63x30 Adds Community Sports Model Reaching 600,000 Children a Year
Project Play’s 63x30 discussion on communities presents Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Buffalo Wild Wings’ All-Stars partnership as a scalable way to make youth sports accessible beyond schools and pay-to-play systems. Jim Clark of BGCA and Stuart Brown of the Inspire Brands Foundation argue that long-term funding for uniforms, equipment, trained staff and league costs can turn community clubs into reliable sports settings for hundreds of thousands of children, with benefits they tie to physical health, mental health and broader youth development.
63x30 is adding a community-scale sports model that already reaches hundreds of thousands
Marty Fox framed community-based sports programs as “the front door to access” for many families — and, in some cases, the only realistic entry point into youth sports. The problem, as Fox put it, is that cost keeps that door closed for too many children. The practical aim of the 63x30 work discussed here is to remove financial barriers so participation is not determined by family income.
Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Buffalo Wild Wings described complementary roles in that work. BGCA, led by Jim Clark, operates as what Fox described as the largest facility-based youth development organization in the country. Buffalo Wild Wings Foundation, represented by Stuart Brown, has been a Boys & Girls Clubs partner since 2013 through the All-Stars program, which supports organized league programming for children.
The scale of that partnership is central to why it matters for 63x30. Clark said hundreds of thousands of young people receive this experience through the Buffalo Wild Wings partnership, including about 600,000 in the prior year and more than 3 million since the partnership began. Brown added that the partnership started with about 13,000 children in 2013 and now reaches roughly 500,000 to 600,000 per year.
Brown’s explanation for why a restaurant brand would fund youth sports began with a simpler point than brand alignment: children want adults to see them. He pointed to a PSA shown before the panel, in which a girl imagines making a winning shot and calls out, “Did you see that?” The emotional force, for Brown, was that nobody had. He connected that moment to a common childhood need — “Mom, Dad, come watch me” — and then to the broader purpose of sports philanthropy.
For Buffalo Wild Wings, Brown said, youth sports is both emotionally unifying and practically aligned with the company’s identity. Franchisees across the country may disagree on many things, but he argued they can rally around wanting a better future for children. As a sports bar brand, Buffalo Wild Wings also sees sports as the natural place to support young people.
But Brown did not frame the work as the brand inventing a youth-development system of its own. Its model is to back organizations already doing the work.
We talk a lot about partnering, not pioneering. So let pioneers pioneer, and we will fund you so you go do what you do further, faster.
That “partnering, not pioneering” approach was central to Brown’s explanation: a funder does not need to build a parallel infrastructure if credible community institutions already exist. It can instead reduce the costs that keep children out.
Clark ties sports access to physical, mental, and developmental outcomes
Jim Clark described the benefits of youth sports in terms of both physical health and mental health. Children who participate in sports, he said, do better than peers on cardio fitness, strength, balance, and coordination. He also said BGCA measures stronger outcomes connected to coping, self-esteem, and life happiness among young people who participate.
The mental-health stakes were especially important to Clark. He said the pandemic worsened an already serious mental-health crisis, leaving young people still dealing with isolation, depression, and related effects. Participation in organized athletics, he said, helps young people face those challenges. He also distinguished structured team sports from activity in general, saying the measured results are better for participating children than for nonparticipating peers on anxiety, identity, and attention.
The Boys & Girls Clubs approach, Clark said, rests on three linked ideas: affordability, scale, and accessibility. Affordability means removing costs for uniforms, equipment, coach and staff training, technical support, and direct club funding. Scale matters because, in Clark’s view, there are not many “big boxes” left that can reach large numbers of children. Schools remain one such institution, but he said schools are not providing the same level of sports and team athletics they once did, leaving community partners to carry more of the load.
Accessibility, in Clark’s framework, means meeting young people where they are. For Boys & Girls Clubs, that requires partnerships with schools, community centers, corporations, foundations, and other local assets. The path to scale, as he described it, is not a single institution doing everything; it is community infrastructure connected to partners that can help fund and deliver sports where children already are.
All-Stars is designed as youth development, not only league play
The All-Stars model includes the visible supports that make a league possible: uniforms, equipment, and organized opportunities to play. Clark said the deeper infrastructure is trained coaches and staff who understand youth development, not just athletic instruction.
Children may come because they want to play a sport, Clark said, but that attention creates an opening. Boys & Girls Clubs uses the sports setting to introduce young people to other experiences and opportunities inside the club. The point is not merely to produce better athletes, though Stuart Brown noted that broader participation can improve the athletic pipeline. Brown said the work is also about creating “better humans, better adults” who can better engage in their communities.
For Brown, the growth of All-Stars matters because it reflects a long-term funding commitment rather than a one-off campaign. Social change rarely comes from flipping a switch. “Most solutions are a dial,” he said, and this one has been turned over 13 years.
That continuity changes the experience for children. Brown argued that children should not have to wonder whether there will be a league next year or a coach next year. After COVID, he said, adults understand how difficult uncertainty can be; for children, he called it “absolutely toxic.” If young people can count on football in the fall and soccer in the spring, they can plan around it, and that stability supports mental health and growth.
Clark extended the stability point to relationships. Seeing the same coaches and staff month after month and year after year is itself a benefit, because the adults become part of the reliable structure around the child.
BGCA joined 63x30 because Clark sees the youth crisis as immediate
Jim Clark said the reason to join the broader 63x30 coalition now is urgency. Young people, he said, are facing a crisis, and the pandemic intensified problems that were already present.
The consequences, Clark said, are not limited to mental health or physical fitness. Academic challenges are also part of the current picture, and communities are already seeing them. In that context, scaling sports access is part of his affordability, scale, and accessibility framework: reduce the costs that block participation, use institutions capable of reaching large numbers of children, and partner with schools, community centers, corporations, foundations, and other local assets to meet young people where they are.
For Clark, 63x30 offers a way to widen the funding and partnership base behind that work. Buffalo Wild Wings remains the example of a long-term partner that covers tangible program costs, but Clark said Boys & Girls Clubs is bringing additional funding partners to the table each year to help scale the model.
The operating logic is specific: BGCA supplies facility-based youth-development reach; Buffalo Wild Wings has underwritten concrete league costs over 13 years; All-Stars uses sports to connect children with trained adults and broader club opportunities; and 63x30 gives BGCA a larger coalition through which to expand that kind of partnership.