Youth sports in U.S. is a vast and disjointed space, larger than any professional sports league – Project Play research shows that families alone spend north of $30 billion a year on their children’s activities – but without any organizing body. While many national entities operate in and influence the sector, programs are still largely designed and delivered by locally controlled organizations.
Software companies focused on serving the industry are among the few venues where sport providers and parents gather and pass through at scale. Among the leaders is TeamSnap, which over the past 13 years has helped more than 25 million people communicate about team activities. Along the way, it’s evolved into an app-based platform that also helps organizations in more than 100 sports register participants, schedule games and practices, and discover useful tools.
That footprint and those levers are why TeamSnap was welcomed into the Project Play 2024 roundtable last year, as the industry-focused group renewed a multi-year commitment to develop mutually reinforcing actions that can help grow sport participation and related metrics among youth. TeamSnap also became co-presenting sponsor of the annual Project Play Summit, helping the Aspen Institute convene leaders from across sectors to take measure of the nation’s state of play and chart next steps in building healthy communities.
Dave DuPont, founder of TeamSnap, talked with Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, about the role of the company and technology broadly in creating opportunities to drive progress – and the disruption caused by COVID-19. Below is an edited version of their conversation.
Tom: We’re a year and a half into the pandemic. It’s still with us. How do you assess the state play today? You've been doing research.
Dave: The Charles Dickens quote comes to mind – it’s the best of times and the worst of times. On the positive side, we’ve seen increasing recognition of the value of the sport across our society. Frankly, we’ve been surprised, and pleased, by how much communities are behind their local sports teams. In the survey we conducted recently of a few thousand folks in youth sports, another thing we validated was how important parents view sports as a mental health activity.
So, lots of good things. At the same time, there are some worrisome trends, like the effect of money on sports, which was changing things even before COVID. I think back to my high school experience in Sunnyvale, California. I was one of probably 40 freshmen on the football team. Almost no one had played organized tackle football before then. Today, I doubt that I would have been able to do that because almost everyone enters with experience in a sport. That drives a wedge between kids from families who have funds and those who don't. The danger we face is that sport becomes more and more of a rich person's game.
Tom: It’s in most sports, even baseball. One of the owners of the Cleveland Indians once told me that baseball has become a country club sport.
Dave: It’s sad because of the cost of coaching and pitching machines, and all this kind of stuff. It’s just a trend that, left unchecked, will exacerbate socio-economic disparities. Ninety-five percent of CEOs played organized sports in some form into college. What does it say if you're limiting access to organized sport for whole sectors of our society?
Sports participation is also why companies like ours are around. That’s why at TeamSnap we’re committing more resources to access to sport. This year, we were acquired by a growth equity firm (Waud Capital) and it’s great that the leaders share our vision of doing even more in the sports world. As we become a much bigger player over time, we’ll have more resources to devote to this.
Tom: I want to ask you about the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports, released by Project Play a month ago. Team Snap is one of the endorsers – more than 80 organizations have now done so. Where do you see the opportunity there?
Dave: The bill of rights articulate rights that I think many of us would agree children should have but until now have never been made explicit. We needed that defined objective because if you don’t know where you’re going, you're probably not going to get there. The bill of rights articulates that on an individual basis for kids, so that's extremely positive. There's a reason why so many individuals and organizations, both nonprofit and profit-oriented, have signed up.
What role can TeamSnap play, moving forward? TeamSnap is a connector of people to the activities that they and their kids are engaged in, so that gives us the opportunity to educate them and to promote the bill of rights.
Tom: What will it take for local sport providers to embrace its principles? Because it's one thing to say, yeah kids have these rights, and it’s another thing to embed the bill of rights into your activities. What’s the value proposition for the provider who's just trying to get people through their turnstiles?
Dave: Enlightened self-interest. There must be something in it for an organization or they're just going to give it lip service. The way to provide value is we introduce a way for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. As these rights become codified and defined, organizations can be measured in terms of the achievement of them and, ultimately, the organizations seen as champions of children's rights become more desired organizations to get involved with.
Tom: TeamSnap has worked with a lot of sports parents. Do you think parents will respond favorably to an organization identified as being child-centered?
Dave: I don't think we're there yet. But we have the opportunity to make that alignment more of a litmus test for organizations, encouraged by parents.
Tom: Michael Lewis talked about this at the Project Play Summit last year, that sports parents don't know how to sort the good from the bad so they just go with what's on the organization’s website, meaning a list of kids who came through the program and appear to have gone on to play college sports.
Dave: Or they rely on what friends or acquaintances tell them. As we've seen in many industries, there's an opportunity to provide a more objective yardstick.
Tom: What role do you see Project Play 2024 playing in driving progress?
Dave: Collaboration. It’s a diverse, capable group that brings significant insights, expertise, and resources. You’ve got big and small companies and collectively they bring a lot to the party. The promise of this group is that it can be the vanguard in identifying and executing initiatives that further the goals of Project Play. I think we have gotten a good start, especially with the Children's Bill of Rights in Sports. It’s an initiative that will have impact, that organizations can get behind. I don't think it’s the only thing the group can do but I think that's a very meaty thing that we have already started to make progress on.
Learn more about TeamSnap’s research with Utah State University on what families want from a youth sport experience at the Project Play Summit (Oct. 19-20), when Dave DuPont will moderate a live conversation with parents, coaches, and program administrators. Registration for this year’s Summit (virtual) is free.