At the Project Play Summit this month, Tom Farrey challenged the 600 leaders in attendance to embrace the federal government’s goal of a 63.3% participation rate by youth in organized sports by 2030. The executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program highlighted the societal benefits, which include a projected $57 billion in direct medical costs and economic productivity gains.

Jeff Young was among those who thought to himself, let’s go. He’s the CEO of Stack Sports, a software provider to 12,000 sports organizations from the youth levels to professional leagues across the country. The company is also the newest member of Project Play’s industry roundtable, Project Play 2024.

In this Project Play 2024 Member Spotlight, Young talked with Farrey about what Stack Sports can contribute to the goal of getting and keeping more children playing sports. Below is an edited transcript.

Tom: The goal of 63.3% would be a 10% lift from when an inter-agency group set the baseline a few years ago (and an even higher lift from the 50.7% rate from 2020-21, the most recent data released). How do we make that happen? And what do you think the role is of Stack Sports in helping get there?

Jeff: Our role is on the front end and on the back end. We sit with a terrific set of industry leaders in every single sport and talk to them about, how do we get more kids in that 3 to 5 age range to just get exposed and have fun? So by the time they’re 6, they’re athletes and they love being athletes?

We also spend time on, how do we keep kids from leaving organized sport way too soon? We get excited about that. I think we're going to make a really compelling path for people above 11 or 12 that’s not all about going to the NFL or MLS or NBA. Just because you’re not an elite athlete doesn't mean you shouldn't have another two, three, five years in some organized sport.

Tom: You’ve got the words “increase participation” in your corporate mission. You’re a software company. For people who don’t understand your sector, how can you act meaningfully in that way?

Jeff: There’s three core things we do. We work with a lot of large organizations – so think national governing bodies, not just in the U.S. but across 15 or 20 different countries. In that place, we’re providing things like high-end data analytics. Where are they getting kids? Where are they keeping kids? Where are kids falling off? That’s a big part of it, using big data to help partners close participation gaps.

Second, it’s to provide great technology. Most people who sign up to help our teams, they sign up to coach. They sign up to be a referee or umpire. They don’t sign up to run the system. But they’re going to have to run the systems along the way – so we have to make really powerful systems that are incredibly easy to use, so you can spend more time fundraising and coaching and umpiring.

Third, getting volunteers is such an important part of what we do, and then making sure the volunteers are high quality and making their lives easier so they come back and volunteer next season. It's taking these sports and rolling them into terrific experiences for the people who get to run them.

Tom: What I find interesting is that in the highly disjointed space that is youth sports, where 35 or so million kids play in some form across an array of activities, software companies like Stack Sports are among one of the few aggregators. There aren’t many places where the industry comes together in a vertically integrated fashion. Am I thinking about it the right way?

Jeff: You very much are. We serve around 20 million sports families a year through our ecosystem, across almost all sports. Our camps start with kids who are 2, 3, 4 years old, getting them exposed to a whole variety of sports. And then we stick with them from the very entry level camps to the very high end. Elite 11 is our football camp, where we bring in the top high school quarterbacks. Three of the top five draft picks at this year’s NFL Draft went through our Elite 11 three years ago. We've got a unique database and a view of data that we can bring in and help our partners with.

Tom: You said you try to get kids involved with sports early. After you’ve got a kid to participate in sports, how do you retain them and help them grow and develop?

Jeff: It’s different in each sport. We work with each (organization) and ask, how do you get more kids into the funnel at the beginning? How do you make that first experience not just excellent, but repeatable and testable? Then, how do you find the spots where they're falling down? Sometimes it's by geography, sometimes it’s by age group, sometimes it's by offering. We look at that with all our different leagues and clubs, all the way to the national governing bodies, and come up with ways that each year they can try some different things to roll out.

Not only do we have these close one-on-one relationships with partners, we've also got a great cross section (of sports). We’re working with people who are doing great things in flag football, one of the fastest growing sports. How do you take some of those ideas to lacrosse, baseball, hockey, and basketball?

Tom: What about little Jeff Young? We all started somewhere. What was your youth sports experience like? And how does that inform your work today?

Jeff: I grew up in a small town in the Midwest, so I was in the dirt a lot. I played baseball, basketball, flag football. I ran cross-country, track, wrestled for a while, you name it. If there was a sign up, I was signing up and giving it a shot. Then I got a chance to do it again with my three kids. I got a chance to serve in volunteer roles, whether it was hauling equipment or fundraising, or using systems that were very antiquated. It was a tremendous opportunity not only to participate and give back, but also to learn at a deeper level just how much technology could help.

Tom: From our surveys, we estimate that north of $30 billion is being spent on youth sports by parents alone. That doesn't include public investment, or private equity or other folks coming into the space. As the environment becomes more commercialized, how do we build a sport ecosystem that still puts the needs and interest of the child at the center?

Jeff: Actually, that's one of the reasons we're so excited about being part of Project Play 2024. Your goal of growing sports and making the sport experience better is hand-in-hand with our mission. It's good for us, for kids, and for our business partners. We’re very excited about driving Project Play’s ideas in to the things we're doing, whether we're talking to a national governing body or a grassroots organization helping somebody get set up in a small town.

Tom: What is the GOALS Council?

Jeff: The GOALS Council is an opportunity for us to step back and think about how we make our impact even broader. We’ve brought in industry leaders, business people, tremendous coaches, and people who have run big and small organizations, and asked them about how do we grow the opportunity for families at the grassroots level?

As an example, one of their projects last year was community soccer ball boxes. Think of Little Free Libraries where they have books out in the neighborhood and you can pick up a book or drop one off. We've got soccer ball stands that are going up around the country. You don't have to sign in. If you want to borrow a ball for a few hours with your buddies and play, great! If you want to take a ball later, other people will show up and put some balls in there. That project will help us learn for other sports.

Tom: Anything else you wanted to add?

Jeff: Just that we really love the opportunity to dive in with Project Play and we are excited to accept the challenge to grow youth sports participation rates to 63.3% by 2030. When we're out there supporting our partners with all these different sports, growing participation is what they're trying to do. If we can help them all get a little piece of it successfully, at both the grassroots and competitive end, we have a chance to do this.

Learn more about Project Play 2024.