Op-ed by David Lasday
For decades, sports analytics has been built around what you can see and measure.
Speed. Strength. Vertical jump. Shot percentage. Sprint time. These are the metrics that scouts document, coaches track, and families obsess over.
Two platforms now entering the youth sports conversation are measuring something different. Not what athletes do, but how they communicate on the field and whether they hold up when it matters most.
The dimension nobody has measured
Ask any coach what separates good teams from great ones and the answer almost always comes back to the same word. Chemistry.
Chemistry is how players talk to each other. Who organizes the press. Who goes quiet in the second half. Who leads with their voice when the game is tight. For as long as sports has existed, that dimension has lived entirely in a coach’s memory and gut feeling.
Vokalo is changing that.
The platform captures on-pitch audio, syncs it to the video a club already records, and turns how a squad communicates into objective data for coaching staff. Players wear a small audio device during training sessions. The AI surfaces communication patterns across the squad, identifying who leads, who listens, and who goes quiet under pressure, then builds a communication profile for every player.
The result is something coaches have never had before: a structured, longitudinal record of how communication shapes performance.
Vokalo was founded in Aarhus, Denmark, and signed City Football Group, owner of Manchester City, as its inaugural customer. It has since added Rangers FC and Brondby IF to its roster, and was selected as part of Juventus’s 2026-27 Forward Squad innovation programme, where its objective is to convert verbal communication, leadership, and team organization into structured information that can complement existing performance analysis.
For youth sports, the application is significant. A U14 coach running a pressing system cannot watch eleven players at once. Vokalo can. The platform surfaces which players are communicating the system correctly and which ones are operating in silence, allowing a coach to coach the invisible layer of the game with the same precision they bring to the physical one.
The metric that did not exist
Scouts can clock a forty. Coaches can time a first step. Parents can track a batting average.
What nobody has been able to measure is clutch.
NTangible measures how athletes perform under pressure and how to coach them. Its tagline is direct: clutch is not a feeling. It is a score.
The Clutch Factor assessment was co-developed with Dr. Ed Levine, a psychologist and University of South Florida professor emeritus, and draws inspiration from the Thematic Apperception Test, a psychological examination in which people are presented with photos of ambiguous situations and describe what they see. The key words used, the phrasing, and the semantic structure of responses are scored against a neurolinguistic guide built by psychologists.
The output is a score from 1 to 1,000. Fifteen minutes of testing per athlete.
NTangible also produces NTerpret, a cognitive and behavioral read on the person behind the player: how they learn, what drives them, and how feedback lands. Together, the two assessments give coaches something they have asked for but never had: a standardized way to evaluate mental readiness alongside physical readiness.
The youth sports application is already well underway. NTangible has expanded its partnership with Alliance Fastpitch, the largest youth softball organization in the country, to assess close to 20,000 athletes annually. Starting this season, every Alliance participant age 13 and up earns a validated cognitive performance score that travels with her through the recruiting process.
NTangible founder Dan Connerty has noted that the Clutch Factor score can be used in rankings, leaderboards, recruiting conversations, NIL conversations, and scholarship conversations. For a youth athlete trying to differentiate themselves in a crowded recruiting market, a verified mental performance score represents a new kind of credential.
The two highest Clutch Factor scores in the country at the 2025 Alliance All-Star Game both went on to Division I success.
Two different layers, one shared direction
Vokalo and NTangible are not solving the same problem. But they are moving in the same direction.
Both platforms are adding structure to dimensions of performance that have historically been invisible. Communication dynamics on the field. Mental performance under pressure. Neither of these is new to sports. What is new is the ability to measure them, track them over time, and use them to make better decisions about how athletes are developed, selected, and coached.
For youth sports operators, both platforms open up questions worth asking now.
Vokalo raises the question of whether communication training belongs in a development curriculum. If a platform can show that certain players consistently go quiet in high-pressure moments, that is a coachable insight. Programs that start thinking about vocal leadership as a developable skill, rather than a fixed personality trait, will be ahead of the curve.
NTangible raises a different question: what happens when mental performance becomes a visible number in a recruiting profile? For event directors and club operators, the opportunity is real. NTangible is already trusted by event directors and league operators turning registration into a recruiting draw. A tournament that offers Clutch Factor scoring as part of its athlete experience is offering something no traditional event can match.
What it means for the athlete
The athlete who comes out of this era will be measured in ways that current youth sports families cannot fully anticipate.
Physical metrics are already abundant. Video analysis is becoming standard. Biomechanics platforms are entering the club environment. The next layer is internal. How an athlete communicates. How an athlete responds when the moment is biggest.
These are not soft metrics. They are the dimensions that determine outcomes when physical talent is roughly equal, which at the highest levels of competition, it almost always is.
The platforms measuring these dimensions today are building the vocabulary that youth sports will use for the next decade. Operators, coaches, and families who engage with them early will have a richer picture of athlete development than the field has ever had before.
The game has always rewarded athletes who talk and athletes who perform. Now it can measure both.
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.
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Check out Jr. Sports Marketing on YouTube or Spotify
Hosted by Cameron Korab, founder of Youth Sports Business Report, Jr. Sports Marketing features candid 1-on-1 conversations with the brands, athletes, leagues, and innovators building the future of youth sports. Each episode breaks down how the smartest brands are activating, building equity, and winning with youth sports families. If you’re an operator, founder, investor, or marketer trying to understand where this space is headed, this is your show.
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.
