Youth sports are growing as Unrivaled Sports builds its portfolio. Unrivaled Sports is a youth-sports investment group led by the owner of the NFL’s Commanders, NBA’s 76ers, and NHL’s Devils.
The investment group launched in late March 2024.[1] Since its launch, the group acquired the Diamond Nation facility in Flemington, New Jersey. Diamond Nation is a premier baseball and softball facility.[2] The group also purchased YTH Sports, which operates Soccer Youth, a nationwide event series.[3]
Unrivaled Sports boasts 12 owned and operated facilities that service more than 550,000 athletes and 1.1 million attendees yearly.[4] Within that, it oversees seven baseball and softball facilities through Ripken Baseball, Cooperstown All Star Village, and Sports Force Parks.[5] The acquisition of Diamond Nation will add over 3,000 teams and 45,000 participants annually to Unrivaled’s already extensive reach.[6] Similarly, the acquisition of YTH Sports should bring nearly 600,000 athletes and 1.2 million attendees in 2024.[7]
The group aims to enrich the lives of young athletes, but investing in youth sports may also be profitable. This can be paralleled to the increased investment in women’s sports. Not too many years ago, people invested in women’s sports because it felt like the right thing to do. Now, with the rise of the PWHL, women’s college sports, and the Caitlin Clark effect, investing in women’s sports also offers financial opportunity. A similar perspective could be taken towards the increased investment in youth sports.
The commodification of youth sports makes perfect sense in today’s society. For example, there is a sentiment that kids are preparing for college the minute they set foot in kindergarten. In a world of high achieving youth, more and more must be done to make one’s college application stand out. Similarly, and probably relatedly, there has been a rise in kids focusing on a single sport at earlier ages. It used to be that kids and teens would play numerous sports throughout high school. Only once they hit college would kids turn their focus to a single sport. Now, as competition is tougher, kids need to be better. Thus, it makes sense that parents support, and sometimes promote, the idea of focusing on a single sport (though the benefits of this are heavily debated).
From a business perspective, it is brilliant that owners of professional sports teams are growing youth sports. Creating top-notch experiences for young athletes may result in greater retention of kids in sports. Thus, investing at the lower levels will eventually feed increasing demand at the higher levels of sports.
Anything that injects resources into a community and promotes more active kids seems like a win. However, one cannot help but long for simpler times where kids played for their town team and not every weekend was consumed by travel for peewee sports.
Image Credit: Unrivaled Sports via Variety
[1] https://www.law360.com/sports-and-betting/articles/1823812/youth-sports-investment-group-bags-soccer-baseball-cos-
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/chernin-group-unrivaled-josh-harris-david-blitzer-sports-1235953908/
[5] https://www.law360.com/sports-and-betting/articles/1823812/youth-sports-investment-group-bags-soccer-baseball-cos-
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
3L at the University at Buffalo School of Law
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