Private equity world

Your passion is underpriced -- meaning, not expensive enough

The Times reports today that the machinery of youth sports in America is being bought up by private equity firms.

At the top end, there are sports academies that are also boarding schools, such as IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, which charges $85k per year. Of course, most families are spending nothing like that amount. But the youth sports apparatus as a whole takes in about $40 billion per year in the U.S., which is over four times the domestic box office of all of Hollywood, according to the Times article.

“He’s my only child, and like most parents, you want to do anything you can for your kid,” said Mr. Bash, who runs a diner…

It’s no wonder that sports dads like Mr. Bash have caught the attention of Wall Street investors.

Families involved in competitive youth sports spend a life-eating amount of time driving to practices and games. Where there is this kind of devotion, there is likely to be some element of life that is “underpriced”, that is, not yet fully gathered into the money matrix. If people’s time, attention and hopes for their kids’ futures are being funneled together at some site of shared activity, private equity sees this as an opportunity to position itself at that site and establish new extractive mechanisms. This is “rentier capitalism.”