The Greg Olsen-hosted show bringing clarity and perspective to youth sports families takes home the inaugural podcast award.
Youth Inc. has been named Best Youth Sports Podcast in the inaugural Youth Sports Awards, presented by GoFundMe and the Youth Sports Business Report.
The recognition honors a media platform built for the families actually living youth sports: the parents driving to 7 a.m. practices, sitting in tournament hotels, and trying to figure out what a healthy, productive sports experience looks like in 2026. Through a weekly podcast hosted by Greg Olsen, a YouTube channel with 130,000+ followers, newsletters, and owned media, Youth Inc. is focused on helping families navigate youth sports with more clarity, more perspective, and a little more joy.
Built from Experience
Youth Inc. was co-founded by Greg Olsen, who spent 14 years in the NFL and is now raising three kids in youth sports himself. He was hearing the same conversations on every sideline: pressure to specialize too early, the cost of travel ball, college recruiting anxiety, kids burning out before they even hit high school. He realized there wasn’t a trusted, experienced voice cutting through the noise for parents.
Youth Inc. was built to be that voice. The company launched its content engine in earnest in 2024, relaunched the podcast in August 2025, and has spent the last year building a real audience around storytelling that takes youth sports seriously without taking itself too seriously.
The podcast sits at the center of what Youth Inc. does. Olsen sits down with athletes, coaches, broadcasters, and experts who have lived this world from every angle: Kirk Herbstreit, Tom Brady, Daniel Jones, David Epstein, Chiney Ogwumike, and many more. Every conversation comes back to the same question: what actually works for kids and families, and what doesn’t?
Serving the Decision-Makers
Youth Inc.’s core audience is youth sports parents, the people making the daily decisions about which league, which coach, which tournament, when to push, when to pull back. The company also serves coaches, athletes, and the broader community of people who care about getting youth sports right.
What Youth Inc. is helping them do is make better decisions. Better in the sense of more informed, more grounded, more aligned with what the research and the most successful athletes and coaches actually say works.
“We want a parent to finish an episode or close a newsletter feeling a little less anxious and a little more equipped, like they just had a conversation with a friend who has been through it,” the organization explained.
Changing Who Gets to Talk to Parents
The biggest thing Youth Inc. has changed is who gets to talk to parents. For too long, the loudest voices in youth sports have been the people selling something: a camp, a showcase, a recruiting service, a travel team spot. Youth Inc. has built a platform where the loudest voices are people who have actually done it: Olympians, NFL and WNBA veterans, college coaches, broadcasters, researchers. They have nothing to sell a parent except perspective, and parents can feel the difference.
“What’s different because of our work is that a parent driving home from a tournament now has somewhere to go that isn’t a highlight reel or a hot take,” Youth Inc. said. “They can hear Kerri Walsh Jennings talk about how her parents handled her career, or Kirk Herbstreit on raising four boys through college football, or David Epstein on what the research actually says about specialization. And they can take what they heard and make a better decision the next morning.”
The impact shows up in parent decisions. The dad who pulled his 10-year-old off a year-round travel team. The mom who finally felt okay letting her kid drop one sport for another. Helping families get to decisions they feel good about, with information they can trust.
What the Audience Has Taught Them
Youth Inc. has learned two things that stand out. First, parents are far more sophisticated than they get credit for. They don’t want oversimplified takes or fear-based content. They want nuance, real data, and people willing to sit in the complexity of these decisions with them.
Second, the multi-sport, well-rounded upbringing keeps showing up as a through line in nearly every elite athlete story Youth Inc. covers. The kid who played three sports until high school. The family that prioritized rec league over travel for an extra year. The coach who told a parent to back off.
“Our communities already sense this intuitively. They’ve watched it play out on their own teams and in their own neighborhoods,” the organization explained. “Our job is to put the stories and the evidence behind what they’re already feeling, so they can trust their instincts when the pressure to specialize gets loud.”
Building an Ecosystem
Youth Inc. sees itself becoming the default place families turn to when they have a question about youth sports, whether that’s through the podcast, the newsletter, video, or eventually, products and tools that go beyond content. The media side is the foundation. The longer-term opportunity is a fuller ecosystem around it.
Partnerships are part of that picture too. Youth Inc. is building meaningful relationships with leagues, brands, and organizations that share its values, and being deliberate about who it works with so the content stays trustworthy.
The role Youth Inc. wants to play is a force pulling the conversation back toward what matters: kids having fun, families staying sane, and the long view winning out over short-term pressure.
“We’re not anti-competition or anti-elite. Greg knows as well as anyone what it takes to reach the top,” the organization said. “But we believe the path there looks different than how a lot of the current youth sports industry is selling it.”
For Youth Inc., the Youth Sports Award validates the work and the approach. “We’re a small team doing this work because we believe it matters, and being recognized alongside the other organizations in this space is both humbling and energizing,” the organization said. “It tells our team, our partners, and our audience that the work is landing.”
More than anything, the recognition is a credit to the parents, coaches, athletes, and experts who have trusted Youth Inc. with their stories and their time. The podcast only exists because they keep showing up.
About Youth Sports Business Report
What is YSBR? Youth Sports Business Report (YSBR) is the largest and most trusted source for youth sports industry news, insights, and analysis in the United States. Founded by Cameron Korab, YSBR is the premier B2B publication dedicated to the $54 billion youth sports market. With over 50,000 followers and millions of monthly views and impressions, YSBR publishes daily across its blog, weekly newsletter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, and Substack.
What does YSBR cover? YSBR delivers original reporting, market intelligence, and business analysis across youth sports facilities, sponsorship and brand partnerships, private equity and venture capital investments, NIL policy and compliance, coaching development, sports technology platforms, equipment and apparel innovation, tournaments and events, community sports initiatives, and parent resources. YSBR is read by industry executives, facility operators and developers, institutional investors, league administrators, sports technology founders, and youth sports parents who rely on accurate, sourced reporting to make informed business decisions.
Who reads YSBR? YSBR is read by youth sports industry executives, institutional investors, facility operators and developers, brand and sponsorship professionals, league administrators, youth sports parents, and sports business professionals shaping the future of youth athletics.
Subscribe to Youth Sports HQ, the largest and most trusted newsletter covering the business of youth sports. Thousands of industry leaders rely on Youth Sports HQ for curated news, analysis, and business intelligence delivered weekly. Youth Sports HQ is the most-read newsletter in the youth sports business space.
Looking for your next role in youth sports? Visit the YSBR Youth Sports Job Board, the most comprehensive job listing destination for careers in youth sports. Browse open positions across facility management, league operations, coaching, sports technology, marketing, and more from organizations hiring across the $54 billion youth sports industry.
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