Private Capital’s Youth-Sports Promise Depends on Local Access and Accountability

The stakes were framed around a costly and increasingly pressured youth-sports market. ? linda-flanagan referred to youth sports as a “$40 billion industry” and cited several pressures on families: a 46% increase in the price of youth sports since 2019, declining participation among low-income families despite overall participation gains, an epidemic of overuse injuries, and travel demands that many parents do not want. She said roughly 80% of parents want less travel, but are getting more of it.

Flanagan, author of Take Back the Game, moderated the discussion between Jay Adya, managing partner at Elysian Park Ventures, and ? katherine-dyck, a senior legal fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and former Federal Trade Commission attorney. That mix of roles mattered: Adya argued that capital can be used to build better youth-sports systems, while Dyck warned from an antitrust and accountability perspective about how profit-driven structures can capture child-facing markets.

Adya drew a distinction between venture capital and conventional private equity before describing where he thinks investment can help. Venture capital, he said, typically puts minority investments into early-stage companies with new products, services, or technologies, and often works actively with those companies on product and growth. Conventional private equity, by contrast, usually invests later in more mature companies and often takes control or ownership positions.

Adya’s larger point was that the label attached to the capital matters less than what the capital is used to do. In his framing, youth sports needs “sustainable and durable” commercial models if it is going to build better systems. He argued that investment can expand participation if it is used to create local programming, better infrastructure, and broader access rather than simply extracting more money from families already paying for private lessons, tournaments, and travel.

Dyck’s critique began from a different premise. Drawing on her antitrust work, including litigation against Varsity Brands over cheerleading, she argued that the profit motive of investment firms is “inherently at odds” with the child-development goals many youth-sports leaders say they care about. What investors call “ecosystems,” she said, can look in antitrust terms like moats or walled gardens: structures designed to keep competitors out and keep families and children trapped inside.

Dyck’s critique was not limited to private equity as a legal category. She included venture capital and other profit-driven sources where they create the same practical dynamics: vertical integration, roll-ups, exclusive relationships, paid access, stay-to-play policies, and systems in which families have little real choice. In that model, the affected customer is not an abstract buyer. It is a family trying to support a child, sometimes amid claims that paid services, events, platforms, or exposure products are tied to recruitment, scholarships, or NIL opportunities.

Jay Adya cautioned against treating youth sports as one market with one set of incentives. The $40 billion figure, he said, hides important differences between private-sector youth sports and scholastic sports. The same parent may pay for private clubs or lessons while also having a child in a school program, but those systems operate with different economics and demographics. He said high school sports remain “chronically underfunded,” even while some private-sector equivalents attract substantial spending.

His concrete example was EL1, an Elysian Park portfolio company that provides baseball and softball training and development through more than 20 facilities around the country. Adya described EL1 as a national platform that partners with Major League Baseball and individual clubs to deliver more local baseball and softball programming. Families may not know the EL1 name, he said, but they may know local versions such as the Seattle Mariners Baseball Academy or the Pittsburgh Pirates Training Academy.

The rationale, in Adya’s account, is that league and club partnerships provide both “trusted authority” and a feedback loop. Local programs can use trained coaches who have gone through SafeSport certification, while professional clubs share economically in the programs and reinvest proceeds into their communities.

Adya contrasted that model with charging families more for the same narrow service. The goal, he said, is to “expand participation, extend it and enrich it” while still building a business. Money can be made, in his view, by expanding the base of children who play rather than by adding another $20 an hour to a private lesson.

The distinction he drew was between two ways to commercialize youth sports. One raises the price of existing access. The other uses capital to create more local programming, link it with leagues and clubs, and return some proceeds to community programs.

? katherine-dyck’s most detailed warning came from the Varsity Brands case. She described Varsity as having built what she called a flywheel in all-star cheerleading. According to her account, Varsity controlled more than 80% of the events where all-star cheerleading competitions took place. It then created an apparel company and connected apparel discounts to event commitments: if customers wanted a discount, they had to commit to a certain number of Varsity events, or to their whole season.

Dyck said Varsity also placed employees on the governing body, the US All Star Federation. In her account, that allowed Varsity to use the governing body to write rules that advantaged its own events and kept other events from developing. The result, as she described it, was a system that put pressure on children, coaches, and cheer gyms trying to field teams and build small businesses in their communities.

For Dyck, that example illustrates the broader danger she sees in youth sports: when one company controls enough adjacent pieces of a sport, families and teams may have no practical alternative but to use its events, products, platforms, and services. The problem is not merely high prices. It is the combination she described in the Varsity context: vertical integration, roll-ups, rules shaped by interested parties, and commercial systems that leave families and local providers with fewer real options.

She argued that self-policing is inadequate, especially in environments where adults and children interact under commercial pressure. She pointed to SafeSport as evidence that oversight exists for a reason, saying it emerged from “a terrible thing” in USA Gymnastics. She also said Varsity, beyond the antitrust case, is facing multiple lawsuits over sex abuse. Her broader point was that child-facing sports institutions need outside accountability, not simply voluntary standards from businesses that profit from the system.

Dyck said existing antitrust laws can address vertical integration and roll-ups, though she did not go into legal detail. She also called for stronger measures: banning certain conduct outright, banning debt loading and asset stripping in youth sports, and creating real accountability for investment firms. In her view, current legal structures often protect the investment firm that owns the operating company. If the owner sells, leaves a club decimated, leaves facilities run down, or fails to maintain adequate safety policies, the children and community bear the harm while the upstream firm may be difficult to reach.

Despite their disagreement over trust and regulation, Jay Adya and ? katherine-dyck converged on several practical complaints. Adya said plainly that “travel ball is too expensive, period.” Flanagan put numbers and family concerns around that claim: she cited a 46% increase in the price of youth sports since 2019, declining participation among low-income families despite overall participation gains, an epidemic of overuse injuries, and the claim that roughly 80% of parents want less travel even as they get more of it.

Adya said one response is to build more local leagues and tournaments. If a family can play down the street or within 30 minutes, it avoids the expense and burden of flying or driving to distant tournament locations. He attributed research to the Aspen Institute suggesting that families in travel ball can spend upward of $30,000 per year, with most of that tied to travel-related expenses.

In baseball, Adya said, local play could be supported by Major League Baseball teams, Minor League Baseball teams, and the fields or community relationships they can access. That would address not only cost and travel, in his view, but also the practical ease of participation. More local programming expands the base of players.

Dyck agreed that getting back to local sports is central. She described her own child’s Little League experience as enriching because it involved watching neighborhood children grow and develop. By comparison, she called her family’s current travel-ball experience “much more cold” and “not as fun for anybody.” For her, the loss is not only financial. It is also communal: youth sports becomes less about local development and more about a transactional circuit of events, fees, travel, and uncertain promises.

Jay Adya identified athlete data as another place where he and Dyck’s concerns overlap. He said Elysian Park agrees that walled gardens and paying for access to one’s own data are “antithetical” to where society should go. Athletes and families, he said, should control their own data.

His example was a youth athlete’s progression through a sport: first event, first training session, first team, first practice. If the system tracks performance over time, Adya argued, the athlete should be able to access that record without paying a platform for the results of their own performance. He singled out Perfect Game as an example of the type of dynamic he considers wrong, while making clear that Elysian Park is investing in companies aimed at a different model. He named BreakAway Data as one such company.

? katherine-dyck’s earlier critique explains why that issue matters beyond convenience. In her account, walled gardens and flywheels work by controlling adjacent parts of a youth-sports system and making families dependent on them. If a company controls access to a child’s own performance information, that control can become another form of lock-in.

Adya’s answer was not to remove capital from that system but to design better systems, ideally with governing bodies and leagues setting expectations from the top. His preferred mechanism was not merely company-level virtue. It was a combination of investment, public-private partnership, and policy direction from leagues, governing bodies, and associations.

? linda-flanagan pressed Jay Adya on a central weakness in relying on better operators: even if Elysian Park and similar firms set better norms, what compels bad actors to follow them in the absence of regulation or enforcement?

Adya answered that top-down partnerships can matter. He said Elysian Park wants to work with leagues, governing bodies, and associations to establish policies that affect whole sports. He mentioned Major League Baseball in baseball, discussions with the Heisman in football, and volleyball associations in volleyball. In his view, leagues and governing bodies can make commitments such as athlete control of data or participation expansion more effective than isolated company promises.

? katherine-dyck’s position was that voluntary self-policing is not enough. Her concern is that the same structures that create scale and coordination can also create exclusion, lock-in, and extraction. Her Varsity example was a warning that governance can be used by an interested company when its employees sit on a governing body and help write rules that favor that company’s own events.

Adya put more weight on aligned capital, league partnerships, and system design. Dyck put more weight on law, enforcement, prohibitions, and liability for the firms that profit from youth-sports assets. Both spoke in favor of better standards; they differed on whether sports institutions and investors can make those standards binding without stronger legal accountability.

When ? linda-flanagan asked what parents can do in a weak regulatory environment, ? katherine-dyck began by refusing to put the burden primarily on them. Parents, she said, are often trying to do what is best for their children under significant financial and emotional pressure. She cited the cost of college as averaging $100,000 to $200,000 for a four-year degree, and argued that it is asking a lot to expect a parent to step away from travel sports on principle and put a child into a recreational league that may barely be able to field a team.

Still, Dyck said parents are not powerless. They can call members of Congress, state representatives, and city council members. They can push for local games and ask how to make them happen. They can ask clubs why a team has to drive two hours for one game across multiple weekends. They can ask why a particular fee is being charged. They can demand more transparency around stay-to-play policies and event costs.

She also placed responsibility on the broader youth-sports community to educate parents. Families need clearer information about the actual odds of scholarships and NIL money, especially when companies promise recruitment, scholarships, or NIL opportunities. Dyck specifically named NCSA and Perfect Game as examples of companies whose representations to families deserve scrutiny. Her concern was that parents who are anxious about college costs and future opportunity are vulnerable to claims that they need those services for their children to move on in life.

Jay Adya’s proposed answer to several of those pressures was to create more local alternatives, lower travel burdens, and build systems where athletes keep control of their data. Dyck did not reject those goals. She questioned whether voluntary industry action is enough. The shared destination was more local, accessible, child-centered sport. The unresolved argument was whether private capital can be disciplined into serving that destination, or whether its strongest incentives will keep pulling youth sports toward extraction.