Private Equity Experience · 2026-06-04 · 37 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
35 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
The "Let Kids Play Act," introduced by Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Chris Deluzio, aims to restrict private equity investment in youth sports by prohibiting PE ownership of leagues, teams, facilities, software platforms, and biometric data collection for children under 18. Proponents argue that PE consolidation drives up costs and creates monopolies, pricing out lower-income families and crowding out community-based nonprofits like the YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs. Critics counter that PE investment addresses genuine market demand - parents now pay for live-streaming, biometric tracking, elite camps, and professional infrastructure that didn't exist a generation ago. The real concern isn't inflation per se, but that PE's profit-maximization motive will eventually concentrate youth sports in expensive private facilities, undermining both accessibility and the character-building benefits of team sports for economically disadvantaged kids. The hosts debate whether legislation is necessary or whether this reflects inevitable market consolidation in a sector that has already commercialized significantly.
The bill prohibits PE ownership of youth sports leagues, teams, facilities, software platforms (scheduling, biometric tracking, live-streaming), camps, and the collection and sale of biometric data on children under 18, defining PE as "vulture capital" investors seeking double-digit returns.
PE firms invest because there is profitable "meat on the bone" - parents demand and pay for live-streaming services, biometric tracking, elite camps, and professional infrastructure that nonprofits like YMCAs historically left on the table while prioritizing community access over profit.
PE will concentrate investment in premium private facilities and elite camps (costing thousands per month) rather than public parks and community programs, forcing lower-income kids away from affordable YMCA and Boys & Girls Club options and eliminating exposure to team sports that develops leadership and mobility skills.
PE collects biometric data - body composition, swing speed, physical characteristics, and performance metrics - which can be aggregated, sold to third parties, and used to predict athletic success and market talent to Division I colleges for NIL recruiting purposes.
No; the hosts view it as performative legislation with no realistic chance of passage, characterizing it as redundant since the Department of Justice already oversees antitrust issues and lacks sufficient data proving PE ownership directly causes cost inflation rather than correlation.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
There are a handful of non-obvious observations - the hypothesis that a PE firm may have lobbied for the bill to ring-fence incumbents, the biometrics-to-NIL pipeline, and the retroactive divestiture clause - but these are brief and surrounded by extended throat-clearing, crosstalk, and recycled supply-and-demand framing. Insight-per-minute is low.
first thought was some private equity firm probably shot this thing forward. These guys run it up the flagpole and, because they've made an investment and they're like, 'Okay, we wanna ring-fence our, our ability.'
You didn't see this come up in 2020 when everyone was making a ton of money and inflation was really low and access to credit was super easy
The ring-fencing/regulatory-moat hypothesis is a genuinely contrarian read on the bill's origins and is the episode's one fresh idea. Everything else - supply and demand, PE vs. nonprofits, access inequality - is standard framing that circulates widely.
some private equity firm probably shot this thing forward
The tough part will be if PE pushes too hard, the not-for-profits will come back in and, and eat them for lunch because you have, you don't have a profit motive
There are no external guests - only three co-hosts, one of whom (Ed) has apparent PE/legal/CPA-rollup practitioner experience. Credentials are barely established and Emily's role is mostly naive questioner. The transcript does not demonstrate deep, verifiable domain expertise at scale.
As a trained attorney, I'm capable
Ed is a vulture capitalist in what he does with, with CPA firms
The episode names the bill, its sponsors, and their states, and mentions a $10,000 camp cost and a two-year divestiture window. Beyond that, there are no named PE firms actually active in the space, no market-size figures, no cost-inflation data, and no specific portfolio companies - exactly the evidence needed to substantiate the core claims.
It was introduced by Senator Chris Murphy, uh, and Representative Chris Deluzio this month, uh, from, you know, uh, Connecticut and, uh, Pennsylvania respectively
you have two years to divest your position
Emily asks several useful clarifying questions that advance the conversation, and Ed is asked to take a devil's advocate position which produces the episode's sharpest analysis. However, unsupported claims go unchallenged throughout, there is no productive disagreement between hosts, and follow-up depth is thin.
How does the bill propose getting vulture capital, in quotes, out?
What exactly are firms doing? What are they investing in or scaling or finding efficiencies in?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Is big business ruining the purity of youth sports, or is it funding the modern infrastructure families actually want? In this episode of the Private Equity Experience Podcast, hosts Ed Barton, Rory Liebhart, and Emily Sander dive into a highly buzzed-about, bicameral bill introduced by Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Chris Deluzio: The Let Kids Play Act. Designed to target what legislators call "vulture capital," this bill aims to restrict private equity ownership across youth leagues, camp facilities, scheduling software, and biometric data tracking. The crew strips away the political grandstanding to look at the real economic drivers. Is PE causing predatory cost inflation, or is it introducing crucial operating leverage and tech innovation to an historically mismanaged, fragmented industry? Ed steps into the shoes of the devil's advocate to examine the true cost of community accessibility versus the realities of a supply-and-demand economy. In this episode, we cover: The "Let Kids Play Act" : Breaking down the 30-page bill aiming to force PE divestment from youth athletics within two years.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Welcome to the Private Equity Experience Podcast. Your backstage pass to the strategies, stories, and secrets that drive value in the PE universe. No filters, no fluff, just straight talk and expert insights to help you navigate the private equity world with confidence. And now your hosts, ed Barton, Rory Leaphart, and Emily Sander.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Are you gonna have one of those pictures where you're like Jared from Subway, you can stand in one pant leg of your eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: I, emily-sander_1_05-20-202: jeans? eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1_: I was never rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: He was never that big, no. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: and I won't be that small. So it's rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Uh, all right. Let's see here. I'm checking our sound. Check.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: I think we got a good topic today, guys emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Yeah, so I'm co- we're coming in fresh because we have kind of agreed what happens if Emily doesn't know anything coming into the call? rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-202: 'Cause that was kind of where I was at last episode, and it actually turned out to be a pretty fruitful discussion. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: yeah. Full on emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Um, even though I might have sounded silly in parts, I'm used to that.
That's rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Never silly. Never silly emily-sander_1_05-20-2: t-t-tee, tee me up. Tee us up. Beam me up, Scotty.
What have we got today? rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Well, once again, in my trolling of the, you know, news section of, uh, my interwebs feed, um, I came across this article that is... I'll read you the article here. It's, it's, it's, um, it's just, it's just too funny.
Uh, it's very salacious. Once again, clickbaity. It was, um- It's basically a How to kick private equity out of youth sports was essentially the article, uh, by- put out by Axios, but it's been picked up by all the other news outlets as well, right? So, um, the, the thrust of the article was there's a bill that's been introduced, um, bicameral, meaning both the House and the Senate have, like, introduced this bill called the Let Kids Play Act.
So it was introduced by Senator Chris Murphy, uh, and Representative Chris Deluzio this month, uh, from, you know, uh, Connecticut and, uh, Pennsylvania respectively. So definitely blue states. It's a Democratically in- introduced bill, and it is effectively trying to get what they term, and they use this term in the bill, vulture capital private equity out of youth sports. So, you know, if you go to read this 30-page bill, they literally define their version of what vulture capital investors are and what constitutes a vulture capital investors, and they go, go further to define what, what is youth sports.
So to kind of get to the point of the bill as it's been presented, there is a position that these, these, um, congressmen take on behalf of whomever that say private equity ownership of all aspects of youth sports, and we're not talking about just youth sports teams, we're talking about leagues, platforms, uh, you know, um, software that governs it, that kind of th- thing. They believe that there is a deleterious effect, that's my word, or b- basically an adverse effect of their ownership in the form of, like, because consolidation can and will occur, or, you know, debt is being used to acquire these youth sports organizations, et cetera, et cetera, that it's driving up costs in the communities.
And youth sports should be very low cost to, um, you know, to families and so forth. So it's like they're, they're, they're basically making a case that because private equity, in some cases, has ownership of youth sports, uh, you know, functions or, or, you know, franchise or whatever, that, like, it's, it's causing expe- you know, costs to, to rise. And th- th- there seems to be, uh, a lot of ways that that can be debunked, and let's just... And, and in my own research, very little data to support that notion that PE ownership of youth sports in its many forms, uh, is causal and not correlation.
So that's kind of it. That's kind of like the, the background. I feel, this is my editorial position, is like this is a performative bill, has no chance in hell of passing. Um, it, it just seems just too Uh, too, um, too loose, too fast and loose.
It has no substance to it, in my opinion. But I thought it was interesting, worth kicking around. Um, you know, there's a lot of aspects to it that worth, worth looking at. I mean, some of the main, main elements of why they introduced this bill is because they think it's gonna, you know, reduce monopolies in sports.
Well, we have the Department of Justice that oversees antitrust to begin with, so why do you need this kind of legislation to put another layer of anti, you know, anti-monopoly, um, you know, governors around? I don't know. It just is silly to me, but that's, that - I'm, I'm showing my cards. I think it's kinda silly, like really silly.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay. So basically there's this bill, it's rory-liebhart_1_05-2: Basically, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Play. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: It's called Let the Kids Play. Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Let the Kids Play.
And so I'm assuming that it's like, just let them play and don't rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. Yeah. You emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: and like blah, blah, blah. Just let the kids rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: the sacred youth sports is being damaged by private, big, bad private equity.
It's all the tropes, you know? emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay. What, what are they defining as youth sports? Like, is rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Under 18 emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Oh, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2: leagues and teams and, you know, anything that touches that basically emily-sander_1_05-20-202: 'Cause we kinda talked about before how college sports are turning into a whole big and operation.
This is, this is even younger rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. But, but it's like time is so arbitrary, right? Like it, it's - I mean, I guess that's the case in, um, anything that has to do with if you turn 18, then you can do this or that, whatever. So, okay, take - put that aside, but it's like, you know, again, wh-why?
Anyway. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: What is the rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2: They're making the claim that private equity ownership of these leagues, clubs, teams, tournaments, facilities, rinks, fields, camps, clinics, registration systems, scheduling software, scoring statistics platforms, streaming media platforms, biometric and performance data businesses emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: doing what? rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: imp- impacted by private equity ownership because they're potentially causing higher costs due to roll-ups that produce monopolies and pricing power and leverage.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay, higher rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: Higher costs, yeah. It couldn't possibly that be the fact that the overall economic landscape has, has seen a lot of inflation or anything like that. You know, it couldn't be that this is experiencing the same thing. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: has a stake in the ground rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: do.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: this one. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: like I yes, yes. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: can take, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Take the other side.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: for the, for the purposes of this discussion, take the other side. Um, so here's, here's a couple things that I think the bill does very well. It does, it does prohibit the sale of biometric information and collection of... collection and sale of biometric information of the youth through to third parties.
So rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: No eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: kind of blocks, it blocks that piece. I think the other, the other element here is you do have circumstances and situations where by leveraging... So private equity doesn't play in an area where they don't expect to get a double-digit return. So that means that there's meat on the bone that's being left on the bone in, in youth sports.
And right now, the beneficiaries of that meat that's left on the bone, well, a lot of the youth sports stuff is, you know, small business and/or not-for-profits. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2: Correct eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: your YMCA, your Boys Girls Club, they handle some of the youth sports stuff. the fact that they're not kind of in this hyper-competitive, I'm trying to drive for-profit margin environment, allows them to leave meat on the bone and, you know, give scholarships to, you know, to kids that can't, you know, afford it or to, you know, discount this or provide, you know, opportunities at the camp for that.
And if you take, if you basically go,"Okay, we're, we're now putting a profit motive all of this," and it's not a, a we're gonna try and earn a reasonable profit we're gonna give back to the community. We're gonna try and maximize our return because we're a private equity investor. That does change the nature of the economics in youth sports from one of, you know,"Okay, how do we kind of survive and do well and perpetuate this?" to, "How do we maximize our return in a three to five-year investment time horizon and flip this, flip this property out into something else?"
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: So what exactly are firms doing? What are they investing in or scaling or finding efficiencies in? eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: on, Rory hit on a number of the items, and so I'll, I'll kind of summarize, you know, my, my understanding as well. So private equity firms are gonna be able to provide...
Right now they're providing investment in the software. So you've got scheduling software, you've got tracking software, you've got software, you know, like when my emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay, eddie-the-mooch - has-th: playing rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: wasn't around when I was playing esports for sure. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: all, all those rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: was rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: All the things that parents now really want their kids to have.
Like, they have these fucking li- excuse my language, Little League games, like basically live stream fed eddie-the-mooch - has-them: Yeah. rory-liebhart_1_05-20: families. Like you eddie-the-mooch - has-them: Yeah. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: it's just that's the way of the world, so.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: my mom, when my mom was rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. eddie-the-mooch - has-th: cancer, she would watch my nephew's games live-streamed on, some third party, some third party app, and emily-sander_1_05-20-20: they're like eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: and stuff like that. So again, there's, there's monetization. Oh, yeah, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: Oh, absolutely.
Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: I'm just remembering, like, my home movies of me playing youth sports and, like, no one rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: No. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: Oh, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: that. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1_: a whole emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: No rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: This is different. Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: that.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: You have, you have some folks there's youth camps in the summer where people are spending tens of thousands of dollars to send their kids to resident camps for a month to play soccer, to play basketball, to play football, to learn baseball, to, to do, uh, karate camps, and that's all would be prohibited. the private equity investment provides that infrastructure. Private equity provides significant investment infrastructure to be able to drive, you know, the, the, you know, whether that's stadiums and, and, and/or sports facilities that the not-for-profit...
You know, so maybe they don't invest in the leagues, but they invest in the infrastructure around the leagues. And emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay. Okay, eddie-the-mooch - has-the: better infrastructure emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: I'm a PE firm and I wanna get into youth sports. I'm going to invest in this biometric company that tracks the biometrics as teams are training.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them: Sure. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Data, absolutely. emily-sander_1_05-20-202: That's an rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: And then... eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: and, emily-sander_1_05-20-202: And...
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1_: I was doing that, I'd go,"How am I capturing the data so..." And I'm predicting whether this person who's 10, 11, 12 years old is gonna have the right body composition and is showing the right swing speed and those kind of things to be a rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: yeah. Yes eddie-the-mooch - has-th: athlete six years from now because I'm capturing all those biometrics and doing a- analysis on it, and then I have longitudinal data going out for 20 years on these folks, and I can predict, you know, I can, I can, you know, kind of predict rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: be a success based upon their physical makeup and size and other characteristics rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: thing, like this, this bill tries to socialize.
Not, uh, that's probably too harsh a term, but like this is a supply and demand economy. If, if the product which is now a business, as Ed's like bullet pointed out elements of that, wasn't in demand by consumers, i.e. parents, i.
e. families, i.e. all this, then that, we wouldn't, th- they wouldn't be in the space.
Don't think - This is no different than private equity investing in Champions League soccer or Premier League soccer or EA Sports or anything like that. It's just big business. People are buying the product. Well, parents are buying the live feed.
Parents are paying for the subscription to their children's biometric data so that they can then market it to Division I colleges, things like that. So if you strip away all of that crap that w- is, was no longer, wasn't there when we all three were playing sports, private equity wouldn't be sniffing around. But because it's been based on demand, become a business itself that no one seems to want to admit. They just want to think about the purity of what they believe sports to be growing up.
But the fact is it's changed. Like someone's got to finance that, you know? Is it gonna be a public sector if, if we raise municipal taxes or if we raise state taxes to be able to fund these programs? It's y- people are gonna be complaining about it from the other side, rightfully too.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: no, because those are, those are common goods. That's like, that's like your - That's like the, the village green. So I mean, the, the... Actually, that's one of the roles a government should be playing is going, okay, providing parks, providing rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: That piece, yes.
Agreed. eddie-the-mooch - has-them: those rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: And, and again, the government's not looking at it from a, from a profit motive perspective. And so again, I, my, my devil's advocate argument, because I will - I'll give my position, it sneaks through every, every once in a while anyway, is, is the - There's meat on the bone here that's being left, and the only reason private equity's playing is because they can optimize their returns here.
It is big business. The issue right now is that big business is, is actually a bunch of small little businesses and not-for-profits that are largely operating, and it's starting to consolidate. And with that consolidation is coming the pressure to have exceptional financial rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them: which isn't necessarily on the, you know, kind of the local, the local parks and rec. And so that, that will eventually start to crowd out your lower income folks.
It's gonna eventually start to crowd out the kind of the common use. So again, you, you build a park that's gonna be for common use, including like when I'm, the, like I'm old and decrepit and I can go walk in the park. But if it's a, if it's a privately held, you know, sports camp that's owned by Blackstone, I'm - they're not gonna probably let me go wander around. And so, I mean, those...
There's things like that that I think the, the private equity getting into everything, the only reason they get into something is'cause there's return left on the, there's return left on the floor and they're gonna pick it up, and that return right now is going back to the, the youth athletes or their families in the community, and they're picking it up, and they're gonna stuff it into the pocket of their limited partners rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. I mean, definitely understand that.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: they really need? rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Well, everyone's talking about this from the, the standpoint of cost inflation, things like that. And yes, and make no mistake, PE or any private investor is gonna try to make as much profit as they can. But one thing that is not talked about is maybe some of these areas where PE is investing are completely mismanaged.
We talk about that in our book. Operating leverage is a thing. If something's mismanaged, you are leaving meat on the bone in that way for some professional team to come in and optimize, as you said. So yeah, maybe, maybe there's some price inflation, but maybe there's also some optimization on the way these things are run.
Who knows? You know, like that's just as possible emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay, so I'm still trying to get to first base here. So we got PE firms eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: what you did there. That was good.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: There we go. Here we go. We got PE firms and they're saying,"Look, this is a thing. People are asking for the thing, and they're willing to pay money for the thing," and the people currently doing the thing are like your YMCAs and your kind of mom and pop, like,"We're just gonna try to do this for the c- community."
It's like this is ripe for the picking. So they're coming in and going, "We can do this better," basically. "We can do this much better than you can." And so right now we're in the flush of that.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: the ar- argument against that, which this bill is proposing, is saying,"Hey, you come in there, and there's gonna be a tipping point where you get so driven and money hungry that you're gonna destroy the, eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: Yes emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: the rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2: That's, that's what they're getting at, but they're putting it under the auspices of it's going to create more costs and make it less affordable for everybody.
So you, you know, the, the answer in this case here to, to the legislators is like, you know, it can't be okay if 90% of the people can afford it, but 10% can't. Everybody has to be able to afford it. Like, that's what youth sports is supposed to be for eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1_: I was about to say, rory-liebhart_1_05-20: everyone. It's a, it's a noble way to, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: so in a eddie-the-mooch - has-t: reality, That's, that's - There should be, there should be a baseline of youth sports participation 'cause it creates better citizens, it creates folks who are better business people.
from my seat, and I think I've told you both, like one of the things I look for is I look less for like where did you go to rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: more rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: did you play team rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: I've eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: If you played team sports, you know, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: been in the armed forces, you know? Yeah.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: to have a role and what your role needs to be and how to play well with others. And if you, and if you don't, if you never played team sports, then you're pro- you may not fit well on my team. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah, I agree eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: so again, this, this is one where if, if you squeeze out folks who are at the lower end of the economic scale, we remove their ability to be able to have economic mobility up the income scale because we're taking those skills rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: as a youth away emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: real example rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: do you address income inequality across the board? This is a tiny symptom of a bigger, bigger problem, you know? Like emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: what they're saying is like, okay, biometric data, let's just... L- um, this is a stupid example.
If YMCA was putting those sensors out and saying,"Hey, guys, come and play at our practice or our thing. We're gonna give you these biometrics," like distributed to everyone. PE comes in there, does their efficiencies, makes it all fancy bells and whistles, and it's like a really nice, and then th- therefore expensive biometric tracker. Then certain people who would've gotten it at YMCA can no longer get it.
Is that what they're saying? eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1_: I think there's elements, I think there's elements to that. That's actually one that's more likely where the, the parent and the kid are gonna get it for free. And the YMCA, the private equity guys are aggregating that data and then selling that data to like a, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: who then sells additional information to Division I colleges to go do their NIL rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
Yeah. Dude, spot on. Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them: where I think it's gonna impact your lower income individuals is the private equity folks are going to... They need to put big money to work.
Not little money, big money. So they're, how are they gonna put big money to work? It's rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: money eddie-the-mooch - ha: facilities. It's the real estate side of this.
It's emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Sure. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: it's the, emily-sander_1_05-20-: Stadiums? eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: the, it's the fields, it's the facilities. So it's, you know, we're gonna, instead of the town building a new football stadium, it's gonna be private equity backed for youth sports.
it's gonna be, or it's gonna be a, you know, a golf course that's private equity backed for youth sports, or it's gonna be, so it's gonna be private equity backed, not, not community backed. the, you know, so again, you, you wanna go use tennis courts, it's gonna be private tennis courts. You're not gonna have public parks because private equity's gonna have kinda hoovered up a bunch of rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah, you create eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: that real rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2: private clubs and leagues and so yeah, if you can't pay to play, then you're left behind.
eddie-the-mooch - has-the: You're gonna lose out, so what's gonna happen is they're gonna go,"Hey, we've got..." And I'll use a camp as an example. You've got the camps that are like the elite soccer camp. It's$10,000, three weeks, and whatever.
Well, that's competing with the local YMCA camp, the, or Boys and Girls Clubs camp. And so what's gonna happen is the folks who can afford it, the ones who have the money, the ones who... So you're gonna be taking folks the, away from the ability of the underprivileged, underprivileged children to participate in camps against folks who are, you know, potentially of a, of a similar, similar class of player because you've got more players in that pool. Instead, these folks are gonna float away off to this elite camp, and you're gonna leave folks who otherwise would really benefit from two things.
One, interaction with, with other children who have, are of different backgrounds, and two, which is probably the most important thing, and two, the inability to play against other players who might challenge them to improve their skill set better because these other players have affor- can afford to go off to the private equity backed sports camp and spend $10,000 for their three weeks, while these poor rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: have to pay 60 bucks for the week for, you know, the, the, uh, YMCA camp.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah, but that's already happening. I mean, like that, that's already a f- a, a eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: And it's rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: fact eddie-the-mooch - has-them: worse with the, with the Bentley drivers doing it rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Well, I mean, no different than private school versus public education too in that regard. And so how does, uh, you know, how eddie-the-mooch - has-them: Yeah, and that's, and that's all - We could go all day long on that rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: I know.
eddie-the-mooch - has-the: that's also, you know, those rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: I guess that's where I come out on it is eddie-the-mooch - has-th: schools rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: you know, I think a lot of the points that can be made are, are, I mean, especially the element of just accessibility. That, but that doesn't need to be dealt with through this particular legislation. That can be dealt with through other grant programs and other things like that, that people could have access to.
Maybe that's, maybe that's contributed in a different way. But I just feel like this legislation, how do you, how do you, how do you s- how do you facilitate innovation on the c- and on the part of like software developers to say,"Oh, well, I build something that the public needs," or like the, the, the consumer needs, but,"Oh, I can't take on private money because, you know, this, this leg- legislation." So that and just other eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: on vulture capital money either.
It's defined rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yes, it is defined. You're right. You're right. It is defined.
But if you take on any debt to finance it, that's pretty big. Like, that's a pretty big, uh, you know, a, a, a qualifier. But, um emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: How does the bill propose getting vulture capital, in quotes, out? Do they have a,"Here's how we're going to do this"?
rory-liebhart_1_05-20: Actually, that's a really good question. Um, not only is this a forward-looking bill, but it's actually retroactive. So it would basically, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Oh. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: one, one of the two, which is to say eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: Part rory-liebhart_1_05-20: investor, you can't invest in the space, which is still broadly defined.
So this thing would at minimum get completely watered down or really narrowed. But going, looking backwards, if, you know, you have to go if, if I think it's two years back or you have to... No, excuse me. If you are a defined vulture capital investor in any of these areas that are defining as youth sports, then you have two years to divest your position.
Otherwise, there's personal liability, uh, to you and there's other, let's see, other emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: So they're defining vulture capital as anything with debt? rory-liebhart_1_05-: Consolidate any vulture practices include consolidation roll-up strategies. So Ed is a vulture capitalist in what he does with, with CPA firms. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Debt loading, whatever that means. Adding debt, using debt, who knows? Uh, asset stripping, junk fees, predatory contracts. Again, these are all left a lot to be defined for sure.
Exclusive participation requirements, this is what Ed speaks to, you know, things like that. Monetization of player bi- player data biometrics. Those last two bullet points, exclusive participation requirements and monetization of data biometrics, th- th- I would be cool with a bill that ha- that spoke to these two things generally. Uh, but the o- the rest of it is just seems very broad to me, I guess.
You know? And so like what kind of precedent are you setting? Like, okay, e-sports is out. Well, you know, w- what other areas is, is private equity going to be pushed out of and why?
You know? So emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Are you guys of the thought that, hey, if this bill were trying to let the kids play and actually doing it in a way that made sense, you would be for that? Or like, no. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: Um, uh, uh, so it depends.
depends on whether you're asking me to continue to play the role that I've been playing, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Doing very well, by the way. Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: this bill. Well, that's good. As a trained attorney, I'm capable rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: both rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: No, exactly. eddie-the-mooch - has-t: argument rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: right person to take the devil's advocate on this one for sure. Not me eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: you know, it, it, so... But if you're asking me personally, that's a, you might get a, you might get a, a differently nuanced answer emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: me the real Ed, the rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: I remember, probably 15 years ago, some question in some meeting came up, and it was kind of an asinine question, and Ed's response is,"I'm a capitalist."
It was, it was answering something of like, you know, this or that, you know, do we do this or that? It was like,"I'm a fucking capitalist. We do what, what, what - where there's demand in an economic way," basically was the answer. So I, I, I assume that that's where his position is here eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: so what Ed would, what Ed would tell you as rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: Unless he's become a socialist.
eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: what the real Ed says rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: The real, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: real rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Eddie B eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: is the, emily-sander_1_05-20-202: please stand eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: the emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: up. eddie-the-mooch - has-them: drive this. I am a rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: I said eddie-the-mooch - has-them: it... The tough part will be if PE pushes too hard, the not-for-profits will come back in and, and eat them for lunch because you have, you don't have a profit motive.
the market will control. at the end of the day, these guys can't ring-fence the entire thing in such a way that you'd be able to screw rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2: Exactly eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: The actually private equity, and I started, I ended up down this road and I had to veer myself back, but they actually will provide the capital necessary to get some of this stuff off the ground. But if they get too piggy, competition will come in just like it should. Where you run into problems with private equity now sports is in college, where the NCAA and the, and the NAIA have kind of created a monopoly or an oligopolistic environment so you can't compete, where you've got the NFL, Major League Baseball, and other leagues where you can't compete because they've created an oligopoly of franchise environment, and where you've got natural difficult barriers to entry, whether they're regulatory, which is, you know, the, the typical private equity.
We've talked about this. Typical private equity is like, how can I, how can I put rents in? Uh, rents being the economic rent, not, you know, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: for the apartment. How can I put rents in with regulations so that I'm protected and it's difficult for competitors to come in?
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: Mm-hmm eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: So how do I make it difficult for competitors by making the barriers to entry high get free rent on this from the government? And so the immediate thing I would look at, I looked at this and said,"Oh, I wonder if this is retroactive." Now, they did say it was retroactive, but first thought was some private equity firm probably shot this thing forward. These guys run it up the flagpole and, because they've made an investment and they're like,"Okay, we wanna ring-fence our, our ability."
there's no need for it. matter of fact, I would actually argue things like the biometrics and, and, you know, those elements, I could get my head ar- I could even get my head around that with the right privacy laws, and I think those privacy laws already exist. Going to Rory's initial comment, is just perfor- performative BS to try and get some headlines, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Okay. eddie-the-mooch - has-them: there you go.
You asked for the real Ed, you got it. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: So you mentioned there might be a backlash from the competitors, similar to our fishing discussion, where it's like, "Hey, we can come in and be the boutique, high quality rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. emily-sander_1_05-20: supplier." In this case, it's like, look, you don't want that...
kind of like, um, you know the movie Dodgeball, where they walk into the gym that Ben Stiller is in? It's like this pristine, like all the modern equipment, and it's all jazzy and like salesy, and then they walk into like the other gym, and it's like,"This is the real gym. You can still get a good rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. Prison, you can get a good workout in too.
Yeah. Uh, I, I emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: Body weight workout. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: I - Yeah, here's - I just... It's a funny one because how do you tell a parent that's like, "You know what?
I've really gotten used to this awesome software that I can watch while I'm sitting at my desk at 8:00 p- 7:30 PM at the law firm I work at because I work 70 hours a week and I can't go to my kid's ball game. I'm gonna have it on in the background while I'm emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: It's a rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: doing work." emily-sander_1_05-2: discussion, by rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: right? Yep.
Yep. So you're telling me that, you know, the, the PE group that owns this needs to sell this, this asset, and the YMCA is gonna go ahead and buy it, and they're gonna be able to do just as well with it as like, as the, uh, software group that's... I, I just, I - No, it's not gonna happen. Like, we've become such a consumer society that the conveniences that are afforded by private enterprise technologically, which are always backed by either bootstrap or private equity or, or venture or whatever, it's...
That's where we are. The, the supply and demand, the consumer wants what the product is. Otherwise PE wouldn't be in it because no one would buy it, you know? emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: You have a rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Like, you can go to the YMCA thing and you can go to the, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: But the thing to solve for is making sure that, yes, there is not a, uh, there's not a greater divide for communities and access to play in these, in these leagues and stuff like to give a, get a shot and all that stuff, and... But is this the way to solve it? I don't think it is, you know, th- through this legislation, for example. emily-sander_1_05-20-202: 'Cause in previous pods, you yourself, Big Rigs, have said, love my college football.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: I do. emily-sander_1_05-20-: football. Don't turn that into a whole business and rigmarole." rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah, but I'm also the same sucker that's still buying tickets, still listen to the podcasts, which are throwing tons of basically DraftKings and gambling ads at me, you know?
So somebody's making a lot of money. But y- you know, so I, I don't have, uh, I don't take a stand as much to say like I'm not willing to what it's become. It just is what it is, you know? So I don't know.
I'm a, I'm a consumer emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: PE - just for like thought experiment purposes, if PE was like,"We're gonna optimize preschool da- daycare sports," would that be like bridge too far? Or be like,"Hey, if there's a demand for the little toddlers, then have at it." rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. I mean, if we're okay with PE being involved in, with healthcare, which is literally life and death for people, then education, sure.
You know? Montessori, sure. I mean, it's all private anyway, so like a lot of that stuff's private, private, it's just not private equity backed. But who's to say, like some rich family that owns it isn't doing the same stuff with it, you know?
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: If we're, if they are being performative with this bill, will rory-liebhart_1_05-20-20: should have looked up whether these two, like, congressmen are actually up for re-election this year or some shit like that emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_150: I mean, we're talking about it though, so it is, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: For sure. eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: Yeah rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: But if their goal is like create this conversation, we're having this rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: Oh, it, it, it totally gripped me.
I was like,"What are we - What? Are you serious about this?" Like, I, I, I, I am. emily-sander_1_05-20-202: You're so susceptible to those clickbait rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: I, am.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: like rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: They, got me. They got my algorithm figured out. And then immediately after I read it, that's when I sent it to you guys. I was like,"This is something we're gonna talk about,"'cause it just, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Yeah.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: But, you know, this is just one bill of many, many that are just head scratchers to whomever's looking at them, you know? So this just happened to be private equity based, so emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: It's an interesting kind of social question though,'cause I mean, as Ed was mentioning, youth sports, that's a formative time in someone's life. I rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: It sure is. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: and soccer, and that absolutely formed me and the teams and coaches and and camps that I went to, like absolutely.
rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-: Man, I, I played all of them really poorly. I was good for two points and five personal fouls for basketball rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. I mean, that's - Yeah, it is. It's - And you, I, you know, y- wanting to keep things affordable for people, all people, and accessibility to all people, that's - Who wouldn't want that, literally?
Like, I don't, I can't imagine somebody that objectively says, "No, I, I want - I don't want that. I want, I want, I want exclusivity. I want all..." People don't think that way, but it's just like they're- If you wanna tackle the big stuff, tackle income inequality to begin with, I guess, in some way.
But I don't, I don't have the answer to that eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: You wanna tackle income inequality? It rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: we might need about six years of podcast. Yeah. Yeah.
And not me as an expert, for sure. So emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: the real Ed would just start speaking and not stop rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: This is one where I would actually just wanna listen to Ed talk and go pine on, because I think there's so much to talk about on that subject. And, but again, it's like, what, what is the - Can anyone actually agree on what the causal factors are on that? Then, then you try to kind of address it.
So I don't know. That would be a future pod. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: it sounds like we're coming down, like in this pocket of the world, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. Yeah.
emily-sander_1_05-20-20: they're doing good things in the market, and it just kind of is what it is. The market will, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: tell rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: if a successful endeavor or not. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: and you, you do wonder if this bill comes up if sort of general inflation isn't what it is, or just general affordability relative to incomes isn't what it is.
You didn't see this come up in 2020 when everyone was making a ton of money and inflation was really low and access to credit was super easy. Like this, this is emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: Yeah. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: this is just symbolic of where we're at. Everyone's - If it's not this, it's the gas prices, right?
Like that's what people think about is like my kids, my gas, you know, those things. Like it's, it's... emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: gas to get my kids to rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yes. emily-sander_1_05-20-202: sports rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: and rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. Or my job's being replaced by AI, so, you know, I have to go find another job. Job market sucks, you know, even though unemployment's still pretty low. It's just, it's just a really weird time right now, straight up.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: Hmm. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_1: So emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: Ed, would you send your kids to private equity camp rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_15: A private equity camp eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1_: I would send them to private rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_1: I, I, I don't know if they would make it through private equity camp. Uh, neither one of them would wanna go to private equity camp, but I certainly would send them to private equity camp, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah.
Yeah. I'd send them to LP camp, emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_: YMCA rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: fund camp emily-sander_1_05-20-202: Sorry. eddie-the-mooch - has-them: Well, it's, I, I mean, the w- I will say this, like, for youth sports, my, my youngest daughter is - she loves youth sports. She loves sports, and she's got all of her dad's athletic ability, and, you know, but she loves it, and she will just...
She'll play and play and play and play and play. rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: And the, you know, at the end of the day, I'm glad that she was in a position to be able to do that, you know, both, you know, basically her entire, her entire youth life'cause it's about to come to a screeching halt, I think, as she moves into college, um, just like it did for her dad. And, you know, that's gonna be the... But it, it's, it's such an important part of everyone's life that I do think that, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah eddie-the-mooch - has-them-_: you know, access is important, but I do think access is available, and I don't think private equity's gonna screw that up.
As a matter of fact, I think they may improve it by improving facilities and other things and, and mo-monetizing, like you said, Rory, monetizing some things and then providing efficiencies that might not be there today emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: All right. There you go. Listener, drop in the comments what you think about this, where you would send your kid, to the YMCA or private equity school. We - I'm interested to hear, what, uh, what folks are thinking about when they hear about this article.
But very cool. Big Riggs, thank you for finding another rory-liebhart_1_05-20-202: Yeah. emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: are very esoteric, rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: Yeah emily-sander_1_05-20-2026: niche things that pop up in your feed and they just grab you. They know how to rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026: They do.
emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_15: so rory-liebhart_1_05-20-2026_: do. Yep. Yep. Thanks, man emily-sander_1_05-20-2026_1: All right.
Thanks, Big Riggs. Thanks, Ed. eddie-the-mooch - has-th: Thanks, Sam If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, share and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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