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Business Insider
15-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Youth sports have become a hot area of investment — and it's prompted a fresh set of concerns
As a kid, I ran from field to field for soccer tournaments with back-to-back games, and woke up before the sun was up for lacrosse tournaments that were a long drive away. I'm not alone. It feels like nearly everyone in the US has some connection to youth sports, either through their own kids, their childhood experiences, or through siblings and other family members. Over 27 million children in the US — 54.6% — played organized sports, according to the most recent data from the National Children's Health Survey, which covered the 2022 and 2023. And investors ranging from venture capitalists to private equity have increasingly been paying attention to the deep connection Americans have with youth sports. "If you look at wallet share and the statistics around that for parents, how much they will spend on youth sports, it's insane," Aaron Miller, an investor at early-stage VC firm Will Ventures, told Business Insider. "For the first time, institutional investors are realizing that these are really interesting assets to own and maybe even optimize." Miller said the addressable market for youth sports is massive. According to The Aspen Institute's Project Play, the average US sports family spent $1,016 on their child's primary sport in 2024. Miller said the US is really the only country in the world with this level of spending on youth sports, which makes it attractive for investments. He said investments had grown in two areas: experiences and technology. Some of the new technologies in the space are using AI, like GameChanger, a livestreaming and game management software that youth teams use to keep track of stats and film, and put together highlights. Unrivaled Sports is an example of a company pouring money into experiences. Josh Harris, the owner of the Washington Commanders and cofounder of Apollo Global Management, along with Blackstone's David Blitzer, co-invested their own money to launch the company this year. Unrivaled Sports specializes in creating unique experiences for kids who play baseball, soccer, football, and action sports and also recently got a further $120 million investment, led by Dick's Sporting Goods. Miller's firm itself has invested in several youth sports companies, such as Youth Inc., a media and commerce company founded by former NFLer Greg Olsen, and Aktivate, a sports tech platform for K-12 schools. Some notable deals in the space include KKR acquiring Varsity Brands last year, and PlayOn (backed by KKR) buying MaxPreps from CBS Sports. TeamSnap acquired Mojo, a youth sports streaming service, in 2023. Investing in youth sports can also benefit leagues. Initiatives like the Junior NBA or LOVB's youth programs are helping to grow the game at a young level. "If you win over a kid in middle school, they're very influenceable, they could be loyal customers for the next 50-plus years," Miller said. Does the money stop kids from being kids? Concerns about the professionalization of youth sports have been growing in the last few years, with some parents concerned about burnout or overuse injuries happening at younger ages. As part of its Project Play research, the Aspen Institute found that some parents felt pressure to have their children specialize in a sport at an earlier age. The costs have also increased. The Aspen Institute reported a 46% increase in cost for a child's primary sport from 2019 to 2024. The study found that spending on travel and lodging, team registration fees, and camps or private training contributed to the increase. Melissa Jacobs is a journalist and the creator of the Good Game Substack, which focuses on talking about youth sports for parents. She said that destination youth sports tournaments and experiences have been proliferating. She said parents' inboxes can be "flooded with emails saying come to Huntington Beach, come to Omaha, come to Florida for every single sport." "It's making the equity gap humongous, and it's also watering down the experience," she said. Miller said he felt there needed to be a system to ensure that youth sports don't get over-optimized as more money flows into the space. Companies can offer services that can be great for talent development and earn more money. But this professionalization could negatively affect the kids playing who don't want to take things as seriously. "Youth sports are really expensive, and I think a lot of people have talked about, what's the breaking point?" Miller said. "Are a lot of these really expensive camps asking families to spend as much as possible? Yes. At the same time, I feel like there are a lot of really awesome products and solutions that haven't been built yet."
Time of India
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Web archivists scrambling to save US public data from deletion
As President Donald Trump's administration purges public records since storming back to power, experts and volunteers are preserving thousands of web pages and government sites devoted to climate change, health or LGBTQ rights and other on AIDS prevention and care, weather records, references to ethnic or gender minorities: numerous databases were destroyed or modified after Trump signed an executive order in January declaring diversity, equality and inclusion programs and policies within the federal governmentto be than 3,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site were taken down and more than 1,000 from the Justice Department's website, Paul Schroeder, president of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, told AFP. 404 error Some websites have disappeared altogether, such as that of the US development agency USAID, which has been effectively shuttered as Trump slashes US aid to poor countries. And the National Children's Health Survey page displays a "404 error" message. Federal agencies must now avoid hundreds of words such as "woman," "disability," "racism", "climate crisis" and "pollution" in their communications, the New York Times reported. "The focus has been on removing language related to environmental (or) climate justice on websites, as well as removing data and tools related to environmental (or) climate justice," Eric Nost, a geographer at Canada's University of Guelph and member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) told AFP. "This Trump administration moved more quickly and with a greater scope than the previous Trump administration," he said. EDGI, a consortium of academics and volunteers, began safeguarding public climate and environmental data after Trump's first election in 2016. Among the tools used are the WayBack Machine from the non-profit Internet Archive, or developed by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School. These systems, which long predate Trump's election, help "courts and law journals preserve the web pages they cite to," said Jack Cushman, director of the Library Innovation Lab. Long used by journalists, researchers and NGOs, web archiving enables a page to be preserved, even if it were to disappear from the internet or be modified later. This data is then stored on servers in a large digital library, allowing anyone to consult it freely. Volunteer work Archiving initiatives have multiplied, expanded and coordinated since Trump's return to the White House. The Data Rescue Project (DRP) brought together several organisations to save as much data as possible. "We were concerned about data being deleted. We wanted to try to see what we could do to rescue them," Lynda Kellam, a university librarian and DRP organizer, told AFP. She first launched the project as an online Google doc in February -- a simple word-processing tool listing downloaded PDF files, original dataset titles and archived links. It is now maintained by volunteers "who are working after work" to keep it running, said Kellam. "We are all volunteers, even myself. We have other jobs so that has been challenging," Kellam added. The data collection work, largely carried out by associations and university libraries, is threatened by a lack of resources. "Funding is the key issue... as the library and archives community rushes to take on a larger preservation challenges than ever before," Cushman said. "We need to fund coordinators for the ongoing effort, new tools, and new homes for the data." Harvard is also battling the ire of the Trump administration, which has cut federal grants to the prestigious university and threatened its tax-exempt status after it refused to comply with the president's demands to accept government oversight. "Data is the modern lighthouse, helping us plan our lives: it shows where we are so we can plan where we're going," Cushman said. "Businesses, individuals, and governments will suffer greatly from any failure to collect and share reliable data on weather and climate, health, justice, housing, employment, and so on."
Iraqi News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Iraqi News
Web archivists scrambling to save US public data from deletion
Washington – As President Donald Trump's administration purges public records since storming back to power, experts and volunteers are preserving thousands of web pages and government sites devoted to climate change, health or LGBTQ rights and other issues. Resources on AIDS prevention and care, weather records, references to ethnic or gender minorities: numerous databases were destroyed or modified after Trump signed an executive order in January declaring diversity, equality and inclusion programs and policies within the federal governmentto be illegal. More than 3,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site were taken down and more than 1,000 from the Justice Department's website, Paul Schroeder, president of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, told AFP. – 404 error – Some websites have disappeared altogether, such as that of the US development agency USAID, which has been effectively shuttered as Trump slashes US aid to poor countries. And the National Children's Health Survey page displays a '404 error' message. Federal agencies must now avoid hundreds of words such as 'woman,' 'disability,' 'racism', 'climate crisis' and 'pollution' in their communications, the New York Times reported. 'The focus has been on removing language related to environmental (or) climate justice on websites, as well as removing data and tools related to environmental (or) climate justice,' Eric Nost, a geographer at Canada's University of Guelph and member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) told AFP. 'This Trump administration moved more quickly and with a greater scope than the previous Trump administration,' he said. EDGI, a consortium of academics and volunteers, began safeguarding public climate and environmental data after Trump's first election in 2016. Among the tools used are the WayBack Machine from the non-profit Internet Archive, or developed by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School. These systems, which long predate Trump's election, help 'courts and law journals preserve the web pages they cite to,' said Jack Cushman, director of the Library Innovation Lab. Long used by journalists, researchers and NGOs, web archiving enables a page to be preserved, even if it were to disappear from the internet or be modified later. This data is then stored on servers in a large digital library, allowing anyone to consult it freely. – Volunteer work – Archiving initiatives have multiplied, expanded and coordinated since Trump's return to the White House. The Data Rescue Project (DRP) brought together several organizations to save as much data as possible. 'We were concerned about data being deleted. We wanted to try to see what we could do to rescue them,' Lynda Kellam, a university librarian and DRP organizer, told AFP. She first launched the project as an online Google doc in February — a simple word-processing tool listing downloaded PDF files, original dataset titles and archived links. It is now maintained by volunteers 'who are working after work' to keep it running, said Kellam. 'We are all volunteers, even myself. We have other jobs so that has been challenging,' Kellam added. The data collection work, largely carried out by associations and university libraries, is threatened by a lack of resources. 'Funding is the key issue… as the library and archives community rushes to take on a larger preservation challenges than ever before,' Cushman said. 'We need to fund coordinators for the ongoing effort, new tools, and new homes for the data.' Harvard is also battling the ire of the Trump administration, which has cut federal grants to the prestigious university and threatened its tax-exempt status after it refused to comply with the president's demands to accept government oversight. 'Data is the modern lighthouse, helping us plan our lives: it shows where we are so we can plan where we're going,' Cushman said. 'Businesses, individuals, and governments will suffer greatly from any failure to collect and share reliable data on weather and climate, health, justice, housing, employment, and so on.'
The Sun
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Trump Purges Data; Experts Rush to Save Public Records
WASHINGTON: As President Donald Trump's administration purges public records since storming back to power, experts and volunteers are preserving thousands of web pages and government sites devoted to climate change, health or LGBTQ rights and other issues. Resources on AIDS prevention and care, weather records, references to ethnic or gender minorities: numerous databases were destroyed or modified after Trump signed an executive order in January declaring diversity, equality and inclusion programs and policies within the federal governmentto be illegal. More than 3,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site were taken down and more than 1,000 from the Justice Department's website, Paul Schroeder, president of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, told AFP. 404 error Some websites have disappeared altogether, such as that of the US development agency USAID, which has been effectively shuttered as Trump slashes US aid to poor countries. And the National Children's Health Survey page displays a '404 error' message. Federal agencies must now avoid hundreds of words such as 'woman,' 'disability,' 'racism', 'climate crisis' and 'pollution' in their communications, the New York Times reported. 'The focus has been on removing language related to environmental (or) climate justice on websites, as well as removing data and tools related to environmental (or) climate justice,' Eric Nost, a geographer at Canada's University of Guelph and member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) told AFP. 'This Trump administration moved more quickly and with a greater scope than the previous Trump administration,' he said. EDGI, a consortium of academics and volunteers, began safeguarding public climate and environmental data after Trump's first election in 2016. Among the tools used are the WayBack Machine from the non-profit Internet Archive, or developed by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School. These systems, which long predate Trump's election, help 'courts and law journals preserve the web pages they cite to,' said Jack Cushman, director of the Library Innovation Lab. Long used by journalists, researchers and NGOs, web archiving enables a page to be preserved, even if it were to disappear from the internet or be modified later. This data is then stored on servers in a large digital library, allowing anyone to consult it freely. Volunteer work Archiving initiatives have multiplied, expanded and coordinated since Trump's return to the White House. The Data Rescue Project (DRP) brought together several organizations to save as much data as possible. 'We were concerned about data being deleted. We wanted to try to see what we could do to rescue them,' Lynda Kellam, a university librarian and DRP organizer, told AFP. She first launched the project as an online Google doc in February -- a simple word-processing tool listing downloaded PDF files, original dataset titles and archived links. It is now maintained by volunteers 'who are working after work' to keep it running, said Kellam. 'We are all volunteers, even myself. We have other jobs so that has been challenging,' Kellam added. The data collection work, largely carried out by associations and university libraries, is threatened by a lack of resources. 'Funding is the key issue... as the library and archives community rushes to take on a larger preservation challenges than ever before,' Cushman said. 'We need to fund coordinators for the ongoing effort, new tools, and new homes for the data.' Harvard is also battling the ire of the Trump administration, which has cut federal grants to the prestigious university and threatened its tax-exempt status after it refused to comply with the president's demands to accept government oversight. 'Data is the modern lighthouse, helping us plan our lives: it shows where we are so we can plan where we're going,' Cushman said. 'Businesses, individuals, and governments will suffer greatly from any failure to collect and share reliable data on weather and climate, health, justice, housing, employment, and so on.'
The Star
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Star
Web archivists scrambling to save US public data from deletion
WASHINGTON: As US President Donald Trump's administration purges public records since storming back to power, experts and volunteers are preserving thousands of web pages and government sites devoted to climate change, health rights and other issues. Resources on AIDS prevention and care, weather records, references to ethnic or gender minorities: numerous databases were destroyed or modified after Trump signed an executive order in January declaring diversity, equality and inclusion programs and policies within the federal governmentto be illegal. More than 3,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site were taken down and more than 1,000 from the Justice Department's website, Paul Schroeder, president of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, told AFP. 404 error Some websites have disappeared altogether, such as that of the US development agency USAID, which has been effectively shuttered as Trump slashes US aid to poor countries. And the National Children's Health Survey page displays a "404 error" message. Federal agencies must now avoid hundreds of words such as "woman", "disability", "racism", "climate crisis" and "pollution" in their communications, the New York Times reported. "The focus has been on removing language related to environmental (or) climate justice on websites, as well as removing data and tools related to environmental (or) climate justice," Eric Nost, a geographer at Canada's University of Guelph and member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) told AFP. "This Trump administration moved more quickly and with a greater scope than the previous Trump administration," he said. EDGI, a consortium of academics and volunteers, began safeguarding public climate and environmental data after Trump's first election in 2016. Among the tools used are the WayBack Machine from the non-profit Internet Archive, or developed by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School. These systems, which long predate Trump's election, help "courts and law journals preserve the web pages they cite to," said Jack Cushman, director of the Library Innovation Lab. Long used by journalists, researchers and NGOs, web archiving enables a page to be preserved, even if it were to disappear from the internet or be modified later. This data is then stored on servers in a large digital library, allowing anyone to consult it freely. Volunteer work Archiving initiatives have multiplied, expanded and coordinated since Trump's return to the White House. The Data Rescue Project (DRP) brought together several organizations to save as much data as possible. "We were concerned about data being deleted. We wanted to try to see what we could do to rescue them," Lynda Kellam, a university librarian and DRP organiser, told AFP. She first launched the project as an online Google doc in February – a simple word-processing tool listing downloaded PDF files, original dataset titles and archived links. It is now maintained by volunteers "who are working after work" to keep it running, said Kellam. "We are all volunteers, even myself. We have other jobs so that has been challenging," Kellam added. The data collection work, largely carried out by associations and university libraries, is threatened by a lack of resources. "Funding is the key issue... as the library and archives community rushes to take on a larger preservation challenges than ever before," Cushman said. "We need to fund coordinators for the ongoing effort, new tools, and new homes for the data." Harvard is also battling the ire of the Trump administration, which has cut federal grants to the prestigious university and threatened its tax-exempt status after it refused to comply with the president's demands to accept government oversight. "Data is the modern lighthouse, helping us plan our lives: it shows where we are so we can plan where we're going," Cushman said. "Businesses, individuals, and governments will suffer greatly from any failure to collect and share reliable data on weather and climate, health, justice, housing, employment, and so on." – AFP
