2026 Youth Sports Predictions: A Mid-Year Checkpoint

On today’s episode we check back in on the Youth Sports predictions we made in January, now that we’re at the halfway point. How many did we get right and how many have we been flat out wrong about so far? We look into the state of international expansion, government legislation, flag football infrastructure, and the SportsEngine sale. Later in the episode, we'll have more predictions for rest of 2026 centered around The Savannah Bananas, interoperability, sports academies, and plenty more. 0:00 - Youth Sports Expands Internationally 7:52 - An Elite High School Football Platform Launches 8:52 - Governments Will Tackle Affordability 11:28 - Organized Pickup Becomes A Hot Trend 16:16 - Parents Pushback On Specialization 19:39 - A Title IX-based Challenge to the House Settlement 22:03 - Sportstainment Grows 25:59 - Flag & Volleyball Increase Infrastructure 27:24 - Versant Will Partially Sell SportsEngine 30:25 - A Youth Sports Credit Card Is Introduced 32:18 - More Predictions For The Rest Of 2026 Thanks to EventConnect for sponsoring the show. If you’re an operator or tournament director you know tournament weekends have become mini supply chains: teams register, rosters change, schedules shift, hotels fill, and parents scramble. Too many events still run things on spreadsheets, portals, and last-minute calls. That’s where EventConnect comes in: They centralize the weekend workflow and handle things like registration, rostering, payments, lodging, and real-time reporting. Tourney organizers can run end-to-end on EventConnect or integrate the systems they already use with no rip-and-replace required. Whatever you choose the data lands in one place so operators aren’t stitching together reports from multiple tools. Their HousingConnect feature embeds hotel bookings directly into checkout, capturing rooms at peak intent instead of sending families to a separate portal later. And results can be up to 30% more room-night reservations and 24% savings on team hotel costs. Need more proof? EventConnect powers 5,000 events and connects 30,000 hotels across 800 destinations annually. Learn more about how EventConnect can help power your tournament at EventConnectSports.com Follow Us: Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.buyingsandlot.com/ LinkedIn:   / buying-sandlot   Instagram:   / buyingsandlot   TikTok:   / buyingsandlot