Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring a great story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Remember when kids played baseball in sandlots and basketball on grotty asphalt courts? That era of unsupervised competition has largely faded, and parent-coached recreational leagues are fast receding. In their place we have paid coaches, year-round schedules, multiple practices per week, long-distance travel and, in many cases, intense competition for roster spots. And as the money flows in, billionaire investors are snapping up companies that serve the players and their parents. Bloomberg sports reporter Ira Boudway visited upstate New York—home to the storied Baseball Hall of Fame—to tell us how kids sports are changing. You can find the whole story online here. If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. Cooperstown All Star Village sits on a southwest-facing slope in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in Oneonta, New York. It’s about a 20-mile drive south of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown proper. Like many businesses in the area, the All Star Village indulges in a bit of geographical imprecision to borrow the Cooperstown name, which has become synonymous with the Hall of Fame. On a muggy Wednesday morning in July, Rick Abbott, chief executive officer of CASV, stops his golf cart to show me the view from the top of the hill. “Our topography is unbelievable,” Abbott says as we look down on 12 baseball fields flanked by the woods of the neighboring Oneonta Country Club golf course.  Over the course of the summer, thousands of kids will arrive from across the US to play baseball on this patch of hillside. CASV hosts 14 consecutive tournaments, with a new crop of about 70 teams, made up mostly of 12-year-old boys, coming through every six days. Last year, the site hosted a record 12,000 players from 763 teams, a mark it will surpass this summer. As we stand at the overlook, a player on the field directly below us hits a ball over the left field fence and circles the bases. “It’s a really big deal when kids hit home runs,” says Abbott. He’s a 61-year-old former Milwaukee Brewers first-round pick who never made it to the big leagues but forged a successful career in facility operations, with stints at ESPN, Rockefeller Center in Manhattan and the Formula 1 racetrack in Austin. “The parents will go scouting for the ball because we get them engraved.” For players, the village is a rite of passage. After age 12, things tend to change in youth baseball: The base paths go from 70 feet to the full 90, and the pitching mound moves from 50 feet away from home plate to the regulation 60 feet, 6 inches. For some, it’s the end of the road, making Cooperstown the culmination of their baseball careers. And for those who keep playing, the tournament serves as a final chance to strut across small fields and swat homers over short fences. For parents, it’s a long-awaited summer trip. Some drive for days to get there, their windows decorated with their kid’s name, number and team mascot. Many families book hotel rooms or rental houses a year in advance. A privileged few stay in the 39-room hotel on site ($483 a night). Over the 2023 season, according to Sports Destination Management, tournament visitors booked nearly 64,000 nights in the area, adding close to $95 million to the local economy. For the village’s owners, it’s a booming business. With registration fees set just under $1,300 per player, CASV brings in more than $15 million in revenue each season before selling a single milkshake ($10), hot dog ($7) or engraved baseball ($25). In the fall of 2021, David Blitzer and Josh Harris, a pair of private equity billionaires with deep ties to professional sports, took control of the village, paying $116 million for an 80% share. Since then, they’ve assembled a portfolio of more than a dozen companies built around youth sport—including baseball, softball, action sports and flag football—and spanning more than 30 states from New Jersey to Oregon. Earlier this year, they formed an umbrella company called Unrivaled Sports LLC for their growing empire. Between the two of them, Blitzer, a more than 30-year veteran at the investment firm Blackstone Inc., and Harris, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management who now runs the private equity firm 26North Partners, already have ownership stakes in every major US professional league. Through Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which they founded in 2017, they own the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils. Blitzer also owns stakes in MLB’s Cleveland Guardians and the MLS club Real Salt Lake (as well as the English Premier League’s Crystal Palace Football Club). And last year, Harris led a group of investors, including Blitzer, in buying the NFL’s Washington Commanders for $6 billion. Now they’re bringing their big league expertise and very deep pockets to an industry that’s traditionally been left to mom-and-pop operators.
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