Key Takeaways
- Ballogy launches an all-new app on August 19 built around MTR, an AI framework tracking how athletes move, train, and recover across every sport
- The platform serves more than 300,000 athletes, coaches, and teams, with basketball depth built over six years now extending to soccer, baseball, and beyond
- Founder Todd Young tells YSBR the structured workout represents roughly 5 percent of an athlete’s week, and the rest is where development is won or lost
- New Coach HQ tools give volunteer coaches a day-one baseline on every roster player, including recovery warning signs that surface before injuries do
Ballogy Inc. launched an all-new version of its app on August 19, 2026, rebuilding the platform around an AI-powered framework called MTR: Move, Train, Recover. The Austin-based company, which says it serves more than 300,000 athletes, coaches, and teams across North America, is also expanding beyond its basketball roots to support youth athlete development in every sport. The app is free to download in the App Store and Google Play.
YSBR sat down with Founder and CEO Todd Young ahead of the launch to talk about where MTR came from, what surprised his team as the technology moved into new sports, and why he believes a kid in a small-town gym should have the same tools as a five-star recruit.
Why Youth Athlete Development Doesn’t Stop When Practice Ends
The MTR framework treats training as one piece of a much larger picture. Move converts the activity data athletes already generate into development insights. Train uses Ballogy’s patented Computer Vision AI to track sport-specific drills and weight room reps in real time. Recover guides cool-downs, tracks rest, and builds smart rest-day plans.
Young traces the idea to his own endurance racing. He has completed three 70.3 Ironman triathlons and a full 140.6, and he says that training taught him recovery is not passive. It is where adaptation happens.
The same gap kept showing up in Ballogy’s own data. Athletes were putting in real work on the court and in the weight room, but that work was only a slice of their week.
“The workout is maybe 5 percent of an athlete’s week,” Young told YSBR. “The rest of it, how they sleep, how they move when nobody’s counting, whether they’ve got anything left in the tank by Saturday, that’s where development actually happens or doesn’t.”
Recover, he added, is the part youth sports has historically treated as optional. “You can’t develop an athlete by only looking at the hour they’re in front of you.”
To pull that full picture together, the new app syncs with Apple Health, Google Health, Garmin, Fitbit, WHOOP, Oura, and other wearables and health platforms, consolidating athlete data that would otherwise sit siloed across devices.
Teaching the AI a New Sport, One Movement at a Time
Ballogy built its reputation on AI shot tracking for basketball. Going multi-sport, Young said, was never really a question. Athletes and coaches had been asking for it since day one. The challenge was doing it right.
“Computer Vision is unforgiving,” he said. “You can’t flip a switch and call it a new sport. The system has to learn the biomechanics of each movement from scratch.” The angle and release of a jump shot share nothing with a pitcher’s delivery or a volleyball approach, and the AI had to learn what correct looks like across different movements, body types, and camera angles.
The sport that surprised him most was soccer. Young expected footwork and positional data to be the hard part. Instead, his team ran into how much of elite soccer performance happens off the ball, invisible to the obvious metrics. “It pushed us to rethink what tracking even means and where we add the most value,” he said.
Basketball remains the platform’s deepest sport, the product of six years of iteration. But Young called watching the technology translate across sports one of the most genuinely exciting things the company has done.
What a Week on Ballogy Looks Like for a 14-Year-Old
Asked to walk through a typical athlete’s week, Young laid out a Tuesday-to-Sunday loop.
Tuesday, practice day, starts with a daily MTR report from the app’s AI Coach, a quick read on yesterday that shapes today. Before team practice, most Ballogy athletes knock out fifteen focused minutes of individual work. The app knows what they have been working on and what their coach has assigned. They film a set of reps, get feedback, and move on.
“Fifteen focused minutes consistently beats an hour of unplanned work,” Young said.
After practice, athletes log the session and watch their MTR score move. Weight room reps are counted and form is tracked with no manual input. Then comes the part Young says keeps them engaged: checking their own data. Shooting heat maps, week-over-week form comparisons, and a Community feed where teammates post highlight clips and progress.
Saturday is game day, and the session folds into the week’s picture. Sunday, the app surfaces a rest routine calibrated to how hard the week was, while Move runs quietly in the background tracking daily activity. By the next Tuesday, the athlete knows where they improved and what still needs work.
Handing Volunteer Coaches Their Evenings Back
For coaches, the launch centers on visibility. Young described the typical youth coach spending the first three weeks of a season figuring out the roster by eye: who is fit, who can go left, who is already carrying a load from a club team nobody mentioned. By the time they have answers, a third of the season is gone.
Ballogy’s Coach HQ delivers that baseline on day one, Young said, including where each athlete stands, what they have been doing on their own, and who is showing recovery warning signs before those signs become an injury. He called that last piece the one that matters most.
The platform also absorbs the administrative load. Coaches assign work through the app, athletes complete it, and results flow back without text-message chases across fourteen families.
“Most of these coaches have a full-time job and are doing this because they love it,” Young said. “The least we can do is give them their evenings back.”
Ballogy is endorsed by the National Federation of State High School Associations and is used by schools, camps, and development programs across North America, according to the company.
The Kid Ballogy Was Actually Built For
Young’s answer on access was the most personal of the conversation. His son was the original inspiration for Ballogy. The family drove across Texas to tournaments and invested what they could in his development. What stayed with Young were the other kids in those gyms.
“I watched other kids who were talented and hungry, who just didn’t have the same access,” he said. “They were playing the same game on a fundamentally different playing field.”
Elite academies have long had film review, performance analytics, and real-time coaching feedback, Young noted. A talented kid in a small town has hard work and whatever a part-time coach can offer in two hours a week. Ballogy’s aim is to collapse that gap by giving that athlete the same AI tracking, performance data, and verified recruiting profile as someone training at a top facility.
“Scouts and coaches aren’t just finding who had the best resources anymore,” Young said. “They’re finding who can actually work hard and play.”
The new app is live now, free, and for the first time, open to every sport. Whether the small-town kid Young built it for shows up on a college scout’s screen next spring is the outcome the whole framework is designed to produce.
Source: Ballogy Inc. press release, August 19, 2026, https://www.ballogy.com/ Source: YSBR exclusive interview with Todd Young, Founder and CEO, Ballogy Inc., August 2026
YSBR provides this content on an “as is” basis without any warranties, express or implied. We do not assume responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, legality, reliability, or use of the information, including any images, videos, or licenses associated with this article. For any concerns, including copyright issues or complaints, please contact YSBR directly.
About Youth Sports Business Report
Youth Sports Business Report (YSBR) is the largest and most trusted media platform covering the business of youth sports worldwide. YSBR delivers youth sports news, market intelligence, and original analysis daily across facilities, sponsorships, private equity, NIL, sports technology, and league operations. With more than 50,000 followers, YSBR is the leading source of youth sports industry news for the investors, owners, operators, and brands shaping the future of youth sports.
How big is the youth sports market?
American families spend approximately $54 billion annually on kids’ sports and recreation, according to the YSBR and Kinetica Group Youth Sports TAM & Parent Spending Report, with organized sports alone representing a $40 billion-plus market. The average family spent $1,016 on a child’s primary sport in 2024, up 46 percent since 2019, per the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, and market research projects the global youth sports market will reach approximately $114 billion by 2032 (Business Research Insights).
How many kids play youth sports in the United States?
Approximately 27.3 million children ages 6 to 17, or about 54.6 percent, played organized sports in 2022-2023, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health as reported by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play. High school sports participation reached a record 8.26 million athletes in 2024-25, per the NFHS.
Who founded Youth Sports Business Report?
Youth Sports Business Report was founded by Cameron Korab, a sports marketing veteran with more than a decade in the industry and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Korab also co-founded Vertical Sports, a sports marketing advisory serving brands across youth, college, and pro sports.
What does YSBR cover?
YSBR delivers original reporting and market intelligence on youth sports facilities, youth sports technology, sponsorship and brand partnerships, private equity and venture capital deals, NIL policy, coaching development, equipment and apparel, tournaments and events, and community sports initiatives. Readers include industry executives, investors, facility owners and operators, league administrators, and youth sports parents.
Youth Sports Business Report resources
- Newsletter: Subscribe to Youth Sports HQ, the most-read newsletter on the business of youth sports, delivering curated youth sports industry news and analysis to thousands of industry leaders every week.
- Research: Read the Youth Sports TAM & Parent Spending Report, an exclusive YSBR and Kinetica Group analysis of market size, parent spending, and marketplace opportunities.
- Jobs: Browse the YSBR Youth Sports Job Board, the most comprehensive destination for careers in youth sports, with hundreds of active listings across facility management, league operations, coaching, sports technology, and marketing.
- Services: Find vetted partners and solutions for your organization in the YSBR Services Hub, connecting youth sports operators, brands, and investors with verified providers across the industry.
- About: Learn more about Youth Sports Business Report and our editorial standards.
Follow Youth Sports Business Report (YSBR): LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | X | Substack
Youth Sports Marketing Questions, Answered
Where can brands sponsor youth sports? Brands can sponsor youth sports through local leagues and clubs, tournaments and events, facilities and complexes, governing bodies, and national platform programs. Sponsoring a child’s own program is the most powerful entry point: 81 percent of parents say it captures their attention, outperforming TV, social media, and pro sports sponsorship, per a 2026 Priority Partnerships study conducted by YouGov Sport.
How much does youth sports sponsorship cost? Youth sports sponsorship costs range from a few thousand dollars for a local league or team sponsorship to six and seven figures for regional facility naming rights and national platform programs. The environment is welcoming at every level: 84 percent of parents hold net positive sentiment toward brands sponsoring youth sports, with negative sentiment under 5 percent, per YouGov Sport research. Most brands start with a pilot activation, measure engagement, then scale.
What is the ROI of youth sports marketing? The data is striking: 80 percent of parents say they would choose the brand that sponsors their child’s youth sports program when comparing two similar products, per a 2026 Priority Partnerships study by YouGov Sport. A 2026 EMARKETER and DICK’S Media survey found 84 percent of sports parents say that role influences their purchase decisions, and 60 percent spend more on game and practice days, driving loyalty across categories from dining to travel to automotive.
Ready to build a youth sports strategy? Vertical Sports is an Advisory+ delivering integrated expertise across all levels of sport. Youth, College, Pro. Every Fan, Every Level. Brands and youth sports organizations can reach the team at info@verticalsports.us.
