The Intentions Are Good. The Industry Makes Them Hard to Keep.

A new survey out of Wharton — covering 277 club owners, investors and operators across 14 sports — confirmed something most of us already know from experience, but rarely see in data.

The people running youth sports clubs are not in it for the money.

97% of respondents cited impact on kids' development as a top personal value. Only 9% cited financial return. That is not a small gap — it's a canyon. These are mission-driven operators. They got into this because they love the sport, they love what it does for young people, and they want to build something meaningful in their community.

And then the job gets in the way.

What's Actually Keeping Them Up at Night

When the same group was asked what keeps them up at night, the answers looked nothing like the values they'd just described.

52% said parent satisfaction and complaints. 43% said rising facility costs. 40% said losing athletes to competitors. 35% said staff retention and burnout.

Read that list again. Not one of those things is about coaching. Not one of them is about player development, about building a game model, about creating an environment where kids fall in love with the sport. The things that consume these leaders at 2am are operational, financial, and relational — the infrastructure of running a small business in a difficult industry.

That's the gap. They came in wanting to develop players. They're spending their energy managing parents and scrambling for field time.

The Structural Problem

This isn't a failure of character or commitment. It's a structural problem, and the numbers make it clear.

84% of clubs earn under $2.5M per year. These are small, independently run operations — most of them nonprofits, particularly in soccer, where 79% of clubs are organised as 501(c)(3)s. They don't have the resource base to hire operations staff, dedicated administrative support, or facility managers. The owner is often also the director of coaching, the head of registration, the person responding to the parent email at 10pm, and the one negotiating the rental agreement with the city.

52% of owners say facility access is the single biggest constraint on their growth. They can see the opportunity — 50% want to grow through camps, clinics and tournaments, and 50% want to add teams and age groups. But you can't run camps without fields. You can't add teams without training space. The ambition is there. The infrastructure isn't.

When asked where they'd reinvest extra cash, 53% said upgrading facilities, 47% said marketing and digital presence, 39% said hiring more coaches and staff. Nobody said they'd buy themselves a boat. The reinvestment priorities are entirely in service of the mission. The problem is that the cash rarely comes.

What This Means for the Sport

As someone who runs a club, I recognise every line of this data. The intention when you start is always about the kids. You have a vision of what a great environment looks like, what great coaching feels like, what it means for a player to come through your programme and leave better than they arrived.

Then you get a week of back-to-back parent complaints about playing time, a facility rental that just went up 20%, a coach who burns out and leaves mid-season, and you realise how quickly the operational weight can pull you away from the reason you started.

The coaches and club leaders who keep the mission alive — who don't let the noise swallow the purpose — are usually the ones who've made a deliberate choice about it. They've built systems that take some of the weight off. They've been honest with families about what the club is and what it isn't. They've invested in staff even when the margins were thin, because they know a burnt-out coach is a greater cost than the salary.

The intention in this industry is almost universally good. 97% good, according to the data. The question is whether the conditions exist to act on it — and right now, for most clubs, those conditions are harder than they should be.

Source: Mewes, P. & Meyer, M. (2026). Youth Sports Industry Benchmarking Survey. Wharton Research, April 2026.

@LeeDunneSoccer