Kyle Scott sits down with CURVE Sports CEO Sandy Ogg to discuss the vision for building a national network of 30 youth baseball Super Clubs over the next decade. Sandy shares how CURVE combines capital, technology, data and operational support while empowering clubs to retain their local brands, leadership and identities:
Welcome back to Buying Sandlot. I'm Kyle Scott, founder of Buying Sandlot. We have a really good one today with one of my favorite people in the space, one of my favorite guests at the summit, Sandy Ogg, the managing partner and CEO of Curve Sports.
They're the youth baseball platform that partners with leading clubs through capital technology and operational support while allowing them to retain their local brands and leadership. Sandy has a really impressive background. He also serves as the chairman of Nord Anglia Education, one of the world's largest international school operators, is a board member of IMG Academy, and is chairman of Prometric, the global testing and credentialing company.
Before entering youth sports, Ogg spent decades advising some of the world's largest organizations. He was chief human resources officer at Unilever, then an operating partner at Blackstone, where he worked with nearly 100 portfolio companies on leadership and value creation. He is also the founder of CEO.Works, a leadership advisory firm, and serves as the senior advisor of EQT.
He's a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy with an MBA from Northwestern Kellogg. Ogg began his career as a Coast Guard officer before moving into corporate leadership. It's an excellent, wide-ranging conversation around what Curve is doing, particularly in baseball and softball clubs, his views and the opportunities around the intersection of sports and education through the scholar athlete, and the commercial opportunity that exists today around rolling up and forming a network of 30 super clubs across the U.S., which is Curve's goal over the next five to 10 years.
But before we get to that, I want to take a second to thank our sponsor, EventConnect. If you're an operator or tournament director like Perfect Game, you know tournament weekends have become many supply chains. Teams register, rosters change, schedules shift, hotels fill, and parents scramble.
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Learn more about how EventConnect can help power your tournament at eventconnectsports.com We thank EventConnect for being a trusted partner and allowing us to do what we do on the podcast and the newsletter. On to the interview with Sandy. All right, Sandy.
First off, I want to tell you that you were one of my favorite summit panelists we had in Philly in April. And your clip about the intersection of how you were running as fast as you can at the intersection of sports and education, I think was my favorite social clip we got out of the event. So I just wanted to lead with that and welcome to the show.
Well, that's very kind of you, Kyle. I want you to know that all of us at Curve Sports, but me particularly, we have a lot of appreciation for buying Sandlot and what you're doing in terms of the speed and effectiveness of the communication about what's going on in the space. And I thought the summit was just terrific.
And the fact that you were able to pull 500 people together like that in that short of a timeframe and be sold out, it was a privilege to be a part of it. So thank you. Awesome.
No, we were glad to have you there. Appreciate the kind words. We're running it back next year, working on dates now, roughly same timeframe.
So we hope to have you and your team back. And it went well, our first one. I'm just worried about like, all right, I don't want to screw up the second one now.
We had low expectations and we were able to clear them, thankfully, but now the expectations are higher, which is tougher. Anyway. All right.
So you're overseeing Curve Sports. For those in our audience who don't know, why don't you give the overview of Curve Sports? You guys are investing in the clubs, particularly in baseball. Give us the overview.
What is it? What are you guys trying to do? Yeah. So Curve Sports, we are building a business in youth sports focused very specifically on baseball and softball. So diamond sports, if you will.
And we are interested in what most people would consider a traditional roll-up where you're buying ownership of the clubs. We're actually not interested in ownership per se. We're interested in partnership.
So if someone wants to sell their club and leave, that's not the club we're interested in. We're interested in someone who wants to be our partner, stay and operate their brand in their market that they have built over, in many cases, decades and partner with us. We can bring things like capital that can really help accelerate the experience for the families and so forth.
So I would say that first and foremost, we are a partnership model, not an ownership model. And so that leads to our kind of the number one thing we look for in a partner is the quality of leadership. Of course, we would like to partner with clubs that are financially sound and that are in good markets.
And by a good market, I mean that there's baseball obsession and some reasonable college jersey density there so that we can produce outcomes that the families are looking for. But first and foremost for me is the leader and the depth of leadership in the club. And because if you're on a partnership model, those become your partners and they have to run, grow, develop, change the business as we partner together.
So what we're trying to do, Kyle, is our original thesis was we want to partner with 30 clubs in 30 months. And now we're kind of thinking that it is going to be 30 super clubs in 30 months. And so that means we will probably end up partnering with about 100.
I don't know that we'll get... Describe what you mean by super club and how you kind of define that. Yeah, it's a it's a great question. And thank you.
Thank you for that. But by super club, what I mean is, you know, we have learned if we go into a particular market, you know, let's take Minneapolis for as an example. And we have a great club in Pitch to Pitch that's run by CJ Woodrow there.
He's our partner. And we can see that there are several other large participants in that market that have built great brands. And if we can create cooperation between those three clubs and that there are things that they do independently, but then there are things that they do together that, you know, that gives us the opportunity to bring more people together.
And so, for example, one of our themes is train more and play local. Train more and play local. And in order to really support great local competition, you know, you need several participants in it.
And we would like to bring those participants together. And, you know, they then have some shared economics, but they are also building their strong, independent, competitive brands themselves, but then bringing those brands together interdependently. And then when you think about something like, you know, it's this intersection between education and sports, the sports academy, if you will, if you have a sports academy that draws from several strong clubs, and these are clubs making each other stronger in the market, now you have a super club that we can support local competition.
We can support a local academy. And we think that, and by academy, we mean a scholar-athlete academy. So, I don't know, Kyle, if that was a good enough definition of what we mean by super club.
No, it was perfect. One question on that, and then I, you touched on a lot of the things I went ahead, scholar-athlete, local, certainly the intersection of academics and athletics. But real quick, when you kind of think about these super clubs, it sounds to me like you're talking about a local platform.
You find the big one that can, and then, you know, kind of the satellite programs that can kind of feed into that. Are you also making investments into those smaller localized programs? So you have pitch-to-pitch as, you know, as a portfolio, piece of the portfolio. Are you also making investments into those other local clubs that help form the super club? Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Yes.
Okay, good. All right. So I want to get into all this.
Maybe it's before, just I'll wind back a sec. Why don't you just give your background briefly? You have a pretty substantial and impressive background. So I think it's worth calling out, but also you could do many things, right? And you're putting your time and effort into youth sports and this opportunity, particularly around Diamond Sports Clubs.
So give your background and then talk about why you're so attracted to the opportunity at hand. And then we'll kind of go through kind of each of those broader categories individually. Yeah.
Well, thank you. Thank you, Kyle. So, you know, I have now, you know, I'm coming up on my 50th reunion of graduating from the United States Coast Guard Academy.
And, you know, the first 10 years of my professional life were in the United States Coast Guard. And I worked in different parts of the country, doing rescue work on ships. And I loved every second of it.
And when I was at the academy, you know, I was fortunate enough, I, you know, I played baseball and I played football. So I was able to play two sports in college. And, you know, that was really fun.
And sports, very important part of my own development. And I'll come back to that. And from there, I went to work in, because my last job in the Coast Guard, I helped one of the people who start and an early operator of the Coast Guard Leadership School in Yorktown, Virginia at the time.
And then I resigned my commission and I went to work for a leadership think tank out in California. And then I had three successive corporate jobs. I went to work for one of my clients who at the time was Motorola.
And so I worked in Motorola. And then I got recruited away to be the global head of human resources at Unilever. And for those people who don't know Unilever per se, the brand, Unilever is a collection of consumer products, brands like Dove soap and Ben and Jerry's ice cream and ragu pasta sauce and, you know, all kinds of stuff.
And, you know, it was a firm of, you know, maybe 300,000 people at the time and 50 or so billion of sales. So I was blessed, you know, to be the head of human resources for that firm for 10 years globally. And then I was hired, you know, I left Unilever because my family wanted to come back and my kids actually wanted to play American sports.
I was living in Europe at the time. And I was hired by Blackstone. And I worked in private equity, and in private capital working on both, you know, on the real estate side, as well as the private equity side.
And what I kind of became known for was connecting talent to value. And as it relates to the transformation of these assets. And then I left Blackstone, about 10 years ago, started my own firm called CEO Works and basically did what I was doing at Blackstone.
And, you know, and I still do work for, you know, EQT, for example. And also, I did some work last year, believe it or not, for the United States Coast Guard, as part of a transformation there. And so, and I think the thing that's probably noteworthy is for EQT, I, you know, they appointed me as the chairman, you know, back in 2019 of two of their portfolio companies.
One of them is a schools business. So we, you know, we're investing in prep schools. And, you know, it started with four prep schools.
And ironically, Kyle, a prep school is about the same size student wise as a good size baseball club. So about 1000 students in these, in these, and about 1000 families in these clubs. And, and what I learned there, you know, and being the chairman of the board, we went from four schools to more than 90 schools, and 100,000 students involved.
And I have watched how that develops. Now, what's interesting at the heart of a prep school is what what I would call the golden triangle, the student, the parent, and the teacher that's housed within a prep school, but the heart, the beating heart of it is that triangle. If you look at a baseball club, or a softball club, the beating heart of that, and the beating heart of youth sports is the player, the parent and the coach.
These are two education systems that have at their heart and what and the club is, is the house of the golden triangle. That's where all the action happens. And, and so watching it happen in education, and now having the opportunity to do it in sports, something I love, since I'm nine years old, I love baseball.
And it changed everything for me. Because I grew up in a family that was not sporting. I mean, my dad was a physics professor.
And, you know, we used to do math problems at dinner. But our neighbors were sporty. And, you know, they took me off to try out for the for the baseball team when I was nine years old.
And that and that changed everything. And even though my family wasn't sporty, I discovered I was 40 and ended up, you know, playing all the way through college. So the thing that is the reason this is so important to me is, you know, working outside the United States for for more than 10 years and living abroad.
You know, I discovered something in that, you know, at Unilever, we were hiring 1000 college graduates every year from all over the world. Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Brazilian, I mean, we were hiring 1000 of them. And we would look, you know, we would look 25 years later, at who was actually running the firm.
And what was ironic was it was these scholar athletes. And by the way, the true scholar athlete model is a it is something that is unique to this country, to our country. And I believe the scholar athlete is a national treasure.
And so that's precious. It's precious to the leadership development of our country and the world, by the way. And so being able to be an active part of that, it's important to me.
So it sounds like a great, great background, by the way. And you're describing the private school as Nord Anglia, correct? A private school network. That's right.
Are you still you're still the chair? Or you were the chair? I still am. Still the chair? Yeah. That was traded for for billions of dollars, correct? Yeah.
14.5 billion. Wow. So are you seeing what you saw in education sort of play out that this playbook maybe start a decade or two earlier in education, kind of this consolidation, you said it went from 40 to 90 schools and traded a 14.5 billion dollars.
Are you seeing that sports and sports clubs, the similarities are obvious. And I think you do such an eloquent, eloquent job of describing them, the three pieces of the triangle, and then the house that they sit within. Are you seeing that sports is maybe kind of 10 years behind or following that exact same path, but on a delayed schedule a little bit? I think that I think it's it's it's a good insight, Kyle.
And that is exactly what I believe is that, you know, when I look at at at youth sports, it's so important. It's so important. I mean, the scholar athlete is important.
And I think when it and when and I don't know the the ecosystem of soccer, and I don't know the ecosystem of lacrosse and, and so on. But I do start to understand the ecosystem of youth baseball. And, and it, you know, it has grown the way it has grown, but it is sort of inverted, you know, in education, that, you know, the value gets created in the in the school, it gets created there.
And in, in, in youth, in travel baseball, travel baseball, you know, had had, or has become a showcase driven. So these clubs are kind of forced to build showcase level brands. And so they have scout teams and national teams, and, you know, that kind of stuff.
And it's play, it's play more, and maybe not even train. And the best players go and compete in these giant tournaments for exposure. Well, that is the opposite of what happens in, in a school, you know, in a school, the heartbeat, the beating heart of it is the parent, the teacher and, and the student, that's the beating heart.
And by the way, we are rediscovering the beating heart of, of youth baseball, by getting back to and inverting, you know, the reason that we want to invest in these clubs is because what I saw was the missing ingredient is capital. Because the club owners, when you look at the, at the, their expense lines, you know, they're spending a lot on uniforms, they're spending a lot on travel, they're spending a lot on having their coaches travel to run the games. And they're, they're not, you know, really doing what I think is, is really important is test, train, compete, recruit.
These are core services that you see in every school. You know, test, train, compete, recruit, and, and what kind of outcomes are, are, are going to be had. So what school am I going to go to? And, you know, am I competitive? What did my test scores say? And so on.
And I think the data is going to, it's not about going to an event and being showcased. What if I'm not ready to be showcased? Or what if I'm, you know, I'm not someone who's going to be seen at one of those things. I may be there, but I won't be seen.
And so how do I, how does my information get to the right people and so on and so forth? And, and that's the reason why I'm really pushing for train more, play local, train more, play local. And our parents are going, thank you. Well, I always, there's a couple of things that I want to pull on.
So I always talk to my kids, they're 10 and seven, both boys, both play sports, both really into baseball. Not quite at the travel circuit club circuit yet, but it's probably coming within the next year or two. And I always say to them, you know, they love seeing the flashy stuff on TV, the perfect game guys, the YouTubers.
And I always say that I describe it as a circle. I'm like, what you see is the outer edge of the circle. But for those guys to do the bat flip on the home run, or to play at that showcase or be in the MLB all-star game, which I took them to here in Philly, there's all this work that happens on the inside of the circle.
And you don't see that you don't see, you know, Kyle Schwarber up at 6.00 AM in the cages. You don't see them in the weight room, right? You see the home run derby, but that is like 2% of their effort, right? The rest of the effort is the stuff that nobody sees. And that's the inside the circle stuff.
And what you're describing kind of around local sports and this beating heartbeat, you know, it sounds a lot like the analogy I give to my kids. And one of the things we write about a lot, write a lot about, this is why I was so excited to have you on today, is because we reference you guys a lot in our writing, because I talk to parents, I see it in the surveys we put out, and lots of people and parents are like, the travel is, A, it's driving more cost, which is kind of a separate conversation going on in youth sports. You know, and the athletes and parents don't want to travel that much.
How can we reinvest in local? And to me, that feels like not only is it great for athlete development, but it's also great for allowing more kids to play, because travel is such a big part of the cost. So you guys are investing in these clubs, and the coaches and the training methods. And it's, you know, to me, it seems like you guys have really are proving a model for how from a business perspective, and an athlete development perspective, those two things can go hand in hand without relying on the travel.
I guess I really don't have a question there. But is that an accurate summary, I guess? Yeah, I mean, and I love what you're saying to your boys. I love that.
And that's what we're seeing is inside of that circle. There are a lot of kids that are being left behind. Part of it is they can't afford it.
Because that travel is expensive. And then the other part of it is the family does not want to invest the time. And you have siblings, and so on and so forth.
And there are lots of activities that families want to be involved in. Do we really have time to go on, you know, to be traveling every weekend for the whole summer, and set aside the cost for a second. And then in terms of the effectiveness, you know, what I want the parent to know, just like the same thing we say at the school, I want you as a parent to know that your son or daughter is getting better.
You know, just because you went to the game, and you got a couple of hits, it doesn't mean that you're actually getting better. Are you getting better? I mean, and you look at the work that Kyle Schwarber actually does, the work that he actually does. And he is measuring what he's doing.
And he needs to be assured that he is getting better based upon the things that he's working on. And I think every parent has the right to know. And I think every kid has the right to know.
And every coach needs to feel responsible for producing actual improvement. And so competition is just like taking an exam. You know, I mean, I take the exam to learn what do I need to work on.
And unfortunately, competition becomes a showcase that I'm, you know, and I do the bat flip and, you know, somebody posted on social media, and gee, wasn't that cool. But am I actually getting better? Yeah, and that's where the testing piece comes in. All right.
So we've discovered, we've talked about, you know, the big picture and the world in which this opportunity exists. So now let's kind of go through the model and, you know, just the business opportunity here. Let's go back to the operator, the owner of the local club, you talked about how important they are, you know, call it the key man, right or key woman.
We've surveyed hundreds of operators and about their capital needs. And one of the things that's like very clear in that data is that the most of the people and owners and operators of these clubs who are looking for money, I think there's this outside view that hey, everyone just wants to sell their business and get rich. It's not that like 90% of the result is I want a strategic partner, because I've developed a really good system.
But I need to be able to scale and I need capital to do that. And it certainly sounds like you're describing that. So talk about what you're seeing that operators want and need, how you guys can be helpful in investing and partnering with them.
And if you're willing to share to some extent, what that, you know, kind of the model looks like, how much ownership are they retaining? Is there a key man risk for you if that person eventually leaves? How do you guys think about all those things around the operator, the coach, the owner who are often one and the same person? Yeah, yeah. And you know, Kyle, our experience is exactly the same. The best operators are in this for the right reasons.
They are interested in the development of that young scholar athlete. They are interested in that. And they have been investing themselves in it.
And so they are looking for a strategic partner. And we can't run those clubs, just like we can't run the schools better than the educators. We can't run the club better than these people who have been developing and putting players in college and putting players on high school teams, and even professional teams.
It would be arrogant to think that we could do that. But what we can do is help them to build a value agenda. And understanding that if my business is here, and I want to scale it to here, then what are the things that I can do that are going to help me scale it? And how do I mobilize it? Because the failure point often is thinking big, but then starting big.
And as a result, moving slow. Because you only have so much capacity, either capital or energy, time, resources to actually grow.
And one of the biggest benefits we're getting is as we have a round table meeting every week, where we're inviting each club that we invest in, we invite the leader to the round table. And then we start sharing ideas. Hey, wait a second.
Up here in the North, we do a lot of training and we have facilities and we do a lot of indoor stuff because it's cold. In the South, we don't do so much indoor training. In fact, we don't do so much training.
We play a lot. Well, is the better model to train more indoors or is it to play more outdoors? Well, the answer is yes. And you should be kind of doing both.
And we discover it and everybody goes, well, gee, actually we do evaluations and tryouts and showcases, all of which are really testing. They are really one form or other of a test to get a baseline. Where do I stand? How am I doing? And so on.
And they want the parent. But what is the model for it? So you start seeing these best practices flying around and then it comes to, well, we need to invest in order to make that happen. I'm in the South.
I don't have a training facility. Okay, let's put together some capital and let's go make that happen. And we also discover, Kyle, that most of them have built their primary brand during this era of large tournament, travel, showcase and so on.
Play in the big tournament, win the big tournament, build your brand, that thing. But this thing is turning back local. And so what we're working on is a secondary brand.
It's not a secondary brand, which is built around train more and play local. And so you have your primary brand because that's not gonna go away quickly, but that secondary brand, and we actually wanna be the leader in that brand. And man, the parents are grabbing at that opportunity because of your outer ring of the circle, the real circle, because that's where the action actually happens.
And so when we look to partner with a club, we like to have a majority ownership. So our sort of working framework is 70-30, but we're happy with 80-20, we're happy with 60-40. And we would like for that owner to be our partner.
So we would like for them to retain a significant part of that. And by working together and creating something that is actually scaled, they have an opportunity to earn off the first tee as we invest in. So now they have some personal wealth.
And then as we're developing it, there's an opportunity to, cause like with Nord Anglia, for example, I mean, it has traded four times. And each time, the people who have been involved and who chose to roll in, and now you have people who are really wealthy as a result of it. And by the way, if you are the person who is managing the heartbeat of this thing, you should get wealthy.
Because this is an important service that the people are providing. This all comes back to the idea of youth sports need capital. I think you said it earlier, you said it at our summit.
I think we've clipped it up a couple of times. There's lots going on now. There's still proposals out there that are seeking to ban private equity from youth sports.
And there's just kind of this general sentiment against private capital in youth sports. But what you're talking about is the exact reason why capital can be, is not only necessary, but can be helpful. And in some ways, relocalize things and make things more accessible in the longterm.
So maybe kind of just give your stance on general on capital and youth sports and maybe expand upon how it can do some good. Because I don't think that's a narrative that the industry is really telling. And it's kind of like losing the public war of words on that, so to speak.
Yeah, I think this is really important discussion. And does that impact your investing decisions at all? I'll kind of add that on to the question. Like all this stuff going on, does that impact how you value things and introduce a risk for you? Yeah, I have so much conviction around the impact of private capital on youth sports because what I've seen in the education space.
North Anglia is the largest private cohort of students in the world. And we are learning every day about what is going on with education and so forth. And I look at what is happening to student outcomes in those schools and it's spectacular.
I mean, it's just amazing. And I see the experience that these kids are getting and the care for safeguarding and all the things that go into when you have those, the right kind of blend and investment. And I think that because some of the proposals I've seen is that, well, let's turn it back to the public and let's have the government put up the money for one thing or the other and maybe even operate these things.
And I actually think that public capital and public funds are great. And in fact, a lot of youth sports is public private partnerships that how do we bring the capital together in order because there isn't enough public capital to be able to devote to it. There are a lot of issues and problems.
So public private partnership is a great thing. And I also think, this is a generous country. We have more philanthropy in this country than virtually anywhere else in the world.
And one of the things that we're doing in order to reduce the cost is if there is a kid that wants to play on a curve sports club but they can't afford it, we are raising money every day to be able to close the gap for that kid because no one should be left behind. And we are all about it. And our clubs are all about it.
And so philanthropy, generous people, putting their hard earned money in public funds. I'm telling you Kyle, we need all of it. If we're gonna do the best job possible for the most precious resource we have.
I mean, think about those two boys of yours. Those are precious and they are the most precious thing we have. And we need to ensure that we are investing properly as a society in the development of our young people.
I mean, that's our future. And we want them to have a better future than what we had. So, I know I'm getting a little bit philosophical about the whole thing, but I think public funds are not enough.
Private funds are not enough. Philanthropic funds are not enough, but if they come together, wow, we can do really, really cool stuff. That was awesome.
We actually just had Jeremy Goldberg from League Apps and Fun play on earlier this week. And he talked about the role that philanthropy also has to play. And what you guys are building, you have the scale and resources to attack, I know attack is the wrong word, but like bring in those athletes who can't afford it at a local level.
And you guys can systematize that across your network of 30 super clubs to bring in those individual athletes. That's really, really interesting and great perspective. Let's go to the education piece.
The overlap, we've written about this before and I was trying to like sort of piece it all together. And I think we even did a diagram some months ago, but the overlap of you, IMG, Nord Anglia, EQT, Drew Weatherford, right? Like there's lots of cross-pollination here. And the common thread there is sports and education and how they come together.
So you've talked a lot about it here. Maybe talk about the sports academy model and opportunity. And I mentioned it earlier at our summit, you said, if I build a network of sports clubs, I'm paraphrasing, I could trade it for X. But when you marry kind of sports and education, the scholar athlete, the academy model, it's a much more interesting business.
So how everyone thinks of IMG when they think of sports and education and they're the best example of it. How is that trickling down to the club level? What will that look like? What opportunities are you guys attacking? And is there a world in which IMG is syndicating some of their content that begins to power sport academy, their curriculum, their education curriculum? Yeah, yeah. Man, Kyle, you're really hitting on the big ones.
I love the academy topic. We may do like a one-day event just around academies at some point because I think it's such an interesting discussion. I think, yeah.
And so if you take the academy, and I'll come on to the economics of it because the economics of it are very, very attractive. But if you look at it and you start with, the outcome is the scholar athlete and it's a national treasure and we should be doing what we can to get after it. And when you look at the day in the life of a parent, you know, a parent of, and you're smiling because you're living it.
The day in the life of a parent- You're right in the other room, you could probably hear. Yeah. A day in the life of a parent is, it never ends.
It starts early and if they're training in the morning, it starts before school. They go off to school and then the real fun starts because they have a lesson here, they have a lesson there, they have a lesson here, they have a lesson there. We've got a game on Friday, we've got travel to a tournament on Saturday, Sunday, and maybe Monday, and I've got to take time off of work and so on.
And think about the life of the parent and the family and that athlete. So school is one thing, sports are another thing, the lessons are another thing, it's all over the place. What's beautiful about a visit to Bradenton and IMG is, it's all there, it's packaged together, and it's designed for the scholar athlete.
It's designed for that. Their testing, their training, their competition, their recruiting, it's all in one place, it's all pulled together. And by the way, if it's local as opposed to in Bradenton, at Bradenton, I've got to make a decision to move there if I'm gonna be with my young person, or I've got to send them off.
And gee, that's heart-wrenching. But it's a great thing. But if it's local, so if you said IMG local, which when you, the reason I want super clubs is that you have enough mass of families that would actually like to, and we think that 10% of the families that participate in our clubs would be interested in one of these academies.
And if you have 3000 families that are in a market and 300 of them come together into a Diamond Sports local academy, powered by all the knowledge and experience of 40 years at IMG, of how do you chisel one of those days out? And by 4.30 or five o'clock, you're done. And you can do your homework. Or if it's a local academy and you're a parent, there it is, they go to school at 7.30 or eight o'clock in the morning, and by four o'clock, they're done.
Maybe they have a game once a week and I can go over and watch the game. But I don't have to travel all over the place for competition. I don't have to go there for lessons and this for this and that for that and so on and so forth.
And now the blend of my life as a student and my blend of a life as an athlete, they go together. And so it makes something a really attractive, interesting mix. And so I think that when I say IMG local, and we're interested in and we're spending time with the IMG team talking about how we can work together to bring the secret sauce to the local academy because we shouldn't reinvent that wheel.
They know how to do it. But if it's local, it's a different kind of proposition. And so if you think of the economics of a club, and what is it that a family is prepared to invest in their young athlete, as opposed to what they're ready to invest in their young student.
So now you have a student athlete. Now the revenue per student or the revenue per athlete in a blended model becomes something quite interesting. And your economics in terms of the multiple at which a business like that is gonna trade is a whole different ballgame.
And if you just look at the multiple at which IMG trades and the multiple at which Curve Sports on its own will trade, it's exciting. Yeah, and we've talked to some of the smaller academy folks, I think like Texas Sports Academy, TPH, Spire, kind of different levels. And then you have IMG sitting all the way up here.
And I mean, every time I have the conversation, like the parent demand is real. You're saying maybe 10% of the people in our clubs, but there is real demand for this, especially on the time commitments for parents and families. How much is, and it almost sounds like what you're describing is like inverting.
Today, private schools start with academics and my kids are at one and sports is very important there, right? But it's an academics first, sports 1A at most. You're talking about flipping that a little bit, lead with sports, make the academics, I don't wanna say secondary, but bring them in after the fact. And if you can leverage a trusted brand like IMG to power that, I imagine that reduces a little bit of the skepticism that maybe parents have around, how good, how much are my kids learning here? And I also imagine AI education, everyone I talk to brings that up about being able to power these and condense that academic day a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. And I think that when you bring the all, and we're already seeing it with IMG by having the same ownership of Nord Anglia and IMG. IMG is becoming a great academic institution in addition to a great athletic institution.
And of course, sports were always first there, but I think that what we're looking for is the outcome of the real scholar athlete experience. And what does that mean? And so we don't wanna subordinate one to the other, but we also, because you end up subordinating it with this wild way that we do it now, where it literally starts at seven in the morning and goes until 10 at night in the case of a really serious athlete, it's lasting that long. Is that right? What about rest? What about recovery? What about a little bit of extra time and reflection and so on and so forth? Just having a life, right? Just having a life.
And why not? Why not have one? Do I have to sacrifice my entire childhood and do things that other kids do because I wanna be? Maybe not. Maybe not. And I think IMG does a great job on their campus of creating space and rest, opportunities for rest in the midst of the whole thing.
So I think the academy, this academy thing is, well, I'm running after it. Like I said before, I'm running after this as fast as I can. Honestly, Kyle, and it's gonna take time to club, super club, be able to get the infrastructure right, put the academy there.
Then, but the thing I'm gonna resist the temptation to do is because everybody's gonna say, well, you need to go multi-sport in order to make the economics work. Not so sure. Not so sure because these academies are cropping up everywhere because the parents want them.
And unfortunately, we're sacrificing either the sport or the academics in many of those cases. And we're not gonna do that. The last, awesome stuff.
The last tenet of this is kind of the testing you talked about earlier. You guys are thinking you're calling it Curve Test Centers, partnered with the Futures app. What specifically does testing look like at Curve? How bullish are you on just the overall opportunity that technology and AI, I think, are enabling around testing and standardized testing and verified numbers, right? Lots of, we've heard lots of ideas around this, but I think you need to have a trusted brand behind it and enough scale that a college recruiter accepts that exit VLO or 40 time or whatever it is.
So talk about what you guys are doing in testing specifically. Yeah, yeah. It comes back to the parent has a right to know.
I'm investing heavily. I mean, significant part of family budgets and so forth, they're going, I have a right to know. And by the way, the kid has a right to know.
And that college recruiter has a right to know about the information. And so, ironically, Kyle, the other company that I'm the chairman of the board of is a testing company called Prometric. And so Prometric does SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, all of those kind of high stakes tests that we all wanna make sure that the physician that is working on us has actually passed the test.
You know, and that they have not only the knowledge, but they have the skills to be able to do it. And I think that you take all of these things that we do now, evaluations, showcases, data days, those are all some form of testing. But back to the point, and we have a partnership with Prometric to design and verify and validate our, and ensure that we are reliably measuring.
So when you look at that, it's verified, verified information. You go into these recruiting websites and it's self-reported information. So therefore, the person who's looking at it says, well, wait a second, you know, that can't be right.
But if it has been verified and it has been measured, if the exit VLO has been measured on a TrackMan and you can see the TrackMan results. So when we do a tryout, a showcase, a day-to-day, an evaluation, that's testing. It's testing.
It's a baseline. It's a summary of how I'm doing so that when I go into the next season, you know, I have that information. And so we're measuring brain, body, ball and behaviors.
But everything is measured objectively. So if you're talking about exit VLO, it's on a TrackMan. If you're talking about a 40 time, it's with a timing gate.
If you're talking about grip strength, it's with a grip dynamometer. If you're talking about, you know, it's with a force plate. If you're looking for a rotational power, you know, it's a Proteus machine.
And if it's a behavior, an exam, it's done with an AI powered interactive simulation of the behavior. It's not like, oh, I talked to Kyle. I think he's a good guy.
You are a good guy. So this testing, we think it is essential. And when someone has, you know, if they have pitch-to-pitch on their jersey and they have a curve patch on their sleeve, I want that to mean something to those families.
These kids are tested. They know where they stand. You know, these coaches are certified.
They have been trained in order to be able to do these things. You know, every coach that is in the thing has had a background check. That curve sports patch means something.
That's important to me. How do you, on that front, and I imagine this is where kind of the operator and the person running the program is also important because I think you have to balance the risk of an athlete just training to hit a certain exit VLO. And it's gotta be like, how do these hard skills translate on field? So I imagine there's some balance there, particularly around the coaches and the training of the coaches as well.
Yeah, and you know, when we do a tryout at Power Baseball, we're measuring on the field. So does it translate onto the field? Do you actually get the translation? And you're so right. You know, you're wanting to know where you stand and we're not just like teaching the test and then figuring out how to get at it.
Does this combine into a person of character and so on? And I think one of the things that I haven't mentioned is the thing that's nice about a scholar athlete, both of those is we're teaching skills AI can't replace. A shortstop has 15 decisions to make when they field a ground ball and based upon their experience and so on, they're making a lot of choices in a split second. You know, where do I throw the ball? What, you know, should I go to my, you know, should I field it backhand or should, you know, what is the, there's like 15 decision choices and the same way, you know, a pitcher or a batter, there are a lot of decision making that happens.
And then what about my teammate, I go into the dugout and I can see that my teammate is struggling. How do I go over and, you know, pick them up? You know, those are not things that AI is gonna teach and not things that AI is gonna do. The skills that AI can't teach is what a scholar athlete academy does.
Because there's so many skills that are, you know, and brain, body, ball, behavior and opportunities to exercise and practice those things that you don't get elsewhere. Yeah, and we've written so much about how, you know, I think why so many people are bullish on sports and the opportunity in youth sports and even just investing in sports in general is it's one of the last things that keeps everybody human. And I think leisure and sports become more of our lives, not less over time.
Last one from me, you know, just big picture. What do things look like in five to 10 years, maybe at the intersection of sports and academics? You know, how will education change? How much of a role do athletics play in education in general? And where does curve sit in that world five to 10 years out? Ideal world. Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, over the next five to 10 years, you know, I'm dreaming about a 30 market. And I'm not even dreaming at this point, Kyle, about outside the United States, but I'm thinking about a 30 market well-established super club network that there is a functioning academy in each of those markets. And that, you know, we see young people that are embracing and developing in this AI powered, more human kind of market that is emerging and they're thriving there.
We see these, and that we have that youth sports coaching is a profession. We have professional coaches that have real jobs. I'm all about cool jobs in baseball, cool jobs in softball, real professional people.
And they are there. So, you know, you've got the player, it's back to the player, the coach and the parent. And the parents have sort of recaptured their lives to a certain extent, because we've brought some sanity, you know, to this whole thing.
And they have that, their most precious, the most precious thing in their life. They feel like, hey, I can actually influence it and I can be an integral part of it. You know, I think it's, that's a 10 year proposition to kind of get that golden triangle functioning.
Because, you know, you look at it today, players are suffering. You know, we've got this rise in all this pressure and various kinds of mental challenges that people are facing as players. And then we have coaches that struggling financially and they have to teach, you know, and they can only do their coaching part-time.
And then the parents, you know, are making great sacrifices. Well, can we continue to work in a way to develop something that really satisfies the needs of those three and how they kind of harmonize together? And I think AI will play an important role in this and it will, and also being a human and becoming a better human is also gonna play a very important part of it. And so I'm seeing this 30 super club network that is really functioning.
And right now, you know, we're a construction site everywhere. Literally last one, it's gonna be short. Like just bring it back to the ground level business stuff.
We have lots of operators in our audience, you know, certainly in the baseball and softball space who may be listening and said, hey, I would love to be a part of this. How do you guys think about valuing these clubs? You know, they're generally, you know, one to $5 million businesses. And so how do you guys think about valuing these clubs?
Some smaller, some bigger, you know, they're kind of all over the place. How do you guys like what's your primary KPI when you value these things when you go in? Yeah, well, you know, as I said before, Kyle, the first thing for me is we're trying to put together a major league roster of leaders, 25 to 30. And we are going to be selective about those 30 leaders.
It all comes down to that. And then, you know, when it comes to the valuation, we are not looking to make a deal at the beginning. So we're not looking for someone who wants to sell their club and therefore make a deal.
We want to build a partnership. So as opposed to, you know, a lot of people go at it and say, well, how can I get this for as little as possible? We go at it and say, we would actually like the opposite of that. Can we help you discover the full value of your club? What is its real, true earning power? So we go in and we try to understand what is the true earning power of the club.
And that forms the initial, the basis of the initial valuation. And we do it in a disciplined way that when we five years from now have, do we have something that we can actually trade? So documentation and, you know, like things like cash to accrual and, you know, and deferred revenue and all the things that go in when you have been running the business as a lifestyle business in a lot of cases, and on a cash basis, it's hard to understand what is, what are we talking about here? But can we together discover the true earning power? We want to give you credit for every dollar that is there. And then, you know, and we establish the baseline.
And then from that baseline, can we really build value together so that we have the opportunity to, there's a payday at the beginning, a payday in a few years, a payday a few years after that, which is exactly the way that Nord Anglia developed. So I don't know if I'm answering your question, but that's the way we go about it. No, I think that was perfect.
And I think it will definitely speak to some people in our audience, you know, for those listening on the club operator and owner side, how can they get in touch with you or learn more if they think, hey, like we're, I'm a fit, I'm a fit for this. I want to talk to these guys. Yeah.
I mean, I think that, you know, we have a website for Curve Sports that has contact information on it. I'm happy, Kyle, to make my personal contact information available to people if they wanted to reach out. Awesome.
Yeah. I think they could find, I mean, certainly they could, they could ping us happy to make an introduction. Anyone who's listening to the full show.
Yeah. I mean, if someone wants to find me, you know, my numbers and email and stuff like that is, I don't keep it a secret. That's for sure.
And, you know, for people who actually are interested in that partnership and really building something together, those are the people that we want to talk to. If you're interested to just sell your club because you're tired of it and you want to move on with your life. And I respect that, but that's not, that's not our partner.
Yeah. No, it makes sense. Sandy, this was, this was awesome.
I really appreciate your time. I know we went longer maybe than we were anticipating or scheduled for, but this was one of my favorite conversations I've had with the guests. And like I said, you were one of our favorite panelists.
So we hope to have you back next year and we hope to have you back again and cover more of the news of what you guys are doing in the newsletter. So thanks. Thanks so much for joining.
Yeah. Yeah. And Kyle, I think you may know we're going to have our first Curve Summit at Steinbrenner down in Tampa in December.
And we have invited, you know, Buying Sandlot to be featured there. We've invited you and we think so much of you and what you're doing that we would like for you to be an important part of that. We're inviting clubs and partners and donors and all kinds of people to come.
And we're also going to have a leadership development workshop because we're not only looking for leaders, but we're developing leaders. Our rate limiting factor of growth is leaders.
