By Katherine Van Dyck

On Monday night in Seattle, the U.S. men’s national team was run off its home turf by Belgium in a disastrous 4-1 loss. The USMNT’s eternal quest for a World Cup trophy remains unfulfilled. By Tuesday morning, the ritual had begun: hand-wringing, promises to “invest in youth development,” vows that next time will be different. We perform this ceremony every four years, and almost nothing changes.

But there is one new part of this conversation. The sports world is finally naming the real culprit: the profit-driven model that has simply made youth sports too expensive. ESPN’s Dan Wetzel wrote Tuesday that the old excuse—our best athletes play other sports—doesn’t hold up against the powerhouses built by much smaller nations. Belgium’s population roughly equals that of greater Los Angeles; Norway’s is about equal to South Carolina’s. They’re in the quarterfinals. We’re not. The differences are in the developmental pipelines.

As the Aspen Institute has pointed out, Norway—winner of a record 41 medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics—“prioritize[s] local, low-cost competition and training that is developmentally appropriate.” Its programs focus on fun and social development until age 13 and are funded through state agencies. European soccer academies are likewise club-funded at no cost to families. Major League Soccer has started to do the same, but by the time kids are old enough for their academies, the pool has already been winnowed down by the ability to pay thousands a year to play U8 soccer.

How did we get here? I gave Congress a solution last week. The United States does not fund youth sports. We have not put a single tax dollar into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee in its 48-year history. Instead, we have a $40 billion profit machine that happens to involve children playing sports.

Private equity is swallowing youth sports through serial acquisitions and vertical integration—buying the leagues, tournaments, facilities, apparel and equipment companies, and tech. Once they capture a market, these firms maximize profits by raising enrollment fees, extending seasons, mandating travel to far-flung tournaments, forcing parents to stay at expensive hotels (a particularly gross scheme called “stay-to-play”), and charging gate fees for them to watch their own kids play. The top priority is investor returns, best achieved by keeping kids enrolled in their leagues, traveling to their tournaments, and staying at their preferred hotels all year long. Meanwhile in Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns money from his club. And younger kids play for free and for fun.

Why? Europe treats young players as an investment. We treat them as revenue streams. The consequences arrive long before any World Cup game. Only 23% of children from low-income families play sports, compared with 44% from families earning over $100,000, and that gap is widening. When your talent identification system is a credit check, you are not scouting a nation of 340 million. You are scouting its wealthiest zip codes.

And the kids who make it through pay-to-play aren’t even developed well. The year-round, single-sport specialization and endless tournaments that define American club soccer are literally hurting our kids. Serious knee injuries among teen athletes are up 26%. As retired NFL star J.J. Watt put it, “[y]ear-round single sport specialization benefits the adults who can make money off of it at the expense of the child’s development.”

Skeptics ask who will pay for all this free soccer. Fair question. The United States has called youth sports a national priority for 70 years—through Title IX, the Amateur Sports Act, and executive orders from Eisenhower to Trump. We just never funded the mandate. This, along with huge cuts to local parks and rec programs, has left a vacuum that private equity was happy to fill. Europe’s clubs and governments pay because developing children—as athletes and citizens—is an investment that pays for itself.

Defenders of the status quo point to basketball, where the pay-to-play AAU system supposedly produces the world’s best players. That grows less true each year. You have to go back to 2017 to find an American-born NBA MVP. And with more than half of NBA draft picks now coming from abroad, the league is exploring how to tap European academies. We’re at risk of losing the Dream Team that defined basketball for a generation.

Our broken system is not a lost cause. Congress can ban private equity’s extractive practices—dividend recapitalization, sale-leasebacks, stay-to-play schemes, junk fees, and predatory false advertising—and hold firms liable for the debts and safety violations plaguing the leagues they oversee. This is the vision of the Let Kids Play Act introduced by Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).

Antitrust enforcers should treat youth sports consolidation like the monopolization problem it is. I sued Varsity Brands in 2020 over its monopolization of All Star cheerleading. Government enforcers need to flex their muscles too.

Most importantly, Congress should finally put public money behind its 70 years of proclamations. Fund the grassroots sports office the 2020 Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics & Paralympics already recommended, provide grants for public fields and rec leagues, and make basic youth sports costs tax-deductible for families.

The 2030 World Cup is four years away. The players who will wear USA colors that summer are 14 and 15 right now—and many have already been priced off the field. We have to make these changes today if we want to compete on that stage tomorrow.

Katherine Van Dyck is a Senior Legal Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and the founder of KVD Strategies PLLC.