How Private Equity Ruined American Youth Sports
The investigation has already established an important distinction: LOVB genuinely acquires youth-volleyball businesses, but ownership of a club network does not automatically prove that parents' dues subsidize the professional league. The strongest criticism must establish where the money actually goes, rather than treating private-equity involvement as proof of financial exploitation.
A second, more consequential weakness has emerged: the video repeats the widely circulated claim that 70% of children quit organized sports by age 13, despite a 2026 investigation questioning whether that statistic has a verifiable primary source. The figure was repeated at a 2025 congressional hearing, but repetition by an institution does not establish its accuracy.
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The fee evidence also complicates the accusation. LOVB anchor club A5's published 2024–25 estimates put older national teams at roughly $5,200–$7,000; its 2026–27 schedule lists $5,000–$6,000 for ages 13–18. These are not perfectly comparable schedules, but they do not demonstrate the fee increases the video predicts.
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The opening tournament is another important distinction. Red Rock Rave is organised by the Southern California Volleyball Association (SCVA), a nonprofit volleyball organisation, with KC Sports Housing handling accommodation. Its mandatory hotel policy is an SCVA event rule—not evidence of LOVB setting prices or collecting tournament revenue.
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Wendover's Case Against LOVB Is Missing the Money Trail
Wendover Productions builds a compelling picture of expensive American youth volleyball. It then makes a much larger accusation: private-equity-backed League One Volleyball (LOVB) needs parents to pay increasingly expensive club dues to finance its professional league.
That is where the investigation stops.
The video establishes an expensive youth sports system, substantial private investment and a commercial relationship between youth clubs and professional volleyball. It does not establish that LOVB has raised club fees following acquisitions, that youth-club revenue is transferred to professional operations, or that private-equity ownership has made participation more expensive.
The narrator says:
"And to maximize the return, private equity needs to see those club dues go up."
That is a hypothesis about investor incentives presented as though it were an established business outcome. The distinction matters.
The opening tournament is not LOVB
The Red Rock Rave provides the video's most memorable evidence of the cost of competitive volleyball. But the event is organized by the Southern California Volleyball Association (SCVA), not LOVB.
SCVA's published accommodation policy requires six hotel rooms per team per night, with a $100 penalty for every missing room per night. SCVA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Its 2023 tax filing reports $10.45 million in revenue and $1.5 million in net income across the association.
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None of this makes the hotel policy reasonable or the tournament inexpensive. It establishes who operates the event.
The video moves from SCVA's tournament economics to LOVB's private-equity-backed business model without demonstrating that LOVB controls the tournament, its hotel arrangements, its concessions or its admission charges.
Those expenses illustrate the wider youth volleyball economy. They are not evidence of LOVB extracting money from families.
LOVB really does have a commercial youth-club business
There is a stronger case against LOVB than the video actually develops.
A 2021 Sports Business Journal investigation documented that LOVB's original partnerships with youth clubs had varying financial arrangements. Some included shared economics from membership dues and training clinics. LOVB also provided administrative support in areas such as facilities and marketing.
CEO Katlyn Gao described participating families and players as the company's audience and identified media, merchandise and events as additional revenue opportunities.
sportsbusinessjournal.com
That is important. LOVB was not simply offering young athletes an inspirational connection to professional players. It was building a commercial ecosystem around their participation.
The company's November 2024 funding announcement made the strategy even clearer:
- $100 million in new investment from Atwater Capital, Ares and Left Lane Capital.
- $160 million in total funding announced to date.
- 58 youth clubs and more than 16,000 athletes.
- An ESPN broadcasting agreement and commercial partnerships.
- A stated ambition to turn young volleyball participants into lifelong professional-league fans.
The announcement specifically identified its 12–26-year-old audience as commercially attractive to brands.
lovb.com
Private equity's involvement is real. So is the commercial value of the youth network.
But there is a distinction between sharing revenue from club dues and demonstrating that those dues finance professional-team operations.
The video never establishes the amount transferred, the proportion of club revenue involved, or whether the professional league depends on those payments.
The ownership structure is more complicated than the video suggests
By May 2026, LOVB's CFO Mike Bufano reported that the network had grown to 92 clubs, with its 100th acquisition expected in July.
He also disclosed that club directors receive a multi-year profit share after joining LOVB. Their club identities and leadership remain in place, while the organization supplies additional infrastructure, coaching resources and administrative support.
YSBR
This is a meaningful incentive structure. Club directors have a financial interest in the profitability of their organizations.
But the video treats all 90 clubs as one straightforward ownership portfolio.
LOVB's own website describes a network of 93 clubs and offers three different routes into the organization: existing clubs joining, new clubs being established, and facility owners hosting LOVB clubs. It also says participating clubs retain discretion over tryouts, practices, tournaments and daily operations.
lovb.com
Those relationships should not automatically be treated as identical legal ownership arrangements.
The public materials do not provide a complete ownership schedule or disclose who sets each club's fees.
That is precisely the information an investigation into private-equity control should establish.
The professional league has other sources of capital
The video's financial argument also gives insufficient attention to how LOVB finances its professional operations.
The $160 million funding announcement is one documented source of capital. Its commercial relationships include sponsorships, broadcasting, media and merchandise.
In March 2026, Sports Business Journal reported that Synergy Sports Capital had acquired the operating rights to LOVB Salt Lake and invested in the league.
The same report said LOVB was seeking $20 million or more for expansion teams. Actual transaction values were not disclosed, but new team investors would become both team owners and equity holders in the league.
sportsbusinessjournal.com
These arrangements establish additional financing channels.
They do not prove that club dues never support professional operations. Equally, they make it impossible to accept the video's suggestion that those dues are necessarily the professional league's financial lifeline.
The public information reviewed does not establish the actual flow of money between the youth clubs and professional operations.
That requires financial statements, acquisition agreements and intercompany transaction records.
The youth-to-professional pipeline is not yet proven
There is another revealing disclosure in Bufano's 2026 interview.
More than 4,000 junior athletes subscribed to monthly position-specific communications from LOVB professionals, compared with a youth ecosystem of approximately 164,000 athletes.
Bufano acknowledged that the organization was still in the early stages of understanding long-term fan conversion. He offered no year-three or year-five conversion target.
YSBR
The pipeline is a commercial ambition, not yet a demonstrated conversion engine.
The video treats the promise of a direct pathway to professional volleyball as though its financial and developmental results were already established.
They are not.
The expensive youth sports system predates LOVB
LOVB launched in 2019. The financial barriers associated with competitive club sports were already documented before then.
A 2018 peer-reviewed study examined 949 parents recruited at youth club sporting events and practices. Parents reported median annual spending of $1,500 on club sports, and most came from households earning more than $100,000 annually.
The researchers warned that year-round club participation could exclude families without sufficient financial resources. The study was cross-sectional and locally recruited, not a nationally representative survey, but its timing is important: the affordability problem existed before LOVB's expansion.
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The Aspen Institute's nationally representative 2024 parent survey provides a broader picture:
- Average spending on a child's primary sport reached $1,016, up 46% since 2019.
- Including other sports teams, average annual spending approached $1,500.
- Parents reported spending more than $40 billion annually on children's sports.
- Travel and club sports appeared in 17% of reported primary-sport settings, compared with 43% for community-based teams, 41% for free play and 40% for school teams.
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Project Play
The rising cost problem is real. But these figures cover youth sports nationally, not LOVB clubs specifically.
There is also a measurement problem with the $40 billion figure. Aspen's estimate measures parental spending. It is not an audited total of company revenues or a pool of money available to private-equity investors.
The video's $11,500 season is a constructed example of an expensive travel-volleyball experience. It is not a measured national average.
A5, one of LOVB's anchor clubs, publishes its own fee schedules and cost information. Its publicly available 2024 and 2026 schedules do not establish the upward price trend the video predicts. They are not a controlled portfolio-wide comparison, but they demonstrate why actual club-level price histories matter more than assumptions.
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If LOVB's acquisitions are driving fees higher, show the increases. Identify the clubs, compare their prices before and after acquisition, account for changes in services and tournament schedules, and establish the company's role in setting those prices.
The video does none of this.
The 70% dropout statistic has a serious source problem
The video states that 70% of American children quit organized sports by age 13, citing a 2025 congressional hearing.
The statistic deserves considerably more scrutiny.
The December 2025 House hearing included the figure in a prepared statement by Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Kiley. That statement is not an independent national participation study.
Committee on Education & the Workforce
The 2020 President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition Science Board report also repeated the 70% figure. Its reference 171 points to a 2018 textbook, Sociology of North American Sport, rather than a primary national longitudinal study.
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Sports researcher Joseph Janosky subsequently traced the statistic's history in a March 2026 investigation. The earliest identifiable data layer appears to lead toward Ewing and Seefeldt's late-1980s participation research.
That research presented sport-specific, cross-sectional figures measuring whether participants intended to return to the same sport the following year. It did not directly establish that 70% of all children quit organized sports by age 13.
Leaving one sport while continuing another is not the same as quitting organized sport entirely.
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More recent research provides a better-defined picture. An Aspen Institute national survey of 3,827 young people aged 10–17 found that former players stopped participating at an average age of 12.93. More than a third of those who quit did so between ages 12 and 14.
That supports the concern about early-adolescent dropout. It does not validate the widely repeated 70% figure.
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Project Play
A documentary making a public-health argument should not rely on a statistic whose original measurement cannot be clearly established.
The scholarship argument contains a factual error
The video correctly identifies the extremely competitive nature of college volleyball recruitment. USA Volleyball itself reports that fewer than 6% of high-school volleyball players reach college competition and approximately 1.2% reach Division I.
But the video then claims that Division II, Division III and NAIA do not offer full scholarships covering tuition and room and board.
That is incorrect.
USA Volleyball's own collegiate guidance states:
- Division II: Full athletic scholarships are possible, although schools can distribute scholarship equivalents across their rosters.
- Division III: Athletic scholarships are prohibited, although academic and other financial aid are available.
- NAIA: Schools can distribute the equivalent of eight scholarships across a women's volleyball roster.
USA Volleyball
This distinction matters to families making expensive decisions about college recruitment.
The video presents the scholarship landscape as even more restrictive than it actually is.
There is also a missing perspective: the children themselves.
The Aspen Institute's 2026 national youth survey found that only 12% of current players named a college scholarship or roster spot among their favorite aspects of playing.
By contrast, 48% identified having fun and 47% identified playing with friends. Only 5% of children who had never played organized sports said the possibility of a scholarship would motivate them to start.
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Project Play
Parents may pursue scholarships. Clubs may market them. But the video's scholarship-centered explanation does not establish that this is what most children actually want from sport.
The access promise depends on fundraising, not a guaranteed revenue share
There is a significant part of LOVB's business model the video does not examine: its financial-aid arrangements.
The LOVB Foundation reports that it awarded $1.7 million in financial aid to 901 athletes during the 2025–26 season.
Its published fundraising figures include:
- $519,257 raised by LOVB families working concession stands.
- $75,754 through employer matching.
- $250,378 through LOVB Stronger.
- $1,758,700 in total funds raised.
LOVB
This is a real access initiative, but its limitations are revealing.
The Foundation's own application portal explicitly states that financial aid does not cover 100% of club dues and that many clubs encourage families to fundraise.
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More importantly, Bufano told YSBR that LOVB does not rely on a fixed percentage of company revenue or a guaranteed sponsor contribution to fund access.
Instead, the model depends on local clubs, their fundraising relationships, benefactors and community grants.
YSBR
That creates a structural weakness.
A club in a wealthy community may have more access to local donors and fundraising opportunities than one serving families with fewer resources. The amount of financial assistance can therefore depend on the local fundraising environment rather than a guaranteed contribution from the central business.
This is a much more defensible criticism than simply assuming that private equity wants dues to rise.
LOVB has a commercial incentive to expand its youth network, but it has not committed a fixed share of operating revenue to ensuring that families can afford to remain in it.
The video misses this distinction.
The verdict: A plausible accusation is not proof
Wendover identifies a genuine problem: competitive youth volleyball is expensive, private investment is entering the sport, and youth clubs have become valuable commercial assets.
There is also actual evidence of shared club economics, profit-sharing arrangements and a deliberate strategy to turn young athletes and their families into a professional sports audience.
But the video does not establish that LOVB's acquisitions caused club fees to rise, that parents' dues finance professional-team operations, or that private equity caused the broader increase in youth sports spending.
It uses another organization's tournament costs, an illustrative family budget, an inadequately sourced dropout statistic and an incorrect description of scholarship opportunities to support a sweeping causal argument.
The stronger investigation would examine club acquisition agreements, actual fee histories, intercompany transfers, club-level profitability and the proportion of company revenue committed to financial assistance.
I do not need to assume private equity is benevolent. I need evidence that it did what the video accuses it of doing.
The affordability crisis is real. LOVB's commercial model deserves scrutiny. But Wendover has not proved that private equity ruined American youth sports. It has presented an indictment without completing the financial investigation needed to sustain it.
References
1. How Private Equity Ruined American Youth Sports — Wendover Productions, YouTube. Original video. The original work examined in this critique.
2. Red Rock Rave 2026 Event Information and Housing Rules — Southern California Volleyball Association, 2026. Event information · Housing policy. Establishes who organizes the tournament and the actual stay-and-play requirements.
3. Southern California Volleyball Association — Nonprofit Explorer — ProPublica, 2023 Form 990 data. Nonprofit records. Establishes SCVA's 501(c)(3) status and its association-wide financial results.
4. League One Volleyball Looks to Fill Void in Female Sports Landscape — Sports Business Journal, October 19, 2021. Read investigation. Documents the early club partnership model, shared dues and clinic economics, and LOVB's audience-monetization strategy.
5. $100M in New Investment for LOVB — League One Volleyball, November 21, 2024. Funding announcement. Establishes the disclosed funding, youth-club expansion, broadcasting arrangements and commercial partnerships.
6. Become a Club — League One Volleyball, current website. LOVB club network. Describes the 93-club network, different entry arrangements and the operational discretion retained by clubs.
7. Synergy Sports Capital Acquires LOVB Salt Lake — Sports Business Journal, March 26, 2026. Read investigation. Documents the operating-rights transaction, expansion investment strategy and undisclosed financial terms.
8. Inside LOVB's Path to 100 Youth Clubs and the 2028 Olympics — Youth Sports Business Report, May 19, 2026. Read CFO interview. Provides direct disclosures from CFO Mike Bufano on club acquisitions, profit sharing, financial aid and fan-conversion metrics.
9. LOVB Foundation Community Impact and Financial Aid Application — LOVB Foundation, 2025–27. Community impact figures · Financial aid application. Documents aid awards, fundraising sources and the restriction that assistance does not cover all club dues.
10. Socioeconomic Status of Parents with Children Participating on Youth Club Sport Teams — Physical Therapy in Sport, July 2018. Read study. Establishes that expensive, income-skewed club participation existed before LOVB; its sample was local rather than nationally representative.
11. Project Play Survey: Family Spending on Youth Sports Rises 46% Over Five Years — Aspen Institute, March 3, 2025. Read survey analysis. Supplies national parent-spending figures and distinguishes travel-club participation from other sports settings.
12. A5 Volleyball 2024–25 Club Information and 2026–27 Cost Structure — A5 Volleyball, June 5, 2024 and current season. 2024 fee schedule · 2026–27 cost structure. Provides actual published fees from an LOVB anchor club; it is a single-club comparison, not a portfolio-wide price study.
13. Kiley Holds Hearing on the Crisis in American Youth Sports — US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, December 16, 2025. Chairman's prepared statement. Establishes that the 70% figure was repeated in congressional remarks, not generated by a new national study.
14. PCSFN Science Board Report on Youth Sports — President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, September 17, 2020. Read federal report. Shows the 70% figure's appearance in a federal report and its citation to a secondary textbook.
15. The Story of How a Number Became a Narrative in Youth Sports — Joseph Janosky, March 27, 2026. Read source-tracing analysis. Traces the dropout statistic to older sport-specific data and explains why it cannot establish the commonly repeated national claim.
16. Aspen Institute National Survey of Youth and Sports: 15 Key Findings — Aspen Institute, April 28, 2026. Read youth survey. Provides current evidence on children's motivations, scholarship expectations and dropout ages from a national sample of 3,827 young people.
17. Playing Collegiate Volleyball — USA Volleyball, current guidance. Read scholarship guidance. Establishes the correct high-school recruitment denominator and confirms Division II and NAIA scholarship possibilities.