Weekly News Roundup: The Biggest Headlines in the World of Youth Sports
Anwar Stetson
Youth sports business news comes from BuyingSandlot.com. Subscribe to their free newsletter here.
🏀 Shoot 360 Focused On Major Expansion
Basketball performance tech franchise Shoot 360 has aggressive plans to grow to 600 locations worldwide by 2030.
Shoot 360 currently has a little over 50 established or planned locations in the U.S., plus a handful in Canada and overseas.
The company is backed by a bevy of NBA and WNBA players. It recently added two C-suite hires — COO Jason Carter (previously Bandon Fitness) and CMO Jamie Eslinger (previously Crunch Fitness, Massage Envy and European Wax Center).
What it is: Shoot 360 pairs AI-powered analytics with gamified training — almost every NBA team uses its technology. Athletes get real-time feedback on shooting, passing, and dribbling.
The brand’s 50 current locations offer group training, personal training, events, and even leagues (shooting competitions).
The investment to run a franchise reportedly runs from $600K to $1.8M, and the company is seeking franchisees in all 50 states.
📹 New Youth Sports Streaming Tech Emerges
BallerTV has launched BallerCam, a wide-angle device that affixes to an iPhone and delivers AI-powered archiving, recording, and live streaming.
The tech starts at $299. It does not include BallerTV access. BallerCam is a DTC product separate from BallerTV’s business with youth sports complexes and venues.
Former U.S. Women’s National Team star Alex Morgan has joined the company as a brand ambassador and strategic investor in conjunction with the rollout.
BallerTV said it has live-streamed over 2M youth sports events in its history. See Prep Network’s full article at “BallerCam’ built for Youth Sports Streaming.”
🛂 Little League’s Looming Political Headache
This would be a bit more than a bat-flip. The State Department denied visa requests for a Venezuelan team that qualified for the Little League Senior Baseball World Series.
Venezuela is among the countries impacted by travel restrictions instituted by President Donald Trump last month. A team from Mexico replaced the Venezuelan team in the ages 13-16 event, which began this past weekend in Easley, South Carolina.
Little League officials called the situation “extremely disappointing, especially to these young athletes.”
The issue now: A Venezuelan team has already qualified for next month’s Little League World Series (ages 10-12) in Williamsport, Pennsylvania — and it is unclear whether it will be allowed into the country.
Athletes, their families, and team officials are supposed to be exempt from the travel ban, but that carve-out is intended for elite professionals, not Little Leaguers. And government officials still retain discretion to reject sports-related visa applications — it has already happened several times.
See Prep Network’s full article at “Little League Team Denied Entry to U.S.“
🏈 NFL Flag Championships Pop Big Ratings
Disney and NFL platforms had a combined 7.7M viewers across 22 linear broadcasts, according to ESPN’s press room— a 65% YoY jump.
Big numbers, for sure. Though 7.7M is a bit misleading.
The real story (which is still good!): Here are the Nielsen ratings for the 2-hour NFL Flag championship broadcast, which featured the boys and girls finals from 4-6 p.m. ET on a Sunday:
- Overall average of 619K viewers
- Boys averaged 464K viewers (first hour)
- Girls averaged 766K viewers (second hour)
- Peak of 878K viewers (during final minutes of girls’ competition)
Added context: The broadcast out-rated the average NHL national broadcast last season and some WNBA national broadcasts this summer.
And here are the average regular season national TV ratings for major US sports:
- NFL: 17.5M viewers (multiple networks)
- Little League World Series championship: 3.5M (ABC/ESPN)
- NBA: 1.53M (ABC/ESPN)
- MLB: 1.84M (FOX)
- F1: 1.3M (ABC/ESPN)
- WNBA: 1.19M (ABC/ESPN)
- Girls flag: 766K
- Flag overall: 619K
- WNBA: 670K (ION)
- Boys flag: 464K
- NHL: 500K (multiple networks)
- MLS: 120K (Apple TV)
ESPN also said its event-related social media engagements were up 198% YoY, and video views jumped 146%.
