Posted by ripe 12 hours ago
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/11/06/te...
By the time they get to college parents will figure out they spent 2-3x what that scholarship will pay and with NIL now non revenue sports will be disappearing
Sports should be accessible to kids of all income levels for the sake of playing sports while they’re kids.
I agree that sports should be accessible to kids of all income levels. And that's true to an extent for certain sports. But the cheaper options of playing on public school or community center teams will only take you so far. The better coaches and higher levels of competition necessary to develop real mastery are often only available in expensive private clubs and academies.
I actually think it's probably better that tier of athletics is predominantly (and obviously) a bunch of trust fund babies. It's immensely high risk and low utility (both internally and externally to the athlete themselves) for anyone else to be pursuing those ambitions.
So, consequently, sports club that is not trying to win is seen as lazy and bunch of loosers. And quite openly.
As someone who was quite competitive in several sports growing up, I don't think "not aspiring to be professional/Olympian" was frowned upon at all.
If it is today, that is extremely pathological.
This is the basic strategy of private equity. Find a sector of businesses that is doing poorly, buy them up (they're motivated to sell), run them poorly for several years while collecting money, file for bankruptcy and find a new sector to take on.
If running an ice rink was good business, PE would have a hard time finding rinks to buy for prices they're willing to pay.
Private Equity's New Venture: Youth Sports (80 comments)