Adam Minter: Youth sports’ stay-to-play is coercion by another name

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The bill for a season in youth sports comes in installments: new skates, registration fees and uniforms. Then there's the price of travel tournaments, gas and restaurant meals. Finally, the hotel requirement, which feels like one mandate too many. Families are instructed to stay at a designated hotel, or their children — and even their team — may not play.

That last one is a revealing form of coercion, and it's so common in youth sports that it has a name: stay-to-play.

Hockey parents recently decided they had had enough and filed a proposed federal class-action lawsuit against Black Bear Sports Group, which is the country's largest owner-operator of hockey rinks, and an organizer of leagues and tournaments. It's the latest in bad publicity for the organization. The families allege the company required them to book designated hotels at inflated rates and told them their children's teams could not compete unless they complied. Black Bear calls the allegations "entirely without merit."

The litigation will test the parents' claims, but the underlying policy question does not depend on the outcome of one case. When a child earns a place on a team, what should be an "optional" expense stops feeling optional. That gives youth-sports businesses leverage to turn one commitment into another purchase — and helps push costs higher for everyone.

The financial squeeze on sports families isn't new. According to the Aspen Institute, the average household spent $1,016 on a child's primary sport in 2024, up 46% since 2019.

One factor is the growing influence — and cost — of travel and club sports. Aspen also found that families spent more on travel and lodging for tournaments than they did on any other single category of youth sports spending, including team registrations, equipment and uniforms, and lessons and instruction.

Families that are expected to stay to play are typically given a list of approved hotels and told to book through the tournament's system. There's no option to shop around elsewhere.

There are legitimate reasons for offering designated rooms. Organizers can lock up in-demand lodging (especially important at large tournaments), negotiate group rates and help keep teams near the venue.

And there can also be money in the hotel bookings themselves. Rebates and commissions paid to different parties, such as tournament operators and local sports organizers, have long been part of the stay-to-play business. Team Travel Source, which manages lodging for youth sports events, says on its website that it books roughly 1.4 million room nights a year. In 2025, the company says it paid more than $17 million in rebates (the company is currently defending a federal lawsuit over its stay-to-play practices; it denies wrongdoing).

Youth sports families are vulnerable to this kind of leverage because they can't simply shop for another team or league when a season is underway. At many tournaments, there's little ambiguity about the arrangement.

Perfect Game, one of the largest baseball tournament operators, spells out the terms plainly. At some 2026 tournaments, players, coaches and parents must stay in an approved host hotel; booking elsewhere can make a player or team ineligible. Some events may offer another option: pay a $100-per-player buyout. But when the choice is between paying up or not competing, it's no choice at all.

The plaintiffs in the Black Bear lawsuit say they faced similar pressure, just with less transparency. They allege families were told there were "no exceptions" to the hotel requirement even though a buyout fee was available, and that they paid higher rates than they could find for the same hotels on other sites. Black Bear disputes those allegations.

Hotels are just one way youth-sports operators can monetize a family's commitment to a sport.

For example, in a 2020 class-action antitrust lawsuit, competitive-cheer families alleged that Varsity Brands, a major operator of cheer camps and tournaments, required athletes to attend Varsity-run camps to be eligible for certain national championships. Varsity settled the case in 2024 for $82.5 million without admitting wrongdoing; the settlement bars that requirement through at least 2029.

Conditions like these exclude more families. Black Bear itself once came to the same conclusion. When it helped create the Atlantic Hockey Federation in 2020, the company said the new league would seek to reduce the cost of hockey for families. One example it offered: "no ‘stay-to-play' hotel mandates," a prohibition that the AHF maintains.

Congress has also taken an interest. In May, Democratic lawmakers introduced the Let Kids Play Act, which targets stay-to-play and other fees at youth-sports businesses owned or controlled by private equity — and only private equity. The intentions are good, but private equity didn't invent stay-to-play. If the practice is unfair to families, it shouldn't matter whether the league is owned by private equity or someone else.

A better rule would be one that goes broader, requiring all youth-sports operators to disclose the full cost of participation to families before they sign up and hand over a credit card. That transparency would empower families to say no before their child commits.

Youth sports should test a child's skills, not a family's ability to keep paying.

Minter is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the author of "Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade."

Previously:
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• Lane Kiffin's abrupt exit is a lesson for all college football fans
• The NCAA does not deserve an antitrust exemption
• College football's new playoff is already a loser
• $2,000 college football tickets may be the new norm
• March Madness as we know it faces extinction
• Private equity and college sports can make a good team
• Baseball fans should root for gambling's expansion
• PGA merger with LIV Golf is only the beginning
• Farmers are fighting for our right to repair our iPhones
• This column may, or may not, cause an allergic reaction
• There's one Trump idea even libs should like