Are Youth Sports Being Professionalized By Adults?

Last week I wrote about the professionalization of youth sports as it relates to our children. Today I would like to write about how the professionalization of youth sports is a huge moneymaker for the adults who seem to be pushing this phenomenon. Now for a disclaimer, I am neither in economist nor a budget expert; however, in doing the research for my previous article on the professionalization of youth sports, I noticed a number of examples where by the adults are making money off the parents of our children and again, it seems to be all about selling that elusive college scholarship possibility to the parent.

In researching last weeks, post the 2017, the Time magazine article “How Kids Sports Became a $15 Billion Industry”, Sean Gregory discuss not only how kids are specializing in a single sport at earlier and earlier ages and traveling further and further away to participate in travel and select events, but businesses seem to be profiting off the children. Some examples are as follows:

· The United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) generates $13.7 million in revenue with a CEO who makes $831,000 a year in compensation. This organization holds tournaments around the country and ranks teams in basketball, baseball and softball with rankings starting at four years old for baseball and six years old for softball;

· NBC bought SportsNIGN, a scheduling and social media application and reconstituted it as SPORTSENGINE;

· Dicks Sports bought companies that specialize in online scheduling and score tracking;

· Time Inc. launched Sports Illustrated Play and has invested over $1 billion in youth sports marketing;

· Travel Team USA books youth sports travel to tournaments and had bookings double each year during the great recession; and,

· Coach up matches young athletes with coaches across the country with Stephen Curry being both an investor and being used to market the company.

Of the businesses that have invested in youth sports listed above the one that I personally have the biggest issue with is USSSA. Think about this, USSSA ranks teams as young as four-years old in baseball and 6 years old in softball. When I was coaching youth soccer, I coached four, five and six-year old’s and just getting them to stay on the field was hard enough so in my mind it is unbelievable that anyone could actually rank a four-year-old baseball or six-year-old softball team, and these rankings are national; again, making me wonder how can anyone rank and the thousands of four-year old baseball and six-year-old softball teams across the nation. Most sports experts can’t agree on ranking the top 25 NCAA football or basketball teams, and those teams are on local, regional and national TV all year on a regular basis. While Time Inc., Dick Sports and NBC are multi-billion-dollar conglomerates that are in the business of making money, I see no issue with them making money, and in fact would encourage it due to their obligations to their shareholders, or finding a niche to fill; however, I’m not sure that making money off children by indirectly selling the possibility of college scholarships or possible professional careers is the right thing to do. As I stated in an earlier post, the chances of actually obtaining a college scholarship is quite small and the chances of going pro are even smaller so are these businesses filling a needed niche or selling unreasonable dreams and expectations to parents and children?

In Mark Hyman’s book “The Most Expensive Game in Town; The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and The Toll on Today’s Families”, Mr. Hyman discusses a myriad of issues dealing with youth sports including, but not limited to, communities spending millions of dollars to construct youth sports complexes in the hopes of bringing in much-needed tax dollars to communities’ that build these complexes. Mr. Hyman writes about a number of communities that built or were considering building youth sports complexes and I will look at two specific municipalities, Round Rock, Texas and Aberdeen, Maryland (note as I stated an earlier post that Mr. Hyman’s book was published in 2012 and some of this information could possibly be dated).

Mr. Hyman explains that the city of Round Rock ­Texas bought up about 570 acres of land over a ten-year period and transformed that land into a kid sports paradise including a passive park area where people can just walk and enjoy nature along with an area for youth sports that includes soccer pitches, tennis courts, beach volleyball pits, a frisbee golf course, along with five softball and 20 baseball fields. Mr. Hyman writes that at first the local residents were not sure if they wanted their tax dollars being spent on a youth sports facility; however, he goes on to write that the complex has been good for Round Rock as it has been highly efficient in generating money and creating jobs. He states that in less than two decades the number of local hotels has gone from 4 to 24 and the tax revenue on the hotel rooms alone is $30 million a year. On the flipside Aberdeen, Maryland, the home of Cal Ripken baseball, is a complex that replicates a number of major league baseball stadiums, built for youth baseball. Now, what youth baseball player wouldn’t want to be playing on a top replica major league baseball field with all the surroundings; scoreboard, name in lights, name being announced before each at-bat, etc. In addition to the fields for tournament play, for $1495 your child can go to the “Ripken Experience Camp”, a week-long camp that featured professional instruction by Cal Ripken himself.

Mr. Hyman states that the estimated cost of the project was $25.5 million and was to be split between the state of Maryland, the City of Aberdeen, Hartford County and Cal Ripken’s business entity. Mr. Hyman also wrote that the City of Aberdeen also bought land right next-door to the Ripken complex and the city envisioned a multi-million-dollar sports theme shopping complex with the taxes raised by movie theaters, restaurants and shops to cover the debt services until the money was paid off; however, when economy tanked everyone lost interest in the project and the City of Aberdeen was left with the bill. In 2009 Aberdeen’s total budget was $12.4 million and its obligation for the Ripken complex was $706,000 money they simply did not have.

There are other examples, both positive and negative, of municipalities investing money in youth sports complexes with varying degrees of success; however, the common denominator in all of these complexes seems to be the feeling that the money generated by these complexes could be the answer to the municipality’s money problems, but what if the complex fails? What if another great recession comes along and youth sports travel bookings don’t double as stated earlier in the article? For example, what happened recently with the COVID shut down? Did the communities with youth sports complexes lose needed revenue during the COVID shutdown? How did these facilities generate income during the two-year shut down? And, as Mr. Hyman states, if a youth sports complex is successful in one town, what is to stop another town 10 miles away from building their own youth sports complex causing a possible oversaturation of youth sports complexes in a particular area. I wonder if taking a huge risk is worth the possible loss of revenue that could occur if the complex fails.

Again, I’ll state that I am not against youth sports and if a municipality wants to go and build a complex, I would just hope that they go into it with their eyes wide open and with the understanding of what can be lost if the project doesn’t bring in the revenue that the municipality might be counting on.