Key Takeaways
- FlexWork Sports has acquired ProCamps, a youth and pro athlete event company founded in 1999 that runs 175-plus events a year, along with its brand activation agency G3 Marketing.
- The combined platform pairs FlexWork’s 2,000-plus events and nearly 700 athletes since 2017 with ProCamps’ operational scale and G3’s brand activation work.
- ProCamps co-founder Gregg Darbyshire joins FlexWork as Chief Growth Officer, leading a push into college athletic department partnerships and a growing fantasy vertical.
- The full ProCamps staff is being retained through the acquisition.
- FlexWork plans fantasy events at Arkansas, Texas Tech, Alabama, and Indiana, building on Darbyshire’s history of events with coaches including John Calipari and Bill Self.
FlexWork Sports announced this week that it has acquired ProCamps and the brand activation agency G3 Marketing, consolidating three businesses into what the company describes as the most comprehensive platform in the youth sports experiential space. ProCamps will be integrated under the FlexWork brand. G3 will operate as a FlexWork Sports company, continuing its work in talent procurement and brand activations.
The deal brings together two of the longest-running operators in a category that barely existed a generation ago. In an exclusive conversation with YSBR, FlexWork founder and CEO Forrest West framed the move less as an expansion into new territory and more as a reunion of the people who built the category in the first place.
FlexWork founder and CEO Forrest West
Bringing the Category’s Originators Together
West’s case for the deal starts with shared history. “The youth sports experiential industry was really pioneered by our companies,” he told YSBR, “so coming together and bringing the experts in this space under one roof will only strengthen our capabilities.”
The numbers behind each business explain the scale of the combination. FlexWork has run more than 2,000 events since 2017 with athletes including Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Saquon Barkley, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Cameron Brink. ProCamps has been staging events with professional and collegiate athletes since 1999 and runs more than 175 of them a year. Put together, the two companies fold decades of operational history into a single platform, with G3 adding the brand activation layer on top.
West says the most important thing he is inheriting is not infrastructure but discipline. “What excites me most about learning from a team that has been running these events since 1999 is that ProCamps’ staying power comes from a relentless commitment to making every single event matter, which is exactly what’s driven FlexWork Sports since day one,” he said. “While the companies took slightly different paths, we’ve always shared the same North Star: that every attendee walks away from each event with a memory that sticks.”
That framing matters for how the integration is being handled. The full ProCamps staff is being retained, and West’s language throughout the conversation positioned the deal as preserving two cultures rather than absorbing one into the other.
What Access Looks Like on the Ground
The product underneath the deal is access. FlexWork’s events are built to go beyond on-field or on-court instruction, with attendees taking part in Q&As, photo opportunities, casual interactions, and unscripted moments with the athletes hosting them.
“Our events extend beyond on-field or on-court instruction,” West said. “We’ve built our leadership team with people who share the belief that we should go above and beyond to create memories that will stay with our participants forever. So whether that’s through the sponsorships we’ve provided to make events more accessible, or by going the extra mile in the moment to create something special for a family, we all share the same mission.”
The athlete pipeline behind those experiences has been deepening. FlexWork recently signed Guerrero to a multiyear partnership as its first-ever brand ambassador, and its events with stars including Saquon Barkley and Jared Goff have drawn national media attention. Acquiring ProCamps widens that roster of professional and collegiate talent considerably.
A Turnkey Model for Brand Partners
The G3 acquisition gives FlexWork an in-house brand activation arm, with existing relationships including Caresource, Kroger, and Procter & Gamble. West sees it as a way to change how sponsors show up at events rather than simply adding more of them.
“G3 Marketing brings deep expertise in brand building and developing strategic, creative partnerships,” he said. “We believe adding their services will strengthen our activations and brand integrations.”
He pointed to FlexWork’s work with Raising Cane’s as the template for what an integrated partnership looks like. Those activations run across the full arc of an event, starting with pre-event promotion, continuing through on-site presence, and extending into post-event follow-through that drives attendees to restaurant locations. “Adding G3 Marketing’s services to our current FlexWork Sports partnerships offerings allows us to further develop a total turnkey activation for our current and future partners,” West said.
For brands trying to reach youth and family audiences in a credible way, an in-house agency that can build and run that full sequence is the kind of offering that is hard to assemble piece by piece.
The College and Fantasy Bet
Darbyshire’s new role as Chief Growth Officer points the combined company at the college level. His mandate centers on long-term partnerships with college athletic departments and event-based programming designed to create new revenue streams, and West says the work is already underway.
“This has been a huge priority for us, and we’ve already been building partnerships at the university level,” West said. The engine is Darbyshire’s relationships. “Gregg brings a long history of hosting fantasy events with some of the top college coaches, including John Calipari and Bill Self. He has strong relationships with programs all over the country, and we see this as an area we’ll be able to really focus on and grow over the next year.”
Planned fantasy events include stops at Arkansas, Texas Tech, Alabama, and Indiana. In his own statement on the deal, Darbyshire described joining FlexWork as the next chapter for a company he helped build. “What began as an entrepreneurial vision 28 years ago has grown into a nationally recognized leader in youth sports experiences and brand engagement,” he said, crediting ProCamps’ network of partners, athletes, coaches, and families for the company’s growth.
Holding the Experience Fixed While the Footprint Grows
The question hanging over any deal this size is whether the thing that made the businesses work survives the scaling. West’s answer is to keep the attendee experience as the fixed point. He notes that FlexWork has supported millions of dollars in scholarships allowing disabled and disadvantaged youth to attend its events, and he returns to the same measure of success no matter how large the platform gets.
“Like sports in general, there are a lot of specialties under the youth sports umbrella,” he said. “For us, it’s about making sure our goal stays the same no matter how much we grow, and that’s to always prioritize the experience for our youth attendees, their families, our athlete hosts and our brand partners.”
For West, that is the throughline connecting the operational scale of ProCamps, the brand machinery of G3, and the college ambitions Darbyshire brings. “At the end of the day, our events are about having fun and making memories these kids will have forever,” he said. “I believe this deal further cements us as the leader in this space, and with our expanded leadership team, I can’t wait to see where we take it from here.”
Source: FlexWork Sports company announcement, June 29, 2026, and an exclusive YSBR interview with Forrest West.
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