💫
Wait... your fee doesn't include tournament fees? What are you paying $2,500 for? We do 12sh tournaments, facility access, 22 week training programs, and 3 uniforms all for $2,400.
No, where i am at, the fee is for uniforms and practice at their facility. Most travel ball organizations here are part of bigger organizations so they pay their coaches a stipend. Hell, I have been at tournaments when these kids get out of chartered busses that are rapped in their team name.
Now, this is the best organization in my city and I know there are cheaper options.
H.S. coaches run clubs. They recruit the best players to their club/school to win titles. Open enrollment where you choose your school opened this loophole. Unintended consequences.
Who the hell is spending that kind of money? This has to just be for traveling leagues. Just don’t play in traveling leagues, I never played traveling and my kid isn’t either m, whatever rec league at the school is good enough
School sports teams in California are free, including travel. It's illegal to demand money. I would be surprised if most other states aren't the same. Don't schools have boosters and fundraisers?
…all the sports compete, that’s the whole point of having games between schools. The most we ever spent was on cleats and maybe the uniform? not sure about that one.
They can, but there are barriers there as well. Both in terms of money and time. A lot of it is time.
It takes time out of your day to coach a team. It takes time out of your day to run a league. It takes time out of your day to have the time to practice - there is a reason long distance running is becoming an elite sport. Not because running for a long time is elite, but because you have to have the time to be able to train.
That's basically what Little League and AYSO are. But for some people that's not good enough for the child so they insist that they join some competitive travel team. Then they complain that sports are too expensive and time consuming.
I can weigh on my experiences volunteering for a youth club in NE England. The sessions for the youth club are £3 for the Saturday session. So affordable for most families. I can't remember exactly, but the teams have a monthly subscription of about £30/month. So not affordable by all.
I know there are a few private schools in the area and some of them are extremely expensive. That said, I've met the coach who runs one of them (a former professional football) and he is, to be fair, excellent.
KopOut | 6 hours ago
Private equity has started heavily investing in youth sports because parents now pay out their ass for every organized activity their kids do and are made to feel like lesser parents if they don’t.
Private equity has merely noticed and will come in to finish the job.
abrandis | 4 hours ago
This as the welath inequality gap increases ,and the middle class evaporates, there's an entire cottage industry that caters to more affluent families, in all areas of childhood development, be it youth sports, schooling and academics , dance and the arts ...
American business are quickly finding it's easier and more profitable to cater to a smaller wealthier group than to offer affordable services to the masse.
Mo_Jack | 44 minutes ago
They are destroying everything that they touch. Every time the wealthy get more tax cuts, they invest in private equity and they take over another industry, whether it is single-family housing, local veterinary services, youth sports or bankrupting large corporations for profit.
andersonb47 | 5 hours ago
Ah yes the Private Equity Boogeyman.
disignore | 3 hours ago
it isn't actually PE, it is greed
andersonb47 | 2 hours ago
Yep
wundabredd | 7 hours ago
There are recreation leagues and club teams in every sport. Club teams travel the country 5-6 times each summer to play in sponsored tournaments. Club teams in many cases are run by a specific High School coach. They are recruiting the best players to their H.S. program. Thousands of dollars in fees to the club doesn't include travel costs for parents. The carrot is the illusion that college coaches are watching players and you'll get a scholarship. Some top tier club teams don't charge fees to the top team players. The lower teams pay for everything. It's absolute corruption. It's a money printing machine.
mojo276 | 6 hours ago
I can only speak to my area, but we still have rec leagues for kids to play that don't require anything insane to be a part of. The cost is maybe like $100-150 to sign up for the season, no travel required.
I think an underrated aspect is just how hard it is for people with little money to be able to get their kids to/from everything. Often times they're working odd hours, evenings and weekends, when kids have practices/games. This is especially hard if you're a single parent even if you HAD the money, you don't have the time. If you make under $50,000/year you might not have reliable transportation, or live in a part of town where it's safe for your kids to be at a field for soccer practice, so you have to get them involved in leagues in other areas of town, which continues to complicate everything.
Matthew212 | 5 hours ago
The other hard part is what used to be a neighborhood thing has turned into "kids from all across the city"
_Damien_X | 2 hours ago
In my hometown almost every park had its own league of 4-8 teams. After two months the top two teams from each park played in a tournament. It was all run by the city but all the kids were geographically separated meaning we could walk or ride our bikes to practice or games until the tournament started.
Now we had to drive our kids 20 minutes to different parks all around town because there aren’t enough kids to field more than 6 teams. The population size is similar but now there are so many activities that kids can choose from and those that are very good are usually on travel teams.
Matthew212 | 2 hours ago
Its deeper than that I think. Parents are constantly being sold this idea that if they dont pay large amounts of money for sports, then their kid is falling behind. And if they pay a large amount of money, then their kid will get a scholarship/go pro, which is nonsense
UnderABig_W | 4 hours ago
The other problem is that in blue-chip sports the rec leagues won’t allow them to play the sport in high school or sometimes even middle-school.
Around here, if you want to play baseball in middle and high school, you have to be on a travel team. The rec leaguers are miles behind in development where the travel ball kids are so they have no chance of making the school teams.
So the rec leagues are fine if you just want to kid your kid a chance to play, but they’re useless for making sure your kid is a good enough player to be able to play on school teams.
msy113 | 4 hours ago
I 100% understand what you are saying and what the issue is but how do you fix it? People willing to pay will always have access to better coaches and development and in what seems to be be a merit based society (obviously not always true) but the best players will play. Government funding to low income areas of course but we can't get them to house the homeless
frumply | 4 hours ago
The biggest issue w rec leagues are that people barely volunteer. I’ve reffed, coached, etc and 90% of people expect to get through it doing jack squat.
watchingwandering | 5 hours ago
Rich and upper middle class kids are the only ones that can afford to be junior athletes even though whats playing baseball or basketball actually cost like $40 bucks for a bat, a ball, some gloves? It’s the rich and upper middle class parents that turn it into this luxury thing demanding uniforms, upgraded ball fields, travel, etc.
These parents even spend money to coach their kin, send them to summer camps and they know there not kind to be some future athlete, it’s just for fun, but they take a lot of the fun out of it. I’ve seen kids treat sports and dance like they were there careers, ruin their bodies even, kids it’s okay , it’s just a game.
Best part though ? These families will spend all this money and some poor kid from the hood will still come along and beat them to the major leagues. Ahh good times.
Man we really might just be evolving into a morlock/eloi species aren’t we ?
Dry_burrito | 3 hours ago
Best part is, treating this shit like a job causes kids to burn out and run away from the sport.
Worst part, they get pushed too hard and tear their acl or something.
[OP] theindependentonline | 7 hours ago
Kids' sports are becoming more and more expensive as a new study found it costs an average of nearly $1,500 per kid in 2024 to be in a sport - up 46 percent from 2019.
This has particularly impacted kids who come from low-income homes.
“Only 2 percent of kids who were playing organized soccer in America came from households that made less than $50,000,” Donovan said in an interview, the day after the epic loss. "Meaning, if you don’t make $50,000, your kid cannot play organized soccer.”
Fringelunaticman | 6 hours ago
1500 per kid? Thats laughable.
In 2016, my friend kept track of all the expenses for his daughter's travel team. That included the fee for the team, the cost each week to enter a tournament, the hotels, the eating out, the gas, etc. Anything extra they did that they wouldn't do at home.
His excel spreadsheet had the cost at 16k. This was soccer
Travel ball has ruined sports. Think of baseball, where i am it costs 2500 just to be on the team. And then 50-100 each week for the tournament. Then the travel expenses each and every week. Plus the lost time sitting around on the weekends instead of earning or doing something productive on your house.
LadySiren | 6 hours ago
My kid was a cheerleader for almost 10 years. She did recreational (rec) cheer, school cheer, and All-Star cheer, simultaneously (her choice). Yes, it was insane.
Recently, there was a class action lawsuit against Varsity Brands, the 900 lb. gorilla and almost-monopoly of the cheer world. Depending on how long your athlete cheered and what documentation you could provide, the payouts were ginormous,
I hadn’t saved all of our receipts, so I only got back $6200-ish. One cheer mom reported getting $11K and if memory serves, one parent received $18K.
That should tell you just how expensive cheer is. 😵💫
KommanderKeen-a42 | 6 hours ago
Wait... your fee doesn't include tournament fees? What are you paying $2,500 for? We do 12sh tournaments, facility access, 22 week training programs, and 3 uniforms all for $2,400.
Everything else is spot on though.
Fringelunaticman | 5 hours ago
No, where i am at, the fee is for uniforms and practice at their facility. Most travel ball organizations here are part of bigger organizations so they pay their coaches a stipend. Hell, I have been at tournaments when these kids get out of chartered busses that are rapped in their team name.
Now, this is the best organization in my city and I know there are cheaper options.
KommanderKeen-a42 | 4 hours ago
Yeah. That's how we are...35+ teams and part of an organization.
Tournament schedule sets the team fee.
AliMcGraw | 3 hours ago
Travel sports parents are INSANE. like every last one. I don't get it at all.
Synergythepariah | 3 hours ago
>Plus the lost time sitting around on the weekends instead of earning or doing something productive on your house.
...Do you just treat weekends as more days to work?
Fringelunaticman | 3 hours ago
No, but i own a house and need to keep up with it. Or my yard or the million other things that need to be done that I have no time for.
I didnt know that keeping up with your responsibilities was such a bad thing?
Dry_burrito | 3 hours ago
He was more focused on "earning" part I recon.
dxk3355 | 6 hours ago
The other part isn’t the money but the time; the travel baseball kids are doing 6 days a week of it. I can’t understand why this is the way it became.
lrodhubbard | 5 hours ago
Like everything else the answer is late stage capitalism. Gotta squeeze as much out of families as they possibly can.
redyellowblue5031 | 5 hours ago
Has been for a while. It’s why I didn’t do sports in the 90s. Just affording the gas to get there was tough, let alone all the gear and fees.
austin101123 | 5 hours ago
What happened to school teams?
wundabredd | 5 hours ago
H.S. coaches run clubs. They recruit the best players to their club/school to win titles. Open enrollment where you choose your school opened this loophole. Unintended consequences.
Jameswithoutfrontier | 5 hours ago
Music, art, and theater went long ago. Might as well make everything unreachable.
LeatherRebel5150 | 5 hours ago
Who the hell is spending that kind of money? This has to just be for traveling leagues. Just don’t play in traveling leagues, I never played traveling and my kid isn’t either m, whatever rec league at the school is good enough
LadySiren | 4 hours ago
Even school sports are spendy these days. My daughter’s school cheer teams all competed, so it was pretty expensive.
flloyd | an hour ago
School sports teams in California are free, including travel. It's illegal to demand money. I would be surprised if most other states aren't the same. Don't schools have boosters and fundraisers?
LeatherRebel5150 | 18 minutes ago
…all the sports compete, that’s the whole point of having games between schools. The most we ever spent was on cleats and maybe the uniform? not sure about that one.
ChouffeMeUp | 6 hours ago
Can’t the parents get together and form their own leagues?
horseradishstalker | 6 hours ago
They can, but there are barriers there as well. Both in terms of money and time. A lot of it is time.
It takes time out of your day to coach a team. It takes time out of your day to run a league. It takes time out of your day to have the time to practice - there is a reason long distance running is becoming an elite sport. Not because running for a long time is elite, but because you have to have the time to be able to train.
ChouffeMeUp | 5 hours ago
Yes, that’s the model that is used in the UK. Usually a load of dads get together and coach a team, look after travel to away games etc.
flloyd | an hour ago
That's basically what Little League and AYSO are. But for some people that's not good enough for the child so they insist that they join some competitive travel team. Then they complain that sports are too expensive and time consuming.
RelicBookends | 3 hours ago
My niece was just complaining about this. It is such a shame it costs do much.
Libertyforzombies | 3 hours ago
I can weigh on my experiences volunteering for a youth club in NE England. The sessions for the youth club are £3 for the Saturday session. So affordable for most families. I can't remember exactly, but the teams have a monthly subscription of about £30/month. So not affordable by all.
I know there are a few private schools in the area and some of them are extremely expensive. That said, I've met the coach who runs one of them (a former professional football) and he is, to be fair, excellent.
mwdeuce | 4 hours ago
Always have been honestly
ZachF8119 | 5 hours ago
They were when I was a kid.
You just didn’t realize.