Lifestyle

Youth Sports Now Costs Families Up to $25,000 a Year. Here’s Who’s Getting That Money.

By Curtis Jones · May 5, 2026

The tryout fee is $50. Making the team costs $3,000. The tournament hotel is mandatory and the team booked it for you. By the time the season ends, you have spent $12,000 — and your kid plays travel soccer, not professional sports.

A video published this week by the Emmy-winning nonprofit newsroom More Perfect Union has gone viral for putting a number on what millions of American parents already feel in their bank accounts: youth sports now costs families as much as $25,000 per year. The reaction in social media comments and parent forums has been immediate and loud — not because the number surprises people, but because it confirms something they have been quietly suspecting for years.

The money did not just grow on its own. It was engineered.

The U.S. youth sports industry has become a $40 billion annual ecosystem — almost twice the revenue of the NFL, according to Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute, who testified about the crisis before a House subcommittee last December. The average cost for a child to participate in a sport has risen 46% over the past five years, from an already strained baseline to more than $1,000 per year for the typical family. But $1,000 is the median — the number that includes the recreational soccer league at the local park. For families chasing elite travel teams, the number is different.

Private equity firms discovered youth sports as an investment category around 2022. What they found was an industry that had three properties investors find extremely attractive: it was fragmented, meaning there were thousands of independent clubs and tournament operators with no dominant player to compete against; it was sticky, meaning parents who enrolled their children in competitive programs rarely dropped out regardless of price increases; and it was growing, meaning demand was rising even as supply constrained.

The playbook private equity applied is the same one it has used in healthcare, veterinary care, and childcare: buy up independent operators, consolidate them under a single brand, cut costs where possible, and raise prices where demand allows. A local travel soccer club that previously charged $2,000 a season gets acquired, rebranded as part of a national academy network, and the fee becomes $4,500. The coaching staff may be the same people. The fields may be the same fields. The invoice is not the same invoice.

Dick’s Sporting Goods’ venture capital arm led a $120 million investment in Unrivaled Sports — an umbrella company that owns more than a dozen youth sports properties including facilities, leagues, and tournament operators. Chicago firm Waud Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in TeamSnap, the scheduling and roster management app that most travel sports families use without realizing it is now a private equity asset charging the clubs fees that are passed on to parents. Cooperstown All Star Village, a destination baseball tournament complex adjacent to the Baseball Hall of Fame, drew 12,000 players from 763 teams last year — generating an estimated $95 million in economic activity for its investors and the surrounding region.

The mandatory hotel booking is one of the most visible mechanisms. Many large tournaments now require teams to stay at specific partner hotels, with prices set by the tournament organizers rather than market competition. Families cannot shop for cheaper accommodations. The hotel revenue goes to the tournament operator — frequently a private equity-backed entity that acquired the tournament from its original community founders. Parents who object can find their team removed from the tournament.

Seventy percent of youth athletes quit organized sports by age 13, according to the Aspen Institute — a dropout rate that researchers link directly to the cost and intensity of the travel sports model. The families who stay are disproportionately affluent. The families who leave are disproportionately not. What began as a community activity has been restructured into something that functions like a luxury product with a youth sports label.

Only 2% of high school athletes receive a college scholarship — the figure that most travel sports families privately cite as their return-on-investment hope for the spending they are doing. The math does not support the investment for the overwhelming majority of families who are making it. What it does support, very well, is the business model of the companies collecting the fees.

There are alternatives. Recreational leagues run by parks departments and nonprofits still exist and still cost a fraction of what travel programs charge. The gap between those programs and the elite travel pathway has widened dramatically — not because the recreational leagues got worse, but because the marketing around travel sports has convinced families that participation in a private equity-backed academy is a necessary step toward a future that, statistically, is not coming.

The More Perfect Union video is viral because the parents watching it recognize themselves. The $25,000 number is not a ceiling for the families in it. For some of them, it is a floor.