Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Elite Clubs National League was founded in 2009 and continues to lead by daring to do things differently, embedded with grit, collaboration and tenacity – all things learned from the beautiful game. The ECNL protects and propels the integrity of the game and everyone it impacts by facilitating the perfect symmetry of excellence and humility, exclusivity and accessibility, freedom and community. We believe that challenging everyone to rise to their best creates game-changers that live well, long after cleats are unlaced. Born out of the belief in a better way. Continued in the ever-evolving pursuit of excellence.
Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Economics of Youth Sports: The Factors And The Future | Ep. 127
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This week's edition of Breaking the Line features a hot topic across the soccer landscape and the sports world as a whole: the economics of sport, and youth sport in particular.
ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken dive into this nuanced topic, discussing the current economic model of youth sports and the reasons behind it, the emerging role of private equity and big business in the youth sport space, and what all this means for clubs, leagues, parents and players.
Throughout this hour-long conversation, the conversation weaves between how these economic factors affect the youth sports experience, where soccer falls in the broader youth sports landscape, and how the ECNL balances soccer and business decisions.
As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.
This is the October 15th, 2025 edition of Breaking the Line, the ETL Podcast, Fix East Notes, CEO Christian Labor, and East NL Bitcoin, Steph Racket. Christian and Doug in addition to talking about the US under 20 team for a few minutes today. We'll talk about the aiming economics of sports. Both sports generally, but specifically youth sports. More than fifty billion dollars are spent on youth sports annually in this country. So let's not mess about. Let's get this conversation started. So to do that, I turn it over to Christian Labers.
Speaker 6:Thank you, Dean. The silky smile, the smooth voice, and everything else that makes Dean Linky the voice of the ECNL. And just more things.
Speaker 3:If you're watching college soccer on TV, you're seeing it and hearing it a lot lately. Dean's been on a lot of games.
Speaker 6:Is there such a thing as too much Linky?
Speaker 3:Big game tomorrow, Christian. Dean Linke on the call, Big Ten men's soccer, Ohio State versus Michigan.
Speaker 5:In Columbus. In Columbus. The Big Ten tournament title game that springboarded the Buckeyes all the way to the College Cup. That's right.
Speaker 3:And since Michigan can't seem to win a football game, maybe this kind of football will be again.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't a good weekend for the Wolverines out in Southern California, that's a fact.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 6:But it was not a good game for the Bengals either, having been ground by the Packers.
Speaker 3:The Bengals stink. No Joe Burrow, no.
Speaker 6:Well, that's not very nice to say. Joe Flacco just came all the way over there to try and help you guys out.
Speaker 3:I thought the guy did a good job. Gave me like a tiny glimmer of hope, but I don't think so. I don't think it's gonna happen. All right.
Speaker 6:Other news in the soccer world, the U-20s just knocked out of the U-20 World Cup in the quarterfinal by Morocco. Doug, any comments on that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did watch a little bit. Yes, we're quite good leading up to it. I thought they'd get through this time, but they did not. This seems to be their kind of perennial stumbling block for whatever reason. I think last four World Cups they've got knocked out in the quarterfinals. So Jacob, can you get us some dates on that?
Speaker 6:Are they the last four World Cups we've been knocked out?
Speaker 7:Absolutely. The U-20s have made the World Cup quarterfinals each of the last four World Cups, which is every two years. So that'd be 25, 23, 21, and 19. The last time they made it to the semifinals was in 1989.
Speaker 6:1989. Well, it's an interesting fact, right? Because as we were just talking about before we went live here, to the average listeners, a quarterfinal is a good run. And it might make you think, hey, well, does that mean that there's a big, for lack of a better word, the next generation coming up is in a different spot than previous generations? And the answer without any judgment is that we've basically been blocked at the quarterfinals for a long time. And uh you got to go back now 1989, that's like what is that? That was my years.
Speaker 3:That's my freshman year. Freshman year.
Speaker 6:35 years to have gotten before that. So for whatever reason, and this is a different topic probably, but for whatever reason, success at the U-20s doesn't necessarily translate into success with the full team. So there's still shouldn't surprise us, right? If we also talk about how signing pros below the age of 17 is almost a complete wild card in terms of who ultimately makes it. So you still got a lot of shaking out of players who are selected for a U-20 World Cup and whether they end up being good enough and selected for a full World Cup. We've only been to the quarters one time in the full World Cup. That was back in 2002. So that was not anytime near the 1989 semis of the U-20s, and that did not precipitate anything different in the last 10 years of getting to the quarters. So interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's good. We're getting there and we're progressing and we're getting that experience in those games. I think that's useful. We'll see if it translates moving forward.
Speaker 6:You could ask a question. Morocco's been on the rise at multiple levels, right? In in world soccer. So Morocco getting past us in the quarters in some ways is not a surprise. And that again begs a whole bunch of questions when you start comparing countries and trajectories and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3:And I believe the U 17, I think they call it the Women's World Cup. It's I think it's girls uh U17s will be happening this fall as well, right? Coming up soon. A lot of uh of our ECNL players playing and representing the US in that. So that'll be interesting to see how they do as well.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we'll unpack that when we get closer because not only will the US be well represented with a lot of ECNL alums or current ECNL players, actually, there will be a lot of other countries, I would imagine, that will have players with connections to the United States. But before we go leave the U20s, I've got a league alum that did really well in the U-20s for the U.S. So, Jacob, you want to give us the deets on that?
Speaker 7:Yeah, one of the standouts for the U-20s was Josh Winder. He's a Louisville City Academy alumni. He played uh 2020 and 2021 in the ECNL, but he spent several years before that coming through the Louisville Academy. So he's been a standout. Matt Doyle had a lot of praise for him. Soccer America did a really good feature on him as well. And he was one of the players who played for the U-20s two years ago when they made the quarterfinals and they got knocked out. So there's a little bit of unfinished business for him, but he had a really strong play at the U-20s and he's hoping to turn that into Portugal where he's playing right now.
Speaker 6:All right. So a good shout out to Lou City there on a on a guy going going places.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's awesome. Good for that. All right, Christian, you ready to dive into this today?
Speaker 6:I am ready to dive into it. Doug, what are we diving into?
Speaker 3:Well, today we are going to tackle the uh subject of the changing economics of sports. I think our focus obviously would be on youth sports because that's where we reside, but but just sports generally. And I guess I would start by saying that youth sports is a particularly a massive industry in this country with over $50 billion in youth sports in the US. Maybe we start there, like at a bigger picture. You can kind of start taking us down the road. And then as we kind of come into things that we want to talk about as it relates to the ECNO and youth soccer versus other sports, we can we can get into that as well.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So I think on these tricky topics, I like to start with the caveat that we're just going to provide some facts here and some background without judgment to some degree. There's pros and cons to everything. And I know there will be plenty of people who have opinions on this, some very nuanced and educated and some quite naive. The reality is that the economic model of youth sports is in the middle of a dramatic change that I think, for lack of a better phrase, is defined by the entrance of private equity or big business uh coming into youth sports. And that is going to change the structure of sport. Again, some can be very good, some can be not so good, but it is not specific to soccer. In fact, you could argue there's other sports that are probably farther along that curve than soccer is in terms of the consolidation under private equity or big businesses. You might even say that that is because those sports were even more fragmented or less developed than the youth soccer industry, for lack of a better word. But it's coming. It's not on the horizon. We're right in the middle of it. The wave is here. It's helpful to understand why that is happening. And then we can talk about what it may mean for operators, for parents, leagues, clubs, all that sort of stuff. Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 3:I think first talk about just so people understand, when you say private equity, what is that?
Speaker 6:What does that mean? Private equity is we're using that in the almost a term of art here, but it's the consolidation of funds or cash that is being used to purchase assets, businesses and other assets, and consolidate them under one economic model, one operating structure. And so when you look at generally across any industry, what you have is, you know, if you say the private equity playbook is to find a fragmented industry with thousands of small single operators that exist independently. And because they're small and independent and all over the place, there's very little economies of scale. There's inconsistencies and inefficiencies in operations, and there is significant opportunity to generate more return through consolidation into a bigger entity with more purchasing power, better controls and processes, which also generates more efficiency in terms of return. You can look at that in, you know, it's occurred in waste management, it's occurred in home storage, it's occurred in a lot of services-oriented businesses where this type of consolidation is happening, is happening in healthcare. It's happened gigantically in healthcare. If you look, you know, the small mom and pop medical practice doesn't really exist anymore.
Speaker 3:Farming. Farming's another one, right? Where they had medical. Yeah.
Speaker 6:So if you look at that sort of as the basis, agnostic to industry, which is fragmented, small, thousands of operators, independent, little shared anything. The playbook or the recipe is to come in with a lot of cash, so an equity fund or in substitution for private equity, uh, you could just think of big business, you know, or big investor coming in and buying a lot of these independent operators. And then by doing so, combining the operations. So, number one, you eliminate redundancies. So you eliminate overlap or duplication of effort. There's a cost savings on there. By buying more services of whatever it may be, you have cost savings, right? Because the more you purchase, the more power you have in terms of price. You professionalize operations, which generates other returns and efficiencies. And then you also have the opportunity to discrete revenue flows under one entity. So where you may have in independent operations, if we go like all the way back, you know, 20 years ago and you're operating a youth soccer club in this country, you go to one vendor to buy your trophies for your tournament, you go to another vendor to set up food, you go to another vendor to buy signs, you go to another vendor to get your uniforms or to sell your apparel at that at the um event or for your club. Now, fast forward from that into the modern day, you go to one vendor to do your technology, you go to another vendor to do your travel, you go to another vendor to do your um whatever other uh collateral revenue or operations you have. You could go into services like um even things like performance training or medical or athletic trainers or any anything that has revenue, flows, and expenses attached to it, you start to combine them. And by combining them across a variety of functions and services, you also have opportunity to generate more return. What you ultimately have is an industry of independent soccer clubs, independent leagues, independent organizations. Some operated better than others for sure, but small. This has been going on, I would say, five, seven years. Maybe, maybe you have a different opinion on that because you've seen this consolidation, and it happens, it happens at multiple levels. It can happen at a town level or a city level, where a club, I mean, this is the rise of the mega club or the super club, whatever you want to call it, that acquires or takes over the other clubs around it. And so five independent clubs and independent communities that are next to each other become one big club that operates across all five communities. There's savings there, there's value there economically and with respect to service potentially, right? Because if you look at five independent clubs, there's pros to that. One of the cons to independent clubs is you tend to have a bigger range of talent within each age group because you have a smaller catchment area or smaller pool. So there are some positives to it that are outside of economics for sure. But you see that happening in the club space for the last several years. You see it happening in the league space. There used to be a lot of independent small leagues. You're seeing more and more consolidation of that. People could point to the ECNL, saying the ECNL has consolidated league operations in a big way. I mean, if you look back at our beginning in 2009, right? 40 clubs, three age groups, one gender, you know, to now 120,000 plus players playing within the league. That that happens in some ways through consolidation or and and growth that we've never acquired anybody, right?
Speaker 3:So it hasn't happened through private equity.
Speaker 6:Correct. We just grew profit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just grew it. Understood. And you know, I think again, you look at the highest levels of sports in general, and there's a lot of private equity attached to professional sports. There are at least 10 teams in each of the professional sport leagues sports leagues that well hold on, hold on, Doug.
Speaker 6:Before you go there, let's also say why is this happening in youth sports now?
Speaker 3:Yes. I was just going to come back to that. Given the big picture, each of the professional sports leagues, there are 10 teams that have private equity attached to them. The highest is the NBA, 20 out of 30, the lowest NFL, 10 out of 32. You've heard conversations now with NIL about colleges that kind of talk of investment in athletic programs at universities. There are a number of examples of this everywhere around the world in sports.
Speaker 6:You ask earlier, what is private equity? And basically what we're talking about is capital or cash from big, big organizations, pension funds, retirement accounts, very, very wealthy people, nation states. Nation states. That's true. You go to the APL, you got lots of nation states running clubs that basically come into an industry, use that capital and resource to buy a variety of different assets, combine them, and then ultimately look to sell that new combined larger company for a significant return, typically in the three to seven year time horizon.
Speaker 3:We'll zoom in and talk about how it's coming into youth soccer. Well, how and why, right?
Speaker 6:And so the why is partially the structure of youth's youth soccer and youth sports. Uh, and that's the the um fractured, independent, you know, inefficient type of um baseline uh that you have uh in the industry. But then the second thing is as you said earlier, Americans spend a lot of money on youth sports. They spend a lot of money on kids, right? And I think Jacob's got some some data on just anything at this point, but anyone with kids knows that whatever you do with them is expensive. School is expensive, especially if you if you go to a private school. Music lessons are expensive, sports is expensive, vacations are expensive, entertainment is expensive, taking them to dinner is expensive, people spend a lot of money on kids, and I don't we probably won't have a citation on this, but uh I do believe there's been some some studies that say uh or surveys in in a recession or or a bad economic outlook, parents the last dollar they will try and cut is what they spend on their kids. Yeah. Right. And that that's there's huge positive things to that. But that collectively means that you know you can probably look at a variety of AI models that'll give you numbers from 30 to 40 to 50 billion dollars a year being spent on youth sports, depending on how you define that expenditure, right? Because some of that is through registration fees, some of that is through equipment, some of that is through travel. I don't even know if travel would go into that, I would assume in some ways. So you have huge, huge money overall being spent on these very fragmented industries. You have people who want to provide for their kids and they want to provide the best possible thing they can for their kids. They're gonna do it year after year after year, whether they're in one sport and they continue down that path, or whether they veer from one sport to another. Then you look at the costs now of providing a service in youth sports are significant and therefore the revenue flows attached to them are significant. It is not cheap to pay experienced, qualified people to spend hours and hours and hours a week, a month with kids to pay for facilities, lights, turf, good grass, whatever it may be, to pay for the equipment that goes along with that. And all of the collateral stuff that as you get older and into higher levels, you start adding on more and more other things to it to in the interest of development, exposure, or whatever it may be. But when I think, you know, we have some very rough data that says the average cost of being in a uh, let's call it an elite level, you know, or an ambitious level. I don't know that word elite gets thrown out a lot, athletic program, basically the floor you're gonna get is $3,000 is the expense that you're paying a year for your son or your daughter to play sports, whether that sport is soccer, baseball, gymnastics, volleyball, hockey, whatever it may be. And when you start saying thousands of dollars per kid year over year with a lot of people who have their kids in one sport or another, that's like, you know, a bullseye for investment.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, when you talk about a fragmented industry or landscape, it is ripe for consolidation. And I think that's what you see happening in youth soccer. Tell me what your thoughts are about that. About what specifically? About because I think we have some pretty uh we've said some things, you know, our values or whatever, however you want to say it. We've we've said some pretty specific things over the years, you know, continuously about our desire to have soccer people running, youth soccer people running youth soccer, stuff like that. So I mean, what are your this inevitability happens that it comes in, continues to come in? Like what are your thoughts about that?
Speaker 6:So the first point, it's important to recognize that this isn't inevitable. It's already happening, it's gonna happen more. And there's nothing that anyone's going to do to stop it, and that is because of the economic forces aligned. And again, if you go back 25 years, we've joked about this. And if you if you were uh starting to coach in in the early 2000s or late 90s, you didn't really, there wasn't a career path for for a club soccer coach, or probably in almost any sport. No. Um, because people weren't spending money on sports to the same degree that they are now. And again, you know, the purist is gonna have one opinion on that, but a you know, a developmental utopian will have a different opinion potentially, because you need resources in order to provide environments. But do you need expense in order to provide a good experience? No, not necessarily. But this is happening because people want to do things in sports with their kids because they see outcomes for those, whether for their kids, whether that is college opportunity, whether it is the life lessons that go along with sport, whether it is the entertainment and health, you know, of being active and being fit or building social relationships, or whether it's all things combined, the fact that people are willing to pay for that and the fact that there are people willing to try and provide a better experience by being more educated, commit more of their time to it as coaches and and operators, means that the market is there, the market has been created over the last 20 years, and now it is in that consolidation stage. So that's a fact. I don't see us, any of us, even if we decided to decide to fight it or try to fight it, I don't see anything changing that. You agree with that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, how do you fight it? Like if you wanted to.
Speaker 6:You'd have to provide services for free. If there wasn't economic incentive to do it, then you wouldn't have investment coming in.
Speaker 3:Correct. And that's not feasible, obviously. You know, not on a large, not on a large scale. Not on a large scale.
Speaker 6:Right. So so you know, what what comes out of this? You know, and we we've you've seen this, right? Because I think there's been waves, uh, even in the last couple of years, there's various waves on this. The in the and and and one of the operating playbooks is if if a big investment, so put yourself in the in the position of a big firm, one one purchase um is the club, you know, the operator itself. Another thing that you can purchase is the venue or the facility, right? Um, another thing that you can purchase is the tournament or the event, the rights or the rights holder, right? So those are all different things within the space, by the way. The club, the tournament, and the facility are all different pieces of the youth sports industry. And private equity or a big investor may be looking to bring all of them together and consolidate those revenue flows. Then you then you have the other things attached to it. The last five years have seen huge investments in in the software space. I mean, you look at like Team Snap. Yeah, right. Team Snap, um, you look at play metrics, you know, on the club soccer uh space, but Team Snap in the communication space. I mean, that that app is being used by athletes in sports all over the place. And from a technology perspective, a soccer player is a baseball player, is a basketball player, is a gymnastics athlete, whatever it may be, the need to communicate within the organization is pretty similar, right? And so that's another uh reason that people are are interested in this space is because if you can solve it for one sport, you can solve it for multiple sports. And numbers uh add up real quickly. You look and say, what's gonna come out of this? Right. And we are in probably opinion world on that, but I think and jump in at any point. But I think you know, operating a club is a really hard thing to do. It's very relationship-based, it's very local context dependent. You know, it's not easy to consolidate clubs. It can happen at a local level, I think far easier than it can happen by buying a club in five different cities and you know, five different states. It can be done, and if it is, it may provide a better user experience because you have more professional operations or more professional management and process and communications and things like that that make the experience of the end user easier or better. Right. There are positives that can come from it.
Speaker 3:Sure. More resources, which I think we'll circle back to as it relates to our the league. But yeah, when you're you're bigger, you in theory have more resources to lean on to provide if you choose to use those resources to do it, right? Yeah to to provide better coaching, better you know better facilities.
Speaker 6:I mean, you combine clubs and you you may have be able to provide a much improved facility for training and competition than you could if you were a much smaller organization.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Well, you just have the money to put it to put in those two new turf fields or four new fields, you know, that but then you're but then the argument to that is if you're larger, you have uh more teams, that means you require more facilities, bigger facilities. So two turf fields probably doesn't get you that far. Yeah, yeah, you can so but yeah, but it's scale, it scales up, right?
Speaker 6:And and by getting getting better processes, getting better facilities, getting better services, uh, all of those things can have a positive effect on the the player, the family, the end user, um, depending on how you phrase it. I think what we've talked about through this and recognizing the inevitability of this is that it's very important to us that as this industry changes, youth soccer people remain in a leadership role in deciding what is happening on the field in terms of the competitive structure, in terms of what does it look like when you step on the field and when you are in the experience of the youth sport, that it's not, it's not something that goes from being operated and run by the soccer professional and then it's turned into the hands of the, you know, exaggerate a little bit, but the accountant or the executive who's looking at spreadsheets and PLs and has no real understanding or care on the field.
Speaker 3:I need you to grow by 25% next year.
Speaker 6:Right? Right, right. But say and how do you do that? Well, one way you do that is you raise prices. Well, raising prices just to raise prices to drive return, that's not a great thing for the end user, right? If prices are raised because the experience is better, then then that's a different question, right? But just raising prices to raise prices, you know, then you get into economic again, economic concepts like price elasticity. How much is somebody willing to pay for an experience? That's how most of uh society functions. I mean, McDonald's figures out the price of the Big Mac and they're gonna price it as high as they can to get you to pay for it. Yeah. Um, and at some point you say it's not worth a Big Mac, right? And then the same thing if you go to Ruth's Chris or whatever your fancy steakhouse is, the same economic model applies. I don't think that extends into youth sports in the same way. And again, this is not saying that people should not make a living or make a profit or make a nice living in doing really good things. Um, but it's not just like selling widgets out of a factory.
Speaker 3:Trying not to jump all over the place. When you talk about, because I think this is something that's really important, because I think sometimes this conversation or the conversation about around economics and sports, which could be applied to economics and anything, school, piano lessons, vacations, whatever. There it you know, it could be a little taboo uh on the soccer front uh for for whatever reason. You have kids playing now, and I think that gives you a new perspective. I have kids playing, it gives you a perspective. What is important to you as it relates to, let's say, CJ's experience?
Speaker 6:Well, I think any parent, and and at the risk of being general, right? What you want for your kid is a quote unquote good experience, which means that they learn, they're having fun, and they want to keep doing it and they keep performing better at it. And while they're doing that, they make friends, they learn lessons, all that sort of stuff. And and I I guess to jump to the end, you have to be willing to pay for that service. If you expect somebody to be very good as a coach or a club as an operator to provide that high-level experience, it doesn't come for free because you have uh the facilities and infrastructure you have to pay for, and you have people's time you have to pay for uh in doing that. And in some ways, the mantra you get what you pay for is true in anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's an ex in a lot of ways, it's an expert's time. And I I know there's varying degrees of expert out there, but that's part of it, right? It's not just any Joe Schmo's time. Sometimes we've looked at the soccer coach, particularly at the club and the youth level, you know, as just some person when you know the greater majority of these people put a lot of time and effort into getting where they're getting.
Speaker 6:So well, if you if you look, let's look at fundamentally, and again, speaking in generalizations, but the difference between a recreational program within a club and a quote unquote select or competitive program, the two most obvious differences are price. And then generally in the recreational program, you are getting a parent or a volunteer coach that comes with a far lower price than if you are going and paying more to be in a quote unquote higher level, higher commitment, higher expectations, whatever it may be, then you're having to pay for somebody who has put in some time and uh uh in education and experience and qualification and all that stuff. Um, that is a fundamental decision that every parent makes when your kids go into sport. And I've had kids in recreational programs uh in a variety of sports and quote unquote select programs, and there is a dramatic price difference, and there is also a dramatic difference in the experience. And again, one is not right or wrong compared to the other, it is different. And I think as people age, more and more people, if they have the means to do so, which is, you know, that is a tough one, right? Because there is the reality is the world is economically not the same for everybody. But if they have the means to do so and they can pay for a quote unquote better experience, they will tr they will choose to do so and get that better experience for their kid. Now, they may not do that uh early on when they're young, and they may not do that for sports that the the the kid is less quote unquote serious or ambitious about. But when, when, and I think most parents would say this regardless of field, if your child shows a a love or an interest in something, you try and provide opportunities for them to do that more, do that better and and become better at it because ambition and dreams and all that stuff are a really positive thing for a for a kid.
Speaker 3:Sure. Yeah, and they and they may change along the way, but yeah, supporting your kids in those is I I agree is huge.
Speaker 5:We are talking about the changing economics in sports, particularly youth sports. And when we return, Doug Bracken will ask Christian labors directly why does soccer sometimes take a lot of the criticism with respect to costs? Doug will ask that question after hearing from Nike and soccer.com, two great corporate partners of the ECNL.
Speaker:Nike is a proud sponsor of ECNL. Nothing can stop what we do together to bring positive change to our communities. You can't stop sport because hashtag you can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The ECNL is pleased to announce QuickGoal as the official goal provider and partner for ECNL girls and ECNL boys, a new partnership created to support the growth and development of the country's top players, clubs and coaches at all national events, including national playoffs and national finals, the QuickGold Coaches Corner will provide hospitality and social space for ECNL girls, ECNL boys and collected coaches. QuickGoal will also be the presenting sponsor of the national championship winning ECNL Girls and ECNL Boys Coaches of the Year and the ECNL Girls and ECNL Boys Goals of the Year. QuickGo looks forward to helping the ECNL continue to elevate the standards of youth soccer and provide more opportunities to players on and off the field in the coming years.
Speaker 5:As promised once again here's Doug Bracken.
Speaker 3:Why do you think soccer specifically is has taken the lion's share of the criticism with respect to cost? Yeah with respect to cost because I I mean I guess I hear it you know I I maybe hear it from some of my kids friends who play other sports as well but I I don't know maybe I we just live in a in our own bubble of soccer so that's where we hear it. But I don't know what what are what are your thoughts there?
Speaker 6:Well I think that's a good point. I mean we we're it's not like you or I are talking to a bunch of parents in baseball you know or gymnastics or hockey every day. So we may have a little bit of an echo chamber in that regard. If if you sort of look at it from a romanticized view, soccer is one of the sports that doesn't demand a huge amount of equipment. I mean if you're going to be an ice hockey player you got to invest significantly in skates and pads and everything that goes with it in facilities. You know maybe add some shin guards which you know can double as you know a piece of cardboard shoved down your socks right but uh and I think Jacob you did a little bit of dirty math on this or back of the envelope math on average cost of sport of a variety of different sports not just soccer do you want to jump in here and give us some of the data that you found?
Speaker 7:Yeah absolutely I can we did go through we looked at different clubs and uh different avenues for a bunch of these different sports and there are some pretty significant price differences and like you said a lot of it comes down to equipment and it comes down to just really how much these families are really going to want to pay. So we looked at pretty much five different clubs from a bunch of these different sports and kind of averaged them out. But baseball comes out to about 3800 a year. That's year round volleyball is about 3400 a year lacrosse 3750 but by far the top two in terms of the pricing for the top elite level of them sports. Ice hockey comes out to about 7800 a year and that I'm it's going to be pretty much on the lower end as well before you call tournaments and travel and things like that. And elite gymnastics can cost up to $10,000 a year on average and there are some that are even higher than that.
Speaker 6:But from what we saw from so hold on to so just to make sure we we outline sort of where you're getting these you you basically did some internet research on this identified club programs in each of these sports where their cost structure was publicly available and and more and more clubs are doing that. And looking at what is the registration cost or the total anticipated cost of uh for you know I would say these are probably in the neighborhood of 11 year old to 18 year olds somewhere in that range.
Speaker 7:These are not your seven and eight year olds generally is that a fair statement no yes it is all generally looking at the ages at the EC NL place 13 to 1819s is what we looked at for the age groups and we tried to pull five clubs that were from different areas of the country so that way we weren't all just pulling from you know New York or California where prices are going to be higher. We wanted to get kind of a representation of different states. So we pulled stuff from Florida from Missouri in the Midwest Illinois Arizona all across the country to try to find different levels of pricing so that way we could kind of get a generally statistical significant average from these five clubs.
Speaker 6:Yeah so we're not we're not going to claim to to debate that this is a sample size that merits publication with you know right confidence intervals of 199% or whatever but uh it's a pretty good it's a pretty good basic cross section it feels about right um and when they're all kind of in the same way and then you you look deeper into soccer as well and you look yes uh at at the bigger leagues and I I think in soccer let's not be very specific to the tune of which one is more expensive by a hundred or not because I think uh there they all all the leagues you looked at fell within the same general frame of three thousand to thirty four hundred dollars basically in using the same type of methodology you did uh in the other sports yeah and this one's actually went to 10 clubs for you went to 10 10 each league right 10 each league again because you know this is the space that we operate in and this is one where we wanted to have kind of a little bit more of a stronger average for these clubs. To your question Doug when when people say well soccer takes a a lot of sort of self-beatings on on cost and and in no way are we minimizing the fact that it's expensive. I mean I have four kids starting to go into sports and you start to add $3,000 a kid times four a year I mean it's a gigantic expense. And so nobody's minimizing that but what we are seeing is that it's fairly consistent is that regardless of the sport you go into and then I I think gymnastics and hockey because of the equipment um and maybe gymnastics when you hear you know stories of how many hours a a day gym gymnastics insane. It's insane. So there's there's some variables there that are probably not the same as the as these other sports it is expensive.
Speaker 7:Now at the same time you also did some uh comparisons of uh cost of you know I I guess these would be stereotypical vacations right Jacob yes so why don't you go through some of the stereotypical brand name vacations that everybody would be aware of yes so we looked at you know family of four whether we want to take on vacation a trip to Disney on average this is hotels food transportation all that is about seven thousand dollars and a trip to universal and that's not flying there that's that's that's drive driving to Disney I'm just yeah and then Universal is about 6100 and so again so both of those are in Orlando both of those are in California but generally it's going to cost you around the 6500 in order to go to to vacation there and then for uh Legoland and SeaWorld this is just admission into the to the parks some of those expenses because they don't have resorts on site um both of those were about $700 for essentially a day trip there.
Speaker 6:And then they nicely all of these guys nicely price an annual pass at you know just enough above that to make you want to go more but uh having taken my kids to Legoland a couple times I can say that $700 for a family of four seems about right.
Speaker 3:A lot I've been to Legoland as well said a lot.
Speaker 6:I mean the the point of this is in saying and again there's always going to be something that is you know there's going to be an outlier. There's going to be the club that charges a lot more than that and for one reason or another they are able to do so. And there's going to be the club who charges a lot less than that, right? Because they they have other funding and they have some charitable arm or whatever it may be. But the point is the cost structure generally looks to be pretty pretty similar across these sports by the time you add in people's time facility needs equipment needs you're in a range and when you compare that I mean I guess by my math then you know five family trips to Legoland gets me one kid's sporting experience for the year uh based on the numbers that you just you just gave it's it's not cheap to raise kids in this country that's for sure.
Speaker 3:If I go back and think about you know why I want my kids doing it right it's it's your point it's that experience it's the teamwork it's the all the things that you learn. I'm not investing in in my kids' soccer future. Now it may work out that he uh goes and plays and beyond you know his youth experience but that's not really my hope for him. My hope is I'm investing in him his development as a as a human.
Speaker 6:Yes. And I think what what we're saying on that is uh first of all if if you're investing in this with the expectation of some type of economic return, that's I mean I dare say it crazy um but it is yes but what what we are saying is that you are investing in an experience that may have longer term opportunity associated with it in terms of playing you know as they get older into high school college and a very very very tiny few beyond that but you are paying for and investing in the experience on a daily basis of being a part of a team learning lessons in sport building friendships learning to be fit and to eat well learning what it's like to compete and be resilient and then also you know you're developing some skills that hopefully become a lifelong passion and activity for you as as a kid young adult and then adults to continue to be able to participate.
Speaker 3:And I would add to that my youngest has taken up golf he golf would be on the high end here. Yes yes yes it would we're lucky we have a a a very affordable little community golf course near us and then I would say the same thing about my soccer playing son it has provided uh me and I know their mom the opportunity to spend time with them whether it be going on the road and and experiencing that with them together. So just more quality time I I went and played golf with my youngest son yesterday and we had you know three hours together. We're not looking at his phone and we're just talking and and I think that's another important part of this is the connection if you allow it to be that part of that that that part of the experience. I mean obviously if you're browbeating your kid about how they're playing and what their what their results are it probably doesn't end up how how you would hope. But I think just having those opportunities to spend time with your kids is also I think really important. I guess what do you if you had a crystal ball and you talked about you thought about the what the future looks like as it relates to the economics of all this what do you think?
Speaker 6:Well I mean again I'll start with the inevitability of this um and we're in the middle of it and people can say hey one of the things we've done in in some ways is consolidate event operations. I mean we operate 50 something events a year and that number's going up the more events you operate by the way the more efficient you can be at operating events right the better you are at it and the the the cost structure becomes more controllable in that and if you're if you have a controllable cost structure and and experience and expertise at it you provide a better experience right and again most um most Americans and most things don't pay for things they don't like right so if you if you provide a good experience the the consumer uh wants that experience and so I think in some ways some of the consolidation will drive improved experiences now again I go back to and it's a it's our first value as a leave we talked about this a lot but youth soccer should be led by experts in youth soccer who understand its unique culture, ecosystem challenges needs all that sort of stuff. I think as economic forces come in here and as more economic reality starts to drive decisions, it's really important that the soccer people are still structuring soccer. We don't want soccer to turn into any uh other commercialized industry in that regard we want soccer experts you know to be in a very big role uh in this I think that demands a new skill set from what you would call your typical soccer expert that are going to have to become more sophisticated with respect to business operations in order to maintain a seat at that table. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. I mean change or die, I think is you know always a mantra that I go by and you have to understand the moment that you're in and rise to whatever that moment is and improve or make the adjustments that need to be made in order for you to be successful in that moment.
Speaker 6:And I think this is a big we've talked about this before it's a big lesson by uh about what happened in the past why certain things failed because they didn't change and they didn't rise to the moment when the moment arrived right so yeah and and to to the single operator or the sole operator who wants to maintain that independence which is great because you know and I've said this uh probably multiple times on this but you've we've had lots of conversations about this. Yeah I I think having competition between clubs uh is really important and I think it's better to have a couple of clubs in a city competing than just have one club owning everything. But if you want to may be the sole operator and maintain that independence it is going to force you to improve and adapt your business model and your service model. And that means you know when we can say things like service model, it sounds very corporate. But ultimately what that means is improve the quality of a coaching improve the quality of the experience that you're offering to people because there is a smarter competitor coming there is a bigger competitor coming there is a more efficient competitor coming whatever word you want to use that that competition level is going to force you to improve by by it its nature.
Speaker 3:I think there's a few different types of these businesses as it relates to you soccer at the club level. For us here like we've always you know purposely kind of kept it smaller. We haven't merged with anybody or you know changed our name or affiliated with anybody right we've been we've kind of tried to keep that small I would say like boutique kind of feel to to what we do. That's just our choice. I mean not not that any other way is is right or wrong. If you are smaller then it does push you to look at yourself frequently and say are we well is what we're doing good enough? Does it meet the challenge of this day and this age of of what's what we're competing against.
Speaker 6:Well and and to that point there are going to be the bigger smarter whatever you want to call it bigger for sure comp competitors who don't do as good of a job that do generalize or commoditize the experience of the youth soccer family or youth sports family. And that's going to have blowback right and that's going to create an opportunity for those clubs that are uniquely individualized and high quality in their service in comparison to sort of the corporate behemoth.
Speaker 3:Yeah look at this from the league's perspective so I mean as you know this is the ECNL podcast so how do you think this affects the ECNL and how we look at it going forward?
Speaker 6:Well I mean again in some ways people could say we are part of drive we are driving in some way the consolidation at a league level you know again we didn't we didn't create it I think it was the opportunity was created by the fracturing of the USYS monopoly which was created by the Development Academy. Then that created a an opening for a better league product where it was very hard to fight the monopoly that grew into a a huge amount of new leagues U.S. club soccer being probably the driver of a lot of those initially and then you start to see other uh member organizations starting to popping up here and there uh I think that's reached from a US soccer member organization perspective you're probably past peak on that I don't think you're gonna see a lot of new of that but what you are now starting to see is as these dozens and dozens of new leagues hundreds of new new leagues across the country have been formed now they're starting to consolidate again whether that consolidation is under trademark or whether it's under operational control or a little bit of both is happening we're engaging in that and again we would put our our our league hat on and say well we think what we're doing is improving the sport. You know we think by by providing the league product and service that we do it's making a better experience for the end user. But at the same time you know we talk about this all the time internally with our leadership team we don't have any inherent right to that it's competitive and the second that we believe our own press or we start acting like the monopoly then we will be vulnerable to the next competitor who comes. So I think we're we're we're in that space and we're we're looking as you would I mean we've we've done a lot at 13 to 18 and now we're looking at U12 and down and saying how do we make that space better? Because even just within the the very very microcosm I mean this is like a chaos theory in fractals right you so you you go from all industries you know are function like this economically then we're looking at you sports and how that looks and now we're looking at you soccer and it still looks the same and then now we're looking down into zone one and saying okay the same issues exist there. Yeah it need it needs to be better and is very inefficient and it's very fragmented. And so what can we do to provide better support for it? And again that doesn't always mean operating it right I mean you see some of the the you you'll see these on social media the pitches by some of these professional services firms let us take your business processes of accounting and payroll and finance so you can just focus on the coaching right that's a sort of a uh a sly way of saying let's buy the business and you can just coach and we'll run the business. Yeah, right, right. Which believe that or not, all this stuff is going to change what we do and we're gonna have to adapt to it and we're facing competitors that are doing the same thing now. So I think it's gonna continue to happen that some good some bad I think it's there's huge values to having new capital that comes in because you can use that to do better things. But again I've said this in multiple environments and maybe I'll finish it here which we and this is a little bit of a play on words but we we try and drive a sports driven business which means that what's good for the sport is the primary decision driver. And then you have a business that supports that. And anyone who says that uh a business is a bad thing doesn't understand economics and operations because you have to have resources in order to pay people and provide opportunity and provide services. So we try to be driven by sport based decisions and and values and that's very much in contrast to a business sport.
Speaker 3:Right. Those don't necessarily always equal the best business outcome.
Speaker 6:Correct there's times there's times we say this is what's right for the sport for the player for the club for whatever and it's going to be more expensive or more inefficient or whatever but it's what's right. That's right. But um and so you know to to do that play on words of a sports bus a sports driven business or a business in sport. And a business in sport is driven by spreadsheets and PLs that says what what is most going to drive the decision is what drops to the bottom line and how do we maximize that and then we figure out and back into the sport how to get there versus what does the sport need and then how do we price that so that we actually can exist to do it. And by existing to do it there needs to be a return because there's risk in business. And if there's not a return and you have a down year because things get canceled or a pandemic happens or anything like that, then you're out of business. Yeah right and then you can't provide the service that you feel is actually valuable. And that's kind of the the world that we we live in now.
Speaker 3:I think that's a great way to wrap it and well said uh it's a complex uh conversation but thought we needed to have it so it's good.
Speaker 5:It was good and Bracken's brain buster is always good.
Speaker:We'll hear from three ECNL corporate partners in return to end the show with a very good Bracken Brainbuster want the same expert advice from the pros at a discount tire store while shopping online meetreadwell your personal tire guide whether you're driving to practice or game day Treadwell gives you tire recommendations based on your vehicle location and driving habits. Get matched with the perfect tires so you can stay focused on the goals that matter most. Stop with Treadwell at discounttire.com ECML provides three recovery steps. ECNL has partnered with SmartGirl a stable for recovery and professional sports smartGirl is a safe affordable East and device that needs to store muscles and the most metabolic ways to stop by the recovery zone during your next event stocker.com is proud department with the ECNL to support the continued development of stocker in the US at the highest level delivery quality soccer equipment apparent players and coaches since 1984 living in pointing the people game ourselves the goal at stucker.com is to inspire you to play better, hear louder and have more fun. Visit stalker.com today to check out our unmatched collection of gear, expert advice and stories of greatness at every level of the game rack and brainbuster for today everybody uh get ready it's gonna be a tough question maybe for some of us we'll see but the question is will the U.S.
Speaker 3:ever produce a Ballon d'or level player for for those of you guys don't know the Ballandor is pretty universally recognized as the award for the best player in the world in a given year and what has to change to make that happen. Dean Linke I don't know the next time I'm gonna see you so I'm taking I'm you're going first.
Speaker 5:Yeah I feel like I live in the land of optimism and I'm gonna say absolutely it will happen and obviously I think it's gonna probably take something similar to what they did when they almost made the semifinals when we got ripped off against Germany. Totally got ripped off yeah totally totally got ripped off I mean in that tournament Claudia Reina was brilliant and probably could have been considered as well our goalkeeper was brilliant so I absolutely think it it's gonna happen. Is it still gonna take a little while for sure but it will happen.
Speaker 7:Okay love that Jacob Bourne I am going to agree with Dean in the sense that I think in the law of averages at some point there has to be an American that wins the Bahaba that's less optimistic than we just went to math but I will I will say this though I I think athletes now today are the best athletes that soccer have been and that that can is going to continue to progress forward in the sense that athletes are going to continue to get better and better. I think with individual training nutrition things like that eventually there's going to be an American athlete that is going to come out and blow the doors off the world. I think the number one thing that needs to happen and I think it's been said multiple times on this podcast as well is getting more players to play outside of their club environments playing in backyards playing on school grounds things like that because that is where you do the most developmental outside of the sport and I think that's how you're gonna be able to get the creativeness in order to be a world class player.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Rate sellers got to stick along the lines of uh optimism here and again going to absolutely say it will happen I think sooner than we think too and in terms of what has to change I'm gonna agree with Jacob it's only a matter of like playing environment and stuff like that. The more you can get out the more you can face adversity just new challenges and stuff. I think that's what it really comes down to. So it will definitely happen I'm gonna say within the next 20 years.
Speaker 6:So next 20 years optimistic either man holy cow it's gonna happen.
Speaker 3:All right labors what do you got I'm gonna say yes okay I'm gonna be very prescriptive by the way can I just say this because I did I did not say this and I need to say this to give proper respect. We have had that level player on the women's side I'm not sure Dean you might be able to check me on this. Maybe not a Ballon d'or winner because they did not have the women's Ballon d'or at the time but I do think FIFA women's player of the year we have had on the women's side. So I want to give due respect to the women who've come out of this country and been absolutely world class players. And I'm talking about this on the men's side so let me just check myself right there.
Speaker 5:Yeah because I'm certain Carly has won it like Rapino may have won it as well. Yeah I know Carly did.
Speaker 6:Okay sorry labors so I'm gonna go back my answer is yes okay be very prescriptive then I'm I'm maybe uh throw some darts on the board number one we need to reevaluate the playing structure of our U10 and down and play with less players on the field.
Speaker 4:Okay I like this I like this prescription number two we need more Americans playing college soccer okay I like that too many internationals currently number three we need more professional soccer clubs with opportunity to move up a pyramid number four is that like pro rel kind of kind of thing there needs to be more clubs I mean you look in Europe there's so many clubs in every city and there's so much opportunity and here we have that at a youth level we do not have that at a pro level or a college level I mean if you happen at it's happening at the pro level Christian I mean USL two is adding like 11 more teams and USL championships adding 10 yeah but it's still we're a continent dean and some of these teams are still very USL two is still very gosh that's of the an amorphous concept of what is US USL League one I meant.
Speaker 6:USL USL one's growing yes and that's a good thing but it's still not enough I mean you can still be in large parts of this country you can still not have a pro team within hundreds of miles in lots of parts of this country and so I think you need more of that because I'm a big fan of the the sort of petri dish uh analogy of if if a bunch of different people have opportunity to build a soccer program at a pro level and can earn their way up in some way. And I'm not going to become a pro rail zealot I'm not saying that but I'm saying if you do real let's say this in in USL one if you do really well in USL one there needs to be some type of economic return for that. You can make that commercially successful at the USL one level but then you have the opportunity to invest more and play in a bigger stadium against better level of competition whether that's a USL championship or something else. The last thing number four is I think we still need much better grassroots coaching education for the entry level uh the 12 and down that is still driven a lot by volunteer parents or young coaches, new coaches who teaching if anyone who's done this, it is a heck of a lot harder to teach a nine, 10, 11 year old basic concepts of like how do you play a two V two than it is to teach an 18 year old how to defend in a back four. So I'll go back. You need better game formats than the young. You need college soccer to be more uh inclusive of the American player. You need more pro teams with the ability to move up some type of ladder. You need more coach education that meets the level of zone one.
Speaker 7:I will also say USL is introducing pro rel in 27-28 across USL Championship League One and League Two.
Speaker 3:I'll believe it when we see it, Jacob. Yep. I'm gonna just say no and we're gonna close the show. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Man, I should have known that to let labors go last on this, because now I'm stuck in a spot where I have to try to respond to that. He has like a written plan. I he did not know this ahead of time. Well, well done on your feet. I'll I'll say yes. I'm gonna add to what you said, Christian. The one thing I would add is in our American professional leagues, USL MLS, we should have some requirements for your US players playing in those playing in those leagues as well.
Speaker 6:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Um so just kind of similar to what you said about the college soccer, but there has to be some ability and and requirement to play play the American player and give those those players that that experience at that level. So I'll say yes. I don't know. What a group of optimists we also hopefully it'll be in our lifetime as well. But again, I do want to say I'm sorry if I meant because we have some have been away. But the but the women's players who have been.
Speaker 6:Listen, and the the level of the women's game all over the world's getting higher and better. So to continue that, there's gonna need to be continued change also in the women's game, which is uh obviously a lot of people are talking about that because yeah, the game is getting better everywhere as other countries invest in it for the first time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally agree. Good stuff. I finally came with a really good question. I felt that was a good ending. We need better.
Speaker 6:We need more bracken brain brain busters like that. I mean, because I think we left you with some inspiration on that, but thank you for that. Thank you, Jacob, for all the prep on this episode. You know, it's a meaty episode, a lot of a lot of things to think about in that episode, and you need to have more than a 40-character response to uh solve these issues.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, you do.
Speaker 6:Thank you guys, appreciate it.
Speaker 3:See you in a couple weeks, everybody.
Speaker 5:We will indeed see you in a couple weeks. And to add what Christian said, a special shout out to Jacob Bourne for all of his research. Good to see Reed Sellers on the call as well. And need to thank our producer Colin Thrash, as well as everybody that works for the East CNL, plays in the East CL, coaches in the ECNL, administers in the East TNL. In fact, for each and every one of them, and all of you, I'm Dave Linke. We'll see you in a couple weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast. And remember, if you have a question that you want answered on Breaking the Line, the ETNL podcast, email us at info at the ectnl.com.