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Beyond this specific issue with ice hockey, participation in youth sports in general has become an escalating financial arms race affordable only to more affluent families. Any parent who wants their child to develop sufficient mastery to maybe have a shot at a college athletic scholarship — or the remote chance of a career as an Olympic or professional athlete — is pretty much forced to pay for travel club teams plus extra private coaching. Sometimes low-income families can get reduced fees but still it's tough to make the logistics work.
> Any parent who wants their child to develop sufficient mastery to maybe have a shot at a college athletic scholarship
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
… why would college athletic scholarship or Olympic/pro athlete be a reasonable bar or something anyone would care about?
Sports should be accessible to kids of all income levels for the sake of playing sports while they’re kids.
I didn't state that it was reasonable but a lot of parents do care. Something on the order of 2% of entering US college freshmen receive at least a partial athletic scholarship at NCAA D1/D2 schools. This can be a major cost savings, plus it allows them to bypass the normal application process. We can argue about whether colleges should give athletic scholarships at all but that's how the system works.
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.
Sorry I guess what I'm getting at is more specifically: why should anyone care if people are priced out of the absolute upper echelons of sports?
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.
Because, not to be idealistic, but America is supposed to be the land of opportunity. There are no kings, or lords. Every person is equal in the eyes of the law, and the free market is the decider. If we're abdicating that position, and just wanna accept that the rich get everything and everyone else fights for their scraps, well, I mean, everyone's gotta have an ethos, I guess.
I agree with those ideals, but this is like saying that only nepo-babies are likely to be professional basket weavers.
I don't see that as a meaningful bifurcation of kings and lords. Some people can afford the 99.9999% probability risk of investing 15 - 20 years of ultra-intensive training and coming up with literally no career and no method of adding value to their community that's even remotely correlated to the level of investment in their training. Most people cannot.
It is good if that is as few people as possible. And it is good if that person isn't literally starving afterwards (i.e. can just collect rent from their parents' accounts)
Was reading today that to become an Olympic big air athlete the estimated costs is 200K to 600k USD excluding major injuries.
Because when people sign up kids for sports, the thing they want them to learn the most is competitiveness and hard training. Everything else is basically perceived as being lazy. As a culture, we tend to turn evrything into grand moralization and duty.
So, consequently, sports club that is not trying to win is seen as lazy and bunch of loosers. And quite openly.
I think there's a big gap between "trying to win" and aspirations to be an actual professional or Olympian.
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.
Seems like redirecting the incentive of athletic scholarships to merit or needs based academic scholarships would solve the problem.
Like how much does this actually cost a year?
There's a huge range depending on the sport and level of commitment. At the top level of youth tennis some families spend $100K per year for coaching, travel, equipment, etc. For rowing we paid something like $13K per year, including trips to National level regattas. Other sports could be cheaper.
> In 2015, the Maryland-based Black Bear Sports entered the scene. The company, owned by the private equity firm Blackstreet Capital, began buying up struggling ice rinks, some of which were on the verge of closing.
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.
Almost as bad as the professional teams controlling and monetizing youth sports...
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/11/06/te...
Similar previous discussion:
Private Equity's New Venture: Youth Sports (80 comments)
So this is about parents complaining they cannot videotape other people’s children and put it online without any form of permission? Disgusting. I want my future children to be able to play sports without being displayed on YouTube.
Ironic that the article is paywalled
Utterly superficial analogy, eh wot.