There are very few American industries that private equity has not leached into, and investors are now setting their sights on the multibillion-dollar youth sports industry, with numerous sports receiving an influx of funds. But not everyone is on board. Parents and politicians across the spectrum have raised concerns about the future of athletics under this business model.
How is private equity getting involved in youth sports?
It began when the Covid-19 pandemic threw a curveball to youth sports across the United States. Local leagues “stopped building rinks and fields and stopped maintaining the ones they had, and no federal agency exists to coordinate what replaced them,” said Fast Company. A pathway for private equity appeared.
Private ventures find youth sports appealing because they offer “pricing power that almost nothing else in consumer spending can match,” said Fast Company. American families “spend more than $40 billion a year on youth sports — nearly twice the NFL’s annual revenue.” There was also a 46% increase in the amount families spent on youth sports from 2019 to 2025, according to an Aspen Institute survey. The rise in spending grew at “twice the rate of price inflation in the U.S. economy during the same period.” Private equity has used this surge of youth sports dollars to invest in almost every sport played by American children.
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One of the most notable ventures in private equity sports is Black Bear Sports Group, a firm that in “less than a decade grew into the single largest owner-operator of ice rinks in the U.S., with 47 facilities across 11 states,” said USA Today. Black Bear, the sports arm of Blackstreet Capital Holdings, has used this leverage to “steer families into its own costly ecosystem of leagues, tournaments and fees.” Families “must spend hundreds more each year or risk being shut out.”
Black Bear’s model has changed large swaths of youth hockey from a “network of community-based nonprofits into a vertically integrated, for-profit system with fewer checks on how money flows,” said USA Today. And other sports have been similarly impacted. Brand Velocity Group, a private equity firm led by Eli Manning, has purchased the “company that manages and controls the official youth sports licenses for most major U.S. professional leagues,” said Forbes, while investment firm KKR now owns Varsity Brands, one of the largest producers of youth uniforms.
How are the players and families being impacted?
Many say the influx of private equity is creating a pay-to-play culture that can be difficult to escape. There are also questions about whether parents are being “forced into buying bundled services they don’t want,” said USA Today. “We’re all paying so much money, and each year, they take away more and more,” Stephanie Kurzweil, a New Jersey hockey mom who paid $4,600 for her son’s spot on a Black Bear-owned team in 2023, said to USA Today. “They are in it for the money. There is no thought for the kids.”
An obsession with centering youth sports around traveling is another common element of private equity that is creating angst among parents. One soccer mom “was shocked when the coach made a surprise announcement that the team was going to compete in scrimmages in Europe that cost $3,500 per player,” said Intelligencer. “I was thinking, ‘There are plenty of teams we are losing to right here in our state,’” the mom, Elizabeth, told Intelligencer. “Why do we need to go lose to teams abroad?”
As a result of this increase in private money, skills and talent level “no longer act as a barrier to entry,” said Intelligencer. “When I competed, travel was more like you had to be really good. It was intimidating, and most people did not make it,” Amanda Pennel, a Georgia mother who played travel basketball as a teenager and whose son plays basketball now, told Intelligencer. Now it “doesn’t matter if you’re the worst basketball player anyone’s ever met; there’s a travel team for you.”
It’s not just regular parents who are complaining. Some high-profile individuals are also sounding the alarm about this private equity surge. “Investor money has warped youth sports in another way: It has individualized and professionalized the experience,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), whose son plays in a Black Bear-owned hockey league, said at The Atlantic.
It is a marked change given that for “most of the past century, youth sports were managed primarily by local park departments, parent-led leagues and nonprofit groups,” said Murphy. But the “high-pressure environment, driven by parents and profit-hungry owners alike, has produced a youth-sports culture in which profit and individual achievement matter more than teamwork or character building.”
What has the larger response been?
As private equity’s stranglehold on youth sports expands, many are looking to the government to intervene — and it appears that Washington, D.C., is taking notice. Several lawmakers have been “looking at the skyrocketing costs of youth sports and trying to figure out ways to regulate private equity’s role in the industry, where rising costs have priced out many young athletes,” said Cronkite News. Democrats in both chambers of Congress recently introduced the Let Kids Play Act, a bill that “would protect youth sports from so-called ‘vulture investors’ that Democrats accuse of exploiting youth sports.”
The bill, if passed, would “ban junk fees, loosely defined as fees that are hidden, offer little or nothing in return or are added only after an initial price is disclosed or paid” and “hold private equity firms liable for certain violations,” said Cronkite News. Beyond this bill, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce also held a bipartisan hearing that “scrutinized the role of private equity in youth sports,” said CNBC, another “potential sign that Congress could be inching closer to intervening.”
“Consolidation is driving up costs for families while limiting access to more affordable, community-based options,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Calif.), the chair of the House Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education subcommittee, said during the hearing. The “simple reality is that too many children are being priced out. It’s not that they lack talent or determination; it’s that their families simply cannot afford the rising costs.”
Not everyone is happy that Congress is thinking of regulating the private equity extravaganza. “Some of the largest youth sports groups acknowledge a need for regulation but defend the role of private capital in expanding access and meeting demand,” said Cronkite News. “I agree that there is a problem with youth sports,” Matt Kanne, the CEO of youth basketball operator Open Gym Premier, said to the outlet. “The infrastructure of youth sports is underfunded and ill-equipped nationally. But why block investments?”
