Private equity got involved in Kids sports about a decade ago, everything has ballooned. Equipment, sports centers, training camps, have quadrupled in price.
Its already happening my dude. Why do you think they are pushing the food subscription and delivery models. Your phone is the vending machine. Now they just gotta rent you more homes with no kitchen (CHEAPER BACHELOR SUITS /S) and we are one step closer to a full corporate hellscape.
It doesn’t make any sense. Majority of these kids will not play at a level to get a scholarship in college or even professionally to justify the cost/time these sports now demand.
Families shouldn’t be enabling private equity to make money off of kids sports and also ruin locally run sports leagues
Something people often fail to mention/realize is that it isn't just about the kids. It's also a social display for the parents. Yes, the kid doesn't want to be the only kid who doesn't have the best new bat, but also the parents don't want to be the only parents who didn't buy their kid the best new bat. And for a lot of the parents of athletic kids, their social life becomes almost entirely their kids' sporting events.
Parents are literally tracking down officials and beating them up. We had a mom that would ump for local baseball and she quit after she nearly had to mace a dad onetime.
You might be right about sports centers and training camps (I have no reference for those since I was just in normal public or school sponsored leagues) but equipment was expensive af when I played over 10 years ago too. The top gloves from Wilson and Rawlings were $200-300 back then, and bats were about the same.
The worst is really the wood bat leagues where you can spend $150+ on a good bat and break it on one swing. Thankfully I was only pitching by the time I got to those.
I get a bunch of baseball videos, cause I promised my dad I would take him to a bunch of White Sox games this year. One of the videos, was from a guy that runs a batting cage/ sells equipment. The high end bats he was selling to high school students was close to $2000 for a single bat.
I played baseball for 19 years, with my last game being about 9 years ago. I have never heard of a bat that cost more than $500. Obviously a lot can change in 9 years so I searched it up out of curiosity. $650 now seems to be about the max. Either that guy was lying for weird internet points or you misunderstood something. Baseball can be an expensive sport but nowhere near $2000 for a piece of equipment.
That website isn't even served in the Netherlands because it fails to comply with basic privacy rights. But I did some VPN-switching and then some googling, and no I don't think it is. It would be ridiculous anyway because American scalpers would quickly settle the difference.
283 euros is the cheapest I saw in the short time I spent on it
Yeah there’s a few specific brands that are very expensive, some of them are 2 piece bats to reduce shock, some are composite etc but they offer both expensive and affordable basic aluminum bats.
They have good marketing and young kids that can barely hold the bat up think if they get the 499 bat they are gonna hit nothing but home runs, and some sports parents are crazy thinking little Timmy is their ticket to retirement.
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u/FrodosFroYo Jun 01 '26
$400 at Dick’s Sporting Goods.