Key Takeaways
- Reeplayer’s End Pay-to-Play initiative returns up to 40% of its advertising profits to clubs, cutting the fees families pay to keep a child in the game.
- One brand has already signed on to sponsor four Southern California teams, with cameras streaming live starting in August 2026.
- Youth sports sponsorships draw 50% more attention than pro-team deals, and 8 in 10 parents favor the sponsoring brand (YouGov Sport, 2026).
- Founder Orhan Basak Ajredinovski aims to fully offset player fees for every participating team by 2030.
Reeplayer, the Los Angeles company that built the first real-time AI camera to autonomously livestream youth sports, has launched an initiative to end youth sports pay-to-play by shifting the bill from families to brand sponsors. Called End Pay-to-Play, the model works like this: a brand sponsors a club’s camera, every game streams live at no cost to families, and Reeplayer returns up to 40% of its advertising profits to the team to cut player fees. The first sponsor has committed to four teams in Southern California, with cameras going live in August 2026.
Turning Youth Sports Pay-to-Play Into a Brand-Funded Model
The costs the initiative targets are well documented. The average family spends $1,016 a year on one child’s primary sport, up 46% in five years, according to the Aspen Institute, which also reports that American families spend more than $40 billion a year on youth sports overall. End Pay-to-Play moves part of that bill onto advertisers.
In exchange, a sponsoring brand gets exclusive advertising on a given camera, targetable by geolocation down to a city, zip code, or neighborhood, for the full season. On the question parents tend to raise first, Ajredinovski said everyone who uses a Reeplayer camera or its platform agrees to be filmed, and players on the field are covered the way any broadcast camera covers a game.
How Does Youth Sports Attention Compare to Pro Sports?
Ajredinovski pushes back on the idea that youth sports is a softer advertising buy than pro or college. The five major pro leagues play roughly 6,000 games a year, each watched by millions, he told YSBR. Youth sports plays more than 100 million games a year, each watched by a smaller local group, and he argues the combined attention is larger than any single pro league’s.
“A pro game spreads one story across millions of loosely watching strangers. We do the opposite: every camera puts one family’s full attention on their own kid, every game, all season,” Ajredinovski said.
The supporting data comes from a 2026 YouGov Sport study, which found youth sports sponsorships get noticed 50% more than pro-team sponsorships, and that when two brands are otherwise equal, 8 in 10 parents say they would pick the one sponsoring their kid’s team. Reeplayer says each share on its platform brings nearly three new viewers, because families pass along a child’s highlight in a way nobody forwards a pro broadcast. A sponsor gets roughly 36 hours a year in front of each viewing family, exclusively, according to the company.
The Founder Was Priced Out of His Own Shot
The initiative traces back to Ajredinovski’s own experience. He set out to play professional soccer and came close more than once, he said, but was stopped by two things: no footage, and no money, with other parents paying for him to play because his family could not. He built Reeplayer to solve the footage problem so young athletes get seen. End Pay-to-Play is his answer to the second.
“It’s personal: I was the kid,” Ajredinovski said. He describes the initiative as “stealing from the pros again,” pointing the broadcast-and-sponsor model that has funded professional sports for decades at youth fields instead.
First Cameras in August, Full Fee Offset the 2030 Goal
Reeplayer is expanding deliberately, city by city and one brand at a time. About a dozen brands ran pilots over the past year, Ajredinovski said, and beyond the first Southern California sponsor, a second brand is close behind in Arizona and a larger name is in talks. He named three signals he is watching: player fees actually dropping, brands renewing because the advertising performs, and clubs applying faster than Reeplayer can place cameras.
The stated goal is that by 2030, every team in the End Pay-to-Play initiative has its player fees fully offset. For now, the proof waits on a single season, since the real savings numbers only arrive once the first sponsored teams finish play. “I’d rather prove that a hundred times than claim it once,” Ajredinovski said.
Source: Interview with Orhan Basak Ajredinovski, Founder of Reeplayer, July 2026, endpaytoplay.com
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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.
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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.
