Travel teams, specialized training and high-end gear crank up the costs
By Harriet Ryan
The second baseman stood 3-foot-6. The shortstop weighed 44 pounds.
At a club baseball tournament east of Los Angeles this summer, the 6-year-olds on teams from as far away as Arizona were too young to pitch the ball themselves, but their parents were spending thousands on baseball.
There were club dues, tournament fees, hotels, transportation, uniforms and equipment. An app offering "advanced statistics" and video of at-bats was $191 a year. Even watching from the stands has a price -- this tournament had a $60-a-head pass for spectators. Spending $10,000 a year is common.
"Nowadays.in order to get certain opportunities, you have to pay money," said Carlos Avila, the national director of ZT Athletics, a private-equity backed company with three 6-and-under teams in the tournament. "People are trying to get ahead of the curve."
America's national pastime, played by generations of children up and down the economic spectrum, is increasingly a sport for rich kids. Many adults remember Little League and rec programs, dad coaches and the snack shack. Youth baseball is now an intense and costly year-round endeavor dominated by for-profit enterprises.
"It's really a white collar sport now," said Los Angeles club coach Michael Dyer, who uses a sliding fee scale to keep less-affluent 12-year-olds on his team. "There's a ton of kids that should be playing at a high level that can't play because they can't afford it."
Frequent participation in baseball has fallen 28% since 2014 in families with annual incomes of less than $100,000, according to data from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. In the same period, participation has increased 21% in families making more than $100,000.
"Whenever it's time to pay for something, it's always like, oh my gosh, it's so expensive," said Paula Mendoza, a Los Angeles mother who said she limited her two sons' play because of money.
The price of playing baseball surpasses soccer and basketball, the other most popular youth sports. Between 2019 and 2024, average family spending on baseball jumped more than 68%, from $660 to $1,113 annually, according to the Aspen Institute's Project Play.
That average hides the costs that sports-focused families face. Annual club fees can reach $6,000, and the cost of traveling to tournaments can potentially double or even triple that. Youth bats go for $500 and gloves for $400. Private pitching and hitting coaches charging up to $200 an hour have become routine for children as young as 8. Sales of backyard batting cages, at costs around $25,000, are surging.
Participation in Little League, meanwhile, where a four-month season averages between $110 and $170, has dropped more than 30% in the past 20 years.
Avila's ZT Athletics, which has about 150 teams nationally, charges monthly fees of $125 to $225, though he added that with other expenses, families who "do it the right way" are probably looking at $10,000 annually.
Youth sports overall is now a $40 billion-a-year industry -- with private-equity investors driving much of the growth. And Name, Image and Likeness compensation is turning the talent of younger and younger athletes into moneymaking opportunities.
In baseball, the biggest corporate player is Perfect Game, which puts on nearly 10,000 tournaments, showcases and other events a year. The Florida-based private company has its hand in everything from uniforms and other apparel to family hotel bookings to team rankings down to age 9. Perfect Game doesn't disclose its revenue, but its lawyers wrote in a court filing two years ago that a private-equity firm valued the company at "significantly" more than $100 million.
"For-profit providers are part of the youth baseball economy and we should not pretend that they have no effect on what families spend," said Greg Casterioto, a spokesman for Perfect Game.
He said the costs supported fields and facilities, umpires, event personnel, insurance, technology, trained scorers, streaming crews, scouting coverage and the administration required to operate thousands of games. "Families are purchasing an organized competitive experience and, at certain events, scouting and recruiting exposure," he said.
He noted that the average annual costs for basketball and soccer are growing faster than baseball's.
"People see a way to make money, and they're gonna make money," said Perfect Game founder Jerry Ford, a former college coach who sold his majority stake in the company four years ago and now runs a charitable foundation that offers free baseball programs to low-income children. He acknowledged that for-profit baseball "grows bigger every year.I don't know what anybody can do about it."
5-and-under teams
Club teams -- also called travel teams -- rose to prominence in the 1990s as a showcase for the most elite high school players. They expanded steadily through the 2010s, and exploded in popularity during the pandemic, when rec and Little League programs temporarily shut down. Many families never returned to community baseball.
James Colvin, a Florida software engineer whose 8-year-old plays baseball, used AI this summer to map club teams and organizations. An initial review of seven states -- Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas -- identified 10,260 organizations fielding at least one team, he said.
Clubs now offer teams from ages 5U -- or 5 and under, essentially preschool -- to 18. Rosters are no longer reserved for top-tier players, instead offering different teams for various talent levels. Girls are allowed but are rare. Little League, for comparison, says nearly 9% of its baseball players are girls.
"We are seeing demand from parents saying, 'I want my child in a travel program even if they're not necessarily on a competitive level to do that,'" said Jordan Baltimore, the chief executive of New York Empire Baseball, which has 1,100 young players in Manhattan and Long Island.
"They want to keep up with the Joneses, and they see their friends' kids always at these tournaments," said Gader Ibrahim, a baseball mom influencer from Orange County, Calif. She has three boys that play, ages 14, 11 and 7. One family in her social circle told her they took out a second mortgage on their home rather than forgo baseball, she said, adding, "I really do truly believe it is parents having FOMO."
Baltimore's organization received an investment last year from Shore Capital Partners, a $17 billion Chicago-based private-equity company with holdings in healthcare and real estate. Eight other private-equity firms also expressed interest, Baltimore said.
Little League said it had 1.5 million baseball players in the U.S. this year, compared with about 2.2 million the organization estimated in 2006.
Patrick Wilson, the president of Little League International, said his nonprofit remained focused on its mission "to be the best player experience for all kids, and not for maybe elite players whose parents want more for them."
To shore up its numbers, Little League has rolled out initiatives, including schedules that allow children to play club on the weekends and for their Little League team on weekdays. All but one player in the 2025 Little League World Series game also competed for a club team, Wilson said.
Participation grew more than 4% last year, and the organization is mulling additional programs to meet parents' desire for what Wilson described as stiffer competition and "more reps."
The Little League World Series, played in August in Williamsport, Pa., still draws enormous international attention. But for many young travel ball players, the peak experience is now a trip with their team to Cooperstown All-Star Village, a "baseball resort" in upstate New York, where a week of baseball games culminates in a championship.
The venue is owned by Unrivaled Sports, a company launched in 2024 by private-equity veterans and valued last year at $650 million. Teams pay roughly $25,000 for a week's stay, with the players lodging together in a bunkhouse. Parents and siblings often come along and stay on site or nearby, so they can watch the tournament.
'Horrible investment'
Tyler Lukrich Williams, a fire captain in Riverside County, Calif., planned for his 6-year-old to play low-cost rec ball. But at the first practice last year, some kids weren't sure which hand the glove went on. His son, meanwhile, was a switch hitter who could throw a bullet from shortstop to first.
He moved him to a 6U travel team, where "all the kids can catch, can field, can throw," he said. "It's quality baseball."
Williams bought his son a $60 used bat, avoids pricey out-of-state tournaments and practices with his son at a local park rather than paying for private lessons. Still, he said, his monthly outlay for one child is about $700.
If you're not strategic, he said, baseball "could be a money, time, energy and family pit."
College baseball players will collect an estimated $115.8 million in Name, Image and Likeness compensation this academic year, according to Opendorse, with Division I pitchers seeing average payouts of about $127,000.
But less than 3% of high school players will play Division I, according to NCAA data, and fewer still will receive an athletic scholarship and NIL. The chance of a pro career is even more remote, with only about 5% of college players at any level making the draft. Those drafted must compete for roster spots with top foreign talent, including Dominican teens who come out of the island's Major League team academies.
Despite these odds, many parents cite a possible college career as the main reason they are spending on baseball.