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Is Your Kid Maybe a Baseball Prodigy? That’ll Cost Thousands of Dollars This story is part of How We Get By, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the full series here. Theo Steele, 13, has been playing baseball for nearly half of his life. Like a lot of kids, he began with an Oakland team at the Little League level, which is meant to be recreational. Fun over foul balls. But a year ago, he wanted to step up his game after batting two home runs during a home run derby. “That’s like when I thought I was actually pretty good at baseball,” Theo said. Theo’s mom, Jonna Prinzing, enjoyed the low-stakes experience. Little League isn’t a huge time commitment, and the costs can be manageable. But when Theo asked to join a travel baseball team — the next rung in the aspiring youth athlete ladder — Prinzing hesitated. “You pay per tournament, as well as a fee to be part of the team,” she said, as she cheered on her son during a recent Major League Baseball-sponsored skills competition in Oakland. The teams have multiple practices a week and tournaments most weekends. “All of that was what held us back from joining sooner.” A growing number of kids are pursuing competitive sports as young as elementary school. Since the 1980s, competitive club and travel teams have exploded into a $40 billion industry, and many parents feel an enormous pressure to pay so that their kids can play. According to a 2025 report by the Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, since 2010, spending on youth sports has increased more than 55%, and nearly 60% of families are financially strained by their children’s sports — while 11% reported that they planned to take on debt. According to Data for a Difference, on average, Bay Area families spend nearly $2,000 annually for one child to play one club sport. Prinzing ultimately signed up her son for Future Stars Baseball, which charges a $600 team fee for the upcoming fall season. Every tournament players attend costs another $125, and extra intramural games are $35 a piece. Plus, families are expected to buy uniforms, priced at $125 a year, along with gear, such as cleats, gloves and bats. “People want to do the best things they can for the kids, so when opportunities come up to play baseball, parents are willing to pay,” said Joe Oh, co-founder of the Oakland Baseball Foundation, a nonprofit that runs baseball travel teams and camps. The organization is part of a growing movement attempting to keep costs lower than similar teams. A changing youth sports landscape These efforts aim to counterbalance the rise in private equity firms that invest in sports complexes and teams — raising costs for families along the way. In 2024, Josh Harris, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, and David Blitzer, a chairman at Blackstone and owner of multiple professional sports teams, launched a youth athletics holding company called Unrivaled Sports that owns sports camps, leagues and venues. They started with a portfolio of 12 facilities and now have 15. In 2025, they acquired the Twin Creeks Sports Complex in Sunnyvale and Big League Dreams in Manteca. Oh said tournament fees have increased significantly at Unrivaled Sports-owned properties. The teams’ entry fee for an upcoming two-day Twin Creeks tournament is $930 — plus a $399 gate fee that teams pay upfront to help cover spectator admission. The tournament fee for a TPR Baseball event at Mistlin Fields later this month is $855. “What the private equity firms realized was, ‘There’s an opportunity to capitalize on the fields, the uniforms, the equipment, the coaching — all the opportunities that come along with this,’” Oh said. ‘We don’t have thousands to spare’ The percentage of children who participate in organized youth sports is significantly correlated with household income, according to the Aspen Institute’s most recent State of Play survey. In 2023, about 37% of kids in households with incomes below the national poverty level participated in organized youth sports, compared to about 73% of kids in households whose income was four times the national poverty level. The data found that children from homes earning $100,000 or more are twice as likely to play travel sports than those in homes making under $50,000. Homero Espinosa, a board member for the Oakland Baseball Foundation, said that while not joining a club team doesn’t necessarily mean that a kid won’t play their sport at a high level, it does put them at a disadvantage. “Kids who have access to the travel ball teams, who are playing a lot more baseball a lot more competitively, obviously are going to have a leg up,” he said. “It’s expensive, it limits access, but that’s how you get to start playing more and more competitively.” There are low-cost and low-commitment options. Many elementary and middle schools have various team sports, and seasonal Little League, Pop Warner Football and AYSO soccer remain popular. “That’s accessible. It’s a good entry point for beginner kids,” Espinosa said. “But for the kids who want to compete and want to further their opportunities, [that] is where the travel ball teams come into play.” Emmalene Maile’s son has played in San Lorenzo’s Little League, which costs about $250 a season, for a few years. He loves baseball, but Maile said her family hasn’t considered travel ball yet. “I heard it was a lot of money from another parent,” she said. “She did say that there was a payment plan, but like thousands of dollars. We don’t have thousands of dollars to spare.” She said her son has asked about playing travel ball, but he hasn’t pushed for it yet. “I know for sure as he gets older he’s definitely going to want to play,” Maile said. “We’d do our best to save up for it,” she said. “Hopefully we would be able to afford it. It is a big expense.” Expanding access Oh said travel ball is marketed to parents as essential if they want their kid to play at collegiate level. He said that’s not always the case, but “what was evident to us is that we are diminishing the number of kids who have the opportunity to at least even try.” “The point of this organization is to create as much opportunity as possible, and then let the kids decide if they want to play,” Oh said. “Let us create an infrastructure where anyone who wants to play and shows the willingness to want to learn [can] be trained under high-level coaches.” In the case of Oakland Baseball Foundation, its estimated costs are about $5,000 a year, compared with between $10,000 and $15,000 for some teams. A quarter of Foundation players receive scholarships, and they put profits into restoring city fields, like the one at Bushrod Park, where they hosted the recent MLB event. Other organizations, like the Volo Kids Foundation, aim to fill similar gaps outside of the competitive arena. Becca Beltramo has registered her foster daughter for the organization’s free six-week sports programs consistently over the last year. “I’m a single parent, so when looking online at the different leagues or the different opportunities for her, it’s a big cost for us and our family,” she said. “I’m on a single income, and it’s hard to make all those things happen for her, but I don’t want to limit her possibilities because of our finances.” Beltramo’s foster daughter has played Volo soccer over the last year. The once-a-week programming includes a warmup, focused skills work and a scrimmage or a structured activity. They also provide T-shirts and the equipment required for the specific sport. “Volo is a great middle ground for us,” Beltramo said. She said for now, club sports “come with a lot of hidden costs, I’ve found out, that I’m not sure that our family is ready to take on.”