The best youth sports franchises by disclosed FDD data: i9 Sports at $59,900 with a $359,546 median across 213 units, and D1 Training at $507,699.
Quick answer Two youth sports franchises disclose enough unit data to judge. i9 Sports reports a $359,546 median across 213 units on a $59,900 to $69,900 investment, with no facility to build. D1 Training reports a $507,699 median across 83 facilities that cost $401,776 to $837,381 to open.
An i9 Sports franchisee can open for $59,900. A D1 Training facility starts at $401,776. Both get shelved under youth sports, and buyers routinely compare them side by side, which is a category error. One sells seasonal league registrations and rents fields it does not own. The other signs a commercial lease, builds out a training floor, and sells monthly memberships.
Those two are also the only youth sports brands in our FDD database with earnings disclosures deep enough to judge. i9 Sports reports on 213 units. D1 Training reports on 83 facilities. Everything else in the category either publishes on a per-owner basis, which is not a per-unit number, or reports a handful of outlets.
| i9 Sports | D1 Training | |
|---|---|---|
| Initial investment | $59,900 to $69,900 | $401,776 to $837,381 |
| Franchise fee | $24,900 | $62,500 |
| Royalty | 7.5% | 7% |
| Ad fund | 2% | 2% or $250/mo |
| Franchised units | 294 | 155 |
| Item 19 median | $359,546 | $507,699 |
| Item 19 sample | 213 units | 83 facilities |
| Costs disclosed | Yes, full P&L | No, revenue only |
i9’s Item 19 reports median registration revenue of $359,546 for calendar 2025. Read the definition before you use the number. Registration revenue means league sign-up sales only; i9 explicitly excludes sponsorships, commissions, merchandise, and concession sales from it. The 213 units in the sample are those with a service start date before 2025 that provided services throughout the full year. Another 81 active units were left out, most of them because they launched mid-year or failed to operate a venue in all four seasons.
Average registration revenue was $458,817, and only 38% of units met or beat it. The spread runs from $44,151 to $1,846,038, and i9 publishes exactly what separates the ends: venue count. A single-venue operator averaged $149,590. Owners running six venues or more averaged $1,009,403, and 41 franchisees sit in that top group against 21 at the bottom. Buying a territory and running one field on Saturday mornings is a five-figure business. The six-figure outcomes belong to owners who added venues and added sports.
One more line from the same item, which most write-ups skip: six i9 franchise units permanently closed during 2025, one of them within twelve months of opening.
Almost no franchise quotes a total investment band that narrow. i9’s 10-year agreement runs $59,900 to $69,900, a spread of exactly $10,000, and the reason sits in the line items. The franchise fee is $24,900 and the territory fee is $15,000, both fixed at a single value. That is $39,900, two-thirds of the low end, with zero variance. The lines that do move are all small: grand opening advertising at $6,000 to $8,000, insurance, legal and accounting, furniture and equipment at $3,000 to $4,000, training expenses, and three months of additional funds at $8,000 to $13,000.
There is no real estate line. No buildout, no leasehold improvements, no permits. Construction is where Item 7 ranges blow out, and i9 does not have a construction line, so the estimate is unusually likely to hold. You are not exposed to a contractor’s bid or a landlord’s allowance or a six-week permitting delay. Your exposure is whether parents in your territory register their kids, which is a cleaner risk to underwrite than most. Buyers weighing this against other low-capital options should compare it to the field in our home-based franchise breakdown.
D1’s headline figure is a $507,699 median gross revenue for 2025. The sample is 83 facilities, and 8 of them are company-owned or affiliate-owned. That distinction moves the number: franchised facilities averaged $534,745, company-owned facilities averaged $717,183, and the blended average D1 leads with is $552,329. To its credit, D1 says so in the document, telling prospects that the franchised-only average of $534,745 may be the most directly comparable data point. Very few franchisors hand you that correction unprompted.
The quartiles are wide. The top 21 facilities averaged $888,671; the bottom 20 averaged $297,791, with a floor of $165,489. Facility size explains some of the spread and operating history explains more. The extra-large facilities averaging $1,159,895 carry 16.2 years of history against 3.1 years for the small-format facilities the current FDD actually sells, and D1 flags that comparison itself.
Then there is what sits outside the table. Only 75 of D1’s 155 franchised facilities appear in the analysis. Twenty more were placed in a separate bucket for facilities that did not align with the D1 operating model, disclosed at a $287,128 median, roughly $220,000 under the headline. Item 3 discloses a pending arbitration in which a former Naples, Florida franchisee has counterclaimed that the model does not work and that D1’s semi-absentee representations were misleading. D1 states it will defend vigorously. Both facts belong in your read.
Revenue comparison flatters D1. i9’s Part II income statement is the more useful page. Across 129 franchisees reporting to a third-party benchmarking consultant for the twelve months ending September 30, 2025, average revenue was $514,066, cost of sales was $149,520, operating expense was $196,999, royalty was $38,257, and average operating profit was $129,290. That is about 25% of revenue.
Qualify it properly. That sample is self-selected: 74 units were dropped for reporting data inconsistently with i9’s categories and 32 more did not report at all. Read 25% as what organized operators produced, not as a systemwide expectation.
D1 publishes no unit-level costs. Its Item 19 is revenue only, which leaves the buyer to model rent, turf, equipment, and coaching payroll from scratch. A facility carrying all four needs a much larger top line to clear the same dollars of profit as a league operator with none of them. That is not a disqualifier. It is a reason to build the P&L yourself from validation calls before you sign, the same discipline we apply in our swim school comparison, where facility costs decide the outcome. If you are shopping the wider kids category, the child services and education brands are all comparable on the same Item 19 fields.
i9 excludes from its own earnings sample any unit that failed to operate a venue in each of the four seasons of the year, which tells you the calendar is the business. Registration revenue lands in bursts tied to school terms, and a missed season is a missed quarter. D1’s monthly memberships smooth that cash curve and move the pressure to summer retention, when high school athletes scatter. Neither pattern is better. They demand different working capital, and the part-time ownership math changes accordingly.
Hi Five Sports discloses a $225,171 median, but it comes from six outlets and the sample mixes franchised units with affiliate-owned ones. Twinkle Star Dance discloses $425,000 from three franchised units. Both numbers are real and neither is evidence. At those sizes a single strong owner sets the median, and an affiliate-owned outlet is not a franchisee outcome.
Two much larger systems have a different problem. Amazing Athletes (169 units) and Soccer Stars (170 units) both report Item 19 on a per-owner basis, and many owners hold multiple territories, so the $214,219 Amazing Athletes figure describes a portfolio rather than a unit. Soccer Shots is the largest league-model system in the category at 383 units with a $42,950 to $54,300 investment, and its earnings disclosure is worth pulling in full before you shortlist it. The same rule applies across the kids category, including the trampoline and entertainment brands where sample definitions vary just as much.
Only i9 and D1 give you enough to underwrite. The rest hand you a number with no way to test it. If you want a read on which model your capital and your calendar actually support before you start requesting FDDs, the franchise readiness quiz is the faster first step.
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best youth sports franchisesyouth sports franchise costi9 Sports franchise costD1 Training franchisekids sports franchiseathletic training franchiseItem 19 analysis
About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
It depends entirely on whether the model uses a building. i9 Sports, which rents fields and gyms it does not own, discloses a total initial investment of $59,900 to $69,900 under its 10-year agreement. D1 Training, which requires a leased and built-out facility, discloses $401,776 to $837,381. Soccer Shots sits near the low end at $42,950 to $54,300. The franchise fee itself is a small part of either number: $24,900 for i9, $62,500 for D1.
i9's Item 19 includes a franchisee income statement, which most youth sports brands do not. Across 129 units reporting to a third-party benchmarking consultant for the year ending September 30, 2025, average revenue was $514,066 and average operating profit was $129,290, or about 25% of revenue. Treat that as a filtered result: 74 units were excluded for reporting data inconsistently and 32 more did not report at all, so the surviving sample skews toward organized operators.
Neither brand requires one. i9 franchisees recruit and train volunteer and paid coaches rather than coaching themselves, and the disclosed revenue driver is venue count, not sports expertise. D1 Training facilities employ certified coaches on payroll. What both models actually demand is local sales: filling registration slots or memberships in a defined territory, season after season.
They suit different buyers. i9 is the fit if your capital is under $100,000, you want no lease exposure, and you are willing to build revenue by adding venues and sports over several seasons. D1 is the fit if you can fund a facility build, want recurring membership revenue instead of seasonal registration bursts, and can absorb the risk that a single location underperforms. Read D1's Item 3 before you decide: a former franchisee has counterclaimed in arbitration that the brand's semi-absentee representations were misleading.
The league model tolerates it better than the facility model, but i9's own data argues against staying small. Units operating a single venue averaged $149,590 in registration revenue, while units operating six or more venues averaged $1,009,403. A part-time owner running one venue is choosing the bottom of that distribution. A D1 facility with a lease and a payroll is not a part-time business under any reading of its disclosure.
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