Our camps start with kids who are 2, 3, 4 years old, getting them exposed to a whole variety of sports. We serve around 20 million sports families a year through our ecosystem, across almost all sports. There aren’t many places where the industry comes together in a vertically integrated fashion. Tom: What I find interesting is that in the highly disjointed space that is youth sports, where 35 or so million kids play in some form across an array of activities, software companies like Stack Sports are among one of the few aggregators. It's taking these sports and rolling them into terrific experiences for the people who get to run them. Third, getting volunteers is such an important part of what we do, and then making sure the volunteers are high quality and making their lives easier so they come back and volunteer next season. But they’re going to have to run the systems along the way – so we have to make really powerful systems that are incredibly easy to use, so you can spend more time fundraising and coaching and umpiring. Most people who sign up to help our teams, they sign up to coach. Second, it’s to provide great technology. Where are they getting kids? Where are they keeping kids? Where are kids falling off? That’s a big part of it, using big data to help partners close participation gaps. In that place, we’re providing things like high-end data analytics. We work with a lot of large organizations – so think national governing bodies, not just in the U.S. For people who don’t understand your sector, how can you act meaningfully in that way? Tom: You’ve got the words “increase participation” in your corporate mission. Just because you’re not an elite athlete doesn't mean you shouldn't have another two, three, five years in some organized sport. I think we're going to make a really compelling path for people above 11 or 12 that’s not all about going to the NFL or MLS or NBA. We also spend time on, how do we keep kids from leaving organized sport way too soon? We get excited about that. We sit with a terrific set of industry leaders in every single sport and talk to them about, how do we get more kids in that 3 to 5 age range to just get exposed and have fun? So by the time they’re 6, they’re athletes and they love being athletes? Jeff: Our role is on the front end and on the back end. How do we make that happen? And what do you think the role is of Stack Sports in helping get there? Tom: The goal of 63.3% would be a 10% lift from when an inter-agency group set the baseline a few years ago (and an even higher lift from the 50.7% rate from 2020-21, the most recent data released). In this Project Play 2024 Member Spotlight, Young talked with Farrey about what Stack Sports can contribute to the goal of getting and keeping more children playing sports. The company is also the newest member of Project Play’s industry roundtable, Project Play 2024. He’s the CEO of Stack Sports, a software provider to 12,000 sports organizations from the youth levels to professional leagues across the country. Jeff Young was among those who thought to himself, let’s go. The executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program highlighted the societal benefits, which include a projected $57 billion in direct medical costs and economic productivity gains. At the Project Play Summit this month, Tom Farrey challenged the 600 leaders in attendance to embrace the federal government’s goal of a 63.3% participation rate by youth in organized sports by 2030.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |