Jeremy Goldberg, president of the youth sports-focused management platform LeagueApps, describes the recent sea change in his industry succinctly.
“If you asked [a youth sports organization] 15 years ago, 10 years ago, let’s talk about ‘P.E.’ in youth sports, they would think you were talking about physical education,” Goldberg told Sports Business Journal. “Now they all know that you’re probably referring to private equity.”
This dynamic is especially present among youth sports management software providers that act as a tech layer for club, league and event organizers. These providers manage registrations, payments, schedules, business-related reporting and communications and other administrative tasks.
LeagueApps took “significant” investment from Accel-KKR and Arctos in 2024. Leading communications platform TeamSnap was acquired by Waud Capital in 2021. Genstar Capital scooped up PlayMetrics — and merged it with Stack Sports — last year. Versant reportedly is eyeing a sale of SportsEngine, a longtime incumbent in the space.
These players and others range in scope and capability. But all are looking for scale, which has fueled consolidation that some industry observers theorize could precede more dealmaking in the future.
“You saw a proliferation of registration platforms in the early days, and then you saw a proliferation of point solutions that are solving very specific problems,” said Cole Van Nice, co-founder and managing partner of Elysian Park Ventures (see Five Companies to Watch, Page xx).
“Where we are now in this space is a really exciting time,” he continued. “Companies that might have built a component part — maybe it’s a registration platform, or maybe it’s camera technology — you’re starting to see a number of companies consolidate all those product offerings into one integrated platform. That’s a big driver of what we’re going to see over the next 12 to 36 months.”
It All Adds Up
Management software is just a part of the ecosystem to which Van Nice refers. But players within it have leveraged M&A to break into new areas.
Since taking the investment from Accel-KKR, LeagueApps has made two acquisitions: facility management platform RecTimes and soccer competition platform Mod11. Goldberg said these moves were made to meet a “broader set of business needs” of its users, driven by the increasing sophistication of youth sports organizations (of which LeagueApps works with more than 3,000).
“If I go back, when my dad was a coach at the JCC basketball league, or the local baseball program, there was no talk of how to think about your P&L of an organization,” Goldberg said. “Now I’ve got to figure out how to manage space. I’ve got to figure out how to manage staff. I’ve got to figure out how to deal with risks.”
TeamSnap acquired the video coaching app Mojo Sports and integrated its core streaming technology and design interface into its newly launched B2B2C platform TeamSnap One. TeamSnap One offers administrative tools for clubs, instructional content for coaches and a livestreaming service for families, which will soon be bolstered by a partnership with an AI camera firm, according to TeamSnap CEO Peter Frintzilas. TeamSnap also bought youth sports sponsorship platform LeagueSide to round out its sponsorship sales offering, which connects local clubs to national brands such as Marriott and Verizon.
“That end-to-end ability to land one sports organization, be able to sell our software to that organization, but along with it bring incredible experiences down to the families and the coaches. It helps with family retention for the club, but it also brings revenue opportunities,” Frintzilas said, adding that TeamSnap works with more than 19,000 clubs and leagues and has 2 million daily active users.
Snap Mobile (unaffiliated with TeamSnap) has used the acquisitions of scheduling (8to18), multilingual messaging (SchoolCNXT), fintech (Groundwork) and fan engagement (FanX) solutions since raising a $90 million Series B in 2021 (led by Elysian Park) to evolve from fundraising platform to “all-in-one” software provider. It launched a single-sign-on app branded Snap Mobile One last year with administrators in mind.
“One individual is managing somewhere between 10 to 200 kids, plus all of their parents, plus a practice plan, plus their schedules, plus rained-out fields,” said Cole Morgan, Snap Mobile’s founder and CEO. “The simple genesis was, ‘How do we make our customers’ lives easier by putting more things in one place for them?’ That led us down the path to commerce and then to registration, communications, website [management].”
New Entrants
The fragmented ecosystem under the hood of the broader, $40 billion youth sports marketplace also has created opportunity for new entrants.
Fastbreak AI launched in 2022 focused on deploying its AI scheduling engine for pro sports leagues, but last year released a youth sports operations platform branded Fastbreak Compete that will serve 1,500 youth tournaments this year. (It also closed a $40 million Series A.) Fastbreak co-founder and CEO John Stewart said he expects the company to derive 65%-70% of its revenue from the youth side of its business this year.
Otto Sport AI is even fresher-faced, having launched a management platform focused on volleyball, soccer and lacrosse earlier this year with $16.5 million in seed funding. Otto Sport co-founder and CEO Luke Zaientz shared the vision for developing a network of AI agents that — such as Tony Stark’s autonomous virtual assistant Jarvis in the “Iron Man” films — take and suggest actions on administrators’ behalf.
That may mean automatically managing practice schedules against weather forecasts, rather than a superhero’s workshop. But the notion underscores the ethos of effective management software.
“None of our customers wake up every day and they’re like, ‘Man, I can hardly wait until I get on that admin system for my club.’ It’s not like we’re social media — we want people off the system, not on the system,” Zaientz said. “Some [of Otto Sport’s features] are software, some are algorithms, some actually use AI. But it doesn’t matter because, for the [administrator], they just want it done.”
