Learn how League Joe’s unique draft-based leagues bring players together for competitive play, social connection, and inclusive growth across eight states.
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Welcome to Episode #20 of the Sold Out podcast, where we interview league organizers across the country for tips on how to sell out and grow leagues.
In this conversation, Shawn from League Joe discusses the origins and growth of the organization, which started in 2014 focusing on slow pitch softball and has since expanded to eight states and multiple sports. Shawn dives into League Joe's unique draft-based league model, which brings players of all skill levels together, balancing competitive play with social engagement. Through their draft system, League Joe fosters an inclusive community that values both fun and development, making it ideal for players new to a city or the sport. Shawn also discusses the role of local commissioners, marketing strategies, and the challenges of scaling the league amidst high facility demand.
Key Takeaways:
Listen to the full episode now!
Below is the full transcript from this episode. The Sold Out Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple, or you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube Channel!
Tune in every other week to hear AREENA interview the country's best league organizers about their success in selling out leagues consistently.
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Lance (00:01.462)
Alright, today we have Sean from League Joe. Thanks for being here, Sean. So, yeah, let's get started with some of the basics of where you're located and what leagues you're running and how many teams you have coming out each season.
Shawn Smith (00:04.548)
that is going to be a very, very and helpful and simple way to do this.
Shawn Smith (00:12.706)
Thanks for having me on. appreciate it. Glad that we could chat here today. Lead Joe, we started in 2014 based in Indianapolis, Indiana. For a long time, we ran it really as a hobby, just focusing on slow pitch softball. But about two years ago, I left my job full time and decided to go ahead and make Lead Joe my full time, you know, pursuit.
And since then, we now have leagues in eight different states and hosted tournaments in about 30. While we primarily focus on slow pitch softball, we also touch on flag football, kickball, the team sports. And we really focus on the draft style model of building leagues.
Lance (00:56.162)
Cool, wow, so you were there in the beginning in 2014 and what did you guys start with? Just softball?
Shawn Smith (00:58.324)
Yeah, so we started because frankly, my beer league team was tired of getting his butt kicked. you know, everybody has that story where they join the league and there's three tournament teams and then there's just one group of ragtag three agents that, you know, ends up winning zero games on the season. They have no fun and then they don't show up again. And we had that experience a couple of times and we said, you know,
Why do it this way? And we ended up convincing those three teams to break their teams up. And we did a draft. And so the entire league was drafted from start to finish. know, the coaches, we basically had four coaches that picked all the players based on a salary system we developed. And it was awesome. It was a more communal league, more fun league. And so, you know, we spent a lot of time building up that software to specifically run.
the draft side of things. And, you know, was really just a hobby where we doing it for our own leaks. So we just ran one leak out of Indianapolis. But, you know, eventually, as I mentioned in beginning, we're like, you know what, if we're ever actually going to make this a thing, we got to try and strike while the iron's hot. So we decided to really expand in a deeper way about three years ago.
Lance (02:20.672)
Nice. And when you say we, who was the, who was starting this? Was it you and one or two other people?
Shawn Smith (02:24.033)
Yeah, myself and I've got two other co-founders and then a fourth person who joined later and we make the core nucleus of the ownership group.
Lance (02:37.844)
Awesome. Okay, so you guys were all together, decided you wanted to do something that had better sort of competition balance and that the draft system was the way to go. What does the team look like? What's your role and what are the other members' roles?
Shawn Smith (02:55.218)
So I'm the president and I'm also the chief developer. So I'm actually the one that has developed the platform over the years. My partners, one focuses primarily on the league and the we call them the commission, you know, the tournament side and then two guys that are basically in sales, sponsorship and partnership development.
Lance (03:01.884)
Cool.
Lance (03:15.956)
Awesome. So you have a developer background. So what is this thing that you've developed? I've heard of a number of, not a ton, but it's, you know, you do hear about draft systems that are out there. And what I seem to hear is people will, it seems kind of manual, they'll get together at a bar and maybe they'll put something up on a screen and all the captains will be there and they'll kind of slot through. it doesn't ever seem like there's tons of information on the people that they're drafting. And I always kind of wonder like, how does that?
Shawn Smith (03:22.524)
Thank you.
Shawn Smith (03:37.154)
Thank
Lance (03:45.246)
work, I guess people know people, but what is your system? So both the software and like the process of how the draft goes down, do people get together for it or is it just online, is it through an app, like what have you built for that?
Shawn Smith (04:00.467)
Do you play football by chance?
Lance (04:03.222)
Fantasy football, I have a couple times, yeah. Not a hardcore player, but.
Shawn Smith (04:10.186)
So basically we built that but for team sports. And so when a player signs up, they actually complete a skill survey. They go through an assessment process. We sync if they have a national database record, we'll sync against that so that we know what their official rank is. And then all this ultimately goes into this soup in the back end where we generate salary cap numbers for each player. And so.
Lance (04:13.388)
Nice.
Shawn Smith (04:36.66)
In most drafts, like you said, you know, it's a bunch of guys that are standing around and really they're picking people at random or picking people that they know. With our system, we actually have a salary cap. So, a simple example, if you're one of my coaches, we might go out to a bar, we might do it online, we can do both. But I'm going to say to you, Lance, you've got 30 points to spend with your first three picks. And the point range is from a three to a 20.
Lance (04:45.024)
Mm-hmm.
Shawn Smith (05:05.392)
So if you got a guy out there that is an absolute stud, they might be a 20 on that scale. So if your first overall pick is a 20, that means you've only got two or 10 points left for your next two picks. So you're likely getting a stud and two novices that end up filling up your team. And so by the time you get to the end of the process, it really does create a lot of parity because like we say, every team has a few pros and every team has a few joes.
Lance (05:15.606)
Hmm
Lance (05:33.652)
Interesting. I kind of have more questions along that, but it makes me curious about the actual leagues themselves. Cause you know, there's, lots of different ways people try to find competition parity. The most common is just divisions. So you have 18 teams. This is what we do in our soccer leagues. Put it up into, you know, three divisions and teams just because they are what they are in terms of their, their skill level. And then we kind of do promotion relegation. And that seems to work pretty well. Sometimes we'll still have pretty big score differentials.
your system, seems like you're creating it in some sense. I don't know if you also have divisions as well, I'd be curious about that. But you're creating it sort of within the teams, you're kind of this broad mix of skill levels from people who are worth 20 points to people who are worth three points. Does that ever create situations where really good players are playing with people that are kind of not as good and that's maybe not as fun? Because they want to play at a certain level where their teammates and all of their competition are all...
Shawn Smith (06:29.008)
Thank
Lance (06:30.752)
really good or all sort of beginner? Like how do you think about the mix of all those things and do you guys do divisions as well?
Shawn Smith (06:40.301)
So first of all, answer the division's question and the answer is no. We actually do focus on this is a league that's about mixing the tops and the bottoms. You know, our league is unique in that, you know, most, most leagues and tournaments out there, you have to know nine or 10 other people to put a team in. And so it's intimidating and it's a core process if you don't know those people.
You just move to a town, it's really difficult to get onto a team. Whereas our leagues are extremely welcoming to that. In fact, I'd say that on average, 20 to 50 % of our players in each season haven't played before, particularly when we moved to a new market. And so, you know, going to the culture question of, you do have an absolute superstar stud. And then we like to say you've got a 65 year old grandma.
We welcome them on the same team. play together on the same team. They have a good job or they have a good time. And what we see more often than not is that super competitive nature of here. They'll tone it down and instead they become a coach. so part of what works with parity is when you know the other teams are also equal. So if you're on a team and you feel like, these guys are stacking, what do you do? You try to stack in our leagues.
Hey, we've got this grandma on our team. And then you look across the field. they've got a grandma too. Okay. Teams are even let's go play ball. so it ends up being a great league for novices to actually get coached up. And we do see a lot of players that end up kind of, you know, growing in their skills and eventually they go on to become tournament players.
Lance (08:21.482)
Interesting. So this is this started with softball, correct? And it sounds like you're moving into other sports. Does it feel, does it look and feel the same in terms of the draft and how people feel about it with other sports?
Shawn Smith (08:31.24)
It does. I will say that, you right now it works best for larger teams. you know, flag football is great, soccer is great, kickball. Smaller teams is more difficult because one person on the field or the court can completely take over a game. We tried to volleyball a couple of times and what we found is just, you know, we've got two really good players and then three novices.
Lance (08:50.956)
Mmm.
Shawn Smith (08:59.276)
they stop passing to the novices. They just kind of step back and forth and put it over the net.
Lance (09:04.246)
Yeah, interesting. So are you thinking about trying maybe like a two division split? Like it seems like that could solve some issues in some leagues if you're having that kind of, you know, one or two dominant people moving them up or do you feel pretty committed that it always should just be one division across all sports?
Shawn Smith (09:22.652)
No, we're pretty committed to that model and you know, we The draft model is for everyone. So, you know, the other thing about us is
You know, a lot of individuals out there, a lot of individuals listening to the podcast, they start by saying, I'm going to take this market and I'm going to dominate this sport in this market. And for us, you probably can't run five or six nights a week of draft leagues because a lot of people do want to play with their friends. They do want to play that traditional team model. So what we end up doing is usually we come in and we're that that really that compliment.
to an existing program where it's like, hey, we're playing four or five nights a week, but we can't fill two days for some reason. Well, that's the perfect time to throw in a draft lead. And so we work with organizers or local directors or regional directors and we'll say, we'll be out there. And then we become the seeder system for the rest the leagues.
Lance (10:18.656)
Interesting, yeah.
Lance (10:25.046)
Wow, that's great because that's a super common issue. People always talk about it's space, finding facility space. So it sounds like you guys have sort of a go-to-market edge there where you can't, because I see that all the time. There's places around here where there's one night a week or two nights where they struggle to fill it out and they're open to bringing something else in. And one of the ways I see pick up or feeders is like pick up leagues. There's a company I think called Play or Goodrec or something and they'll...
They'll do some of that. They just do a bunch of pickup and then that kind of feeds in and they're able to slot and that lets them get space. So you feel like that solves that problem really well. Like you're able everywhere you go to usually find a night kind of at a private facility, which is often one of the more difficult ones, I think for private leagues is cause then they're competition. But you find that that works really well.
Shawn Smith (11:16.92)
Yeah, so far we've had a lot of success and we've actually had a lot of success in markets where they've struggled with just player dissatisfaction, players getting, you know, a little too unruly. You know, for example, in Myrtle Beach, there's this amazing complex called Grand Park in the state turf fields. And three years ago, they stopped doing leagues full out. And it's because they had issues with people fighting in the parking lots and...
And I think there was actually somebody that was stupid enough to bring a gun one time to the leagues. And so they said, you know what, we're done, tournaments only. And we had an in over there, we convinced them and we said, hey, look, what we do is way different. We don't have any of those security issues. We don't have any fights. We don't have any arguments. It's all about fun. It's all about social. So they let us go in there. They made us hire a uniformed police officer for the first season.
Lance (11:50.316)
Cheers.
Shawn Smith (12:14.06)
and we had zero incidents. And so since then, we're now the only leak that operates in that entire facility.
Lance (12:20.642)
What do you attribute the zero incidents to in your leagues versus other leagues? Is that because you're sort of breaking up these friend groups and everybody, it's more like, you know, no people in social, maybe people don't have that same, like, I'm here with my friends and you get all riled up. Like, what is it that makes it, you think, less incidents with your model?
Shawn Smith (12:42.344)
Yeah, definitely. think that a lot of what feels that kind of stuff is the people egging the hotheads on. And so whenever you get drafted to a team and you don't have your eight or nine hothead buddies sitting around egging you on, you tend to cool off. The other thing that we do is after every single season, we break up the teams and start again. So by the time we play two or three seasons, you don't just know your team, you know, most of the people in the league and it's.
Lance (13:09.611)
Yep.
Shawn Smith (13:11.34)
It's a lot harder to just get so angry at Tim for making an obvious error when you're like, I just played with Tim. Tim's actually a good guy. Let me cool myself off as opposed to going and trying to prep him.
Lance (13:27.084)
That's yeah interesting that makes a lot of sense. So then I have two questions that are sort of still about this One is you mentioned sometimes especially in new areas. You might have a bunch of new people joining How on earth do you get any sort of accurate? skill level for somebody new because We've done similar type of things nothing like what you're saying in terms of how advanced but a little skill indicator like what level you want to play at and my experiences people are wildly inaccurate
on both ways, like somebody really good will be like, I'm not that good, because they've seen really good, and then people who are. So how do you deal with that?
Shawn Smith (14:05.42)
Yeah, so we've got a pretty in-depth survey that they have to take and, you know, we've been doing this now. but I think we've got probably 50 to 60 giraffes under our belt. And so we've seen the ways that people try to game the system. We've also seen the ways that people are innocently just wrong. And so now we kind of look for those patterns and then each of the coats is kind of has this red flag marker next to the players so that they know, all right, this is a bit of a risky pit.
They say they play shortstop, but they said that they're not very good at infield. Clearly something isn't diving here. So it ends up working out that every team ends up having a player or two who may be underrated themselves, but they all have a player or two that overrated themselves. So it kind of finds its own mark, or the water level finds its mark.
Lance (14:41.11)
Mmm.
Lance (14:54.582)
I like this.
And then as they progress in your system, how do you get more and more accurate? you start moving away from the survey and more toward like real performance? then how do you get real performance? Is that from stats? Is that from ratings from other players on the team? Or how do do that?
Shawn Smith (14:59.802)
but all of the teams are collectively ball jammed. The level of development is very similar. The player can't really call it food. The coaching role will be the same. The national team will be the to ensure food.
Shawn Smith (15:28.84)
rookie season. Definitely have plenty of people that are, you know, inaccurate on scale after they play once, then the coach adjusts them and they tend to get closer to what their true level is.
Lance (15:41.346)
Cool, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then my next question was around sort of the social side of this, because it seems like the potential for social connection is just off the charts versus a normal league. And I see this in our leagues and stuff is, know, you'll sometimes we'll put together like a total free agent team and that's great. Nobody knows each other. Sometimes we'll slot them in and then you kind of in with a group that has already been sort of playing here. You've got so much mixing and matching and
And in general, when I look across the industry, it seems like most of the money in the adult private space outside of Parks and Rec is like sport and socials. And so the social component is huge. And this, like I said, seems to have a lot of potential. So do you facilitate the social component even more so than just the mixing and matching in terms of how you intro people or events that you have or anything else? Or does it sort of just because of the model naturally happen?
Shawn Smith (16:38.767)
Yeah, we definitely spend a lot of time emphasizing that side. I mean, we actually have rules that are focused on inclusion, on making sure that everybody's welcome, but just the natural idea of putting 11 or 12 players onto a team that don't know each other, organically, they're going to have to figure it out. And so our leagues end up being really great for that particularly shy player, that one that
You know, if they walk into a bar, they're never going to have like the self confidence to walk up and buy somebody a beer. mean, making friends is awkward these days, right? This isn't just a way to kind of force yourself into one of those pools and know that I'm not going to be the awkward 12th wheel. We're all a team of 12 wheels that gets to know each other over the course of the season.
Lance (17:13.527)
early.
Lance (17:28.17)
Yeah, that makes sense. And then do y'all do any sort of social events, parties, or any of that kind of stuff?
Shawn Smith (17:32.713)
Yeah, occasionally we actually want to do more of that kind of stuff. We spend most of our time on the fields and our favorite scenario is to find a private complex that will have like an alcohol license and then we intentionally schedule double headers with an hour break in between them. So a lot of our socialization actually just happens there on the fields. So you'll play a game.
Lance (17:58.028)
Alright.
Shawn Smith (17:59.566)
He got an hour to sit around, wait for your next game, bond with your teammates, and then you go play your second game.
Lance (18:04.994)
Yeah, that makes sense. know a lot of places have success as well when they partner with like a bar that might be somewhat close and they can, you the bar is great that you can pack them out and they'll, I think typically pay decent money for that. And it seems like your league would, I would make a ton of sense as well. Cause you, when you go to that bar, you're not just hanging out with your team, you're hanging out with the whole league. Cause you've met and played with everybody. It seems like a real sort of advantage with that.
Shawn Smith (18:06.992)
So, I'll be able to stay here for all of the next days. I you guys get through the rest the a smile and a healthy and a happy new year.
Lance (18:31.849)
Interesting, so that's the league piece and then you mentioned tournaments. So how did the tournaments fit in?
Shawn Smith (18:39.524)
Well, it's directly the exact same thing in terms of their draft style. And what's unique about our tournaments is, you know, they're almost like destination vacation weekends. Because for example, New Orleans is our flagship tournament and everybody's flying down and they meet their teammates for the first time when they get on the field. So you're going to New Orleans with a different mentality than if you had, you know, your teammates that you're going down and you're like, hey, we're going down to, win this championship.
But whenever you go to a draft tournament, it's more like, hey, I'm going to go have a vacation in the city. I'm going to play softball there. So the same sort of stuff happens where you got these, you know, these teams with some really skilled players and brand new novices. But they're all there with the understanding that this is not the World Series. This is just a fun weekend and everybody is trying to win. Like competition level is actually good, but.
It never gets to that intensity level that a lot of leagues and tournaments have to deal with on the security side of things.
Lance (19:43.958)
Man, that's interesting. So is it the exact same grab system where you might have some data and some ratings on a person or you might not, they might be new and you're going to have the same sort of distribution of some people overrated, some people underrated, all of it's the same?
Shawn Smith (19:56.917)
Okay, that's the same system.
Lance (20:02.786)
Wow, cool. So then, yeah, I'm curious then about like the, well, one is pricing. Is the pricing, how do you think about pricing in this?
Shawn Smith (20:14.566)
Well, one thing that's unique about our pricing is a lot of lead and permit organized into a per team price and we're all individual base. So our pricing model ends up being roughly equivalent to the higher tier levels of team pricing.
Typically, you know, our leagues, for example, an eight-week season is usually around $95 per player for two nights, two games per week. So 16 games, 95 bucks. Tournaments are a little different. We have a lower tier where it is just to play. It might cost you roughly $40 to $50. But then we create these packages that include merchandise, apparel, uniforms, hats, t-shirts, the whole nine yards.
And so some of our top packages for these tournaments are $350. But for $350, you get a brand new bat. So you end up playing that game of, you know, what kind of experience are you going for? If you've got a bat bag that's already full, you can play for 39 bucks. you don't have any equipment at all, well, effectively you get a starter kit and that price might be around $300.
Lance (21:25.506)
Interesting, And then are you doing, in terms of gear and stuff, are you doing playoffs as well for all your leagues? And then is there rewards at the end of playoffs?
Shawn Smith (21:35.594)
Yeah, we for all of our league we do a first week preseason So it's it's played as normal. We do have umpire fade to be on the field But of course the result of the comp course the regular season standings That way, know, you got that that carefree week to figure out where everybody goes And then the last week of season So technically the eighth week of the season is our playoffs
And that's when it's just a single elimination bracket with the number of teams we've got.
Lance (22:04.482)
Cool. And so, yeah, how do you think then about staffing? I think you mentioned you're in eight states at this point. I have some experience with trying to expand the different cities. Are you guys flying out there? Do you have a local person that's sort of in charge of everything? Do you just hire somebody sort of part time as a commissioner? How do you find umpires, refs, all that kind of stuff?
Shawn Smith (22:31.219)
Yeah, we just basically find a local commissioner and we make sure that they have our culture and our, you know, a real understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. And then we will go and we'll work with a local attorney director, parks facility, whatever the case may be, and build around that person. So, you know, I like to say that that person is kind of like a
a sports Uber driver for us, right? They're the 1099 contractor. They're basically participating in a profit share program with us. So they are our boots on the ground. And when we only have one or two or three league nights a week, we really don't need a full staff in each territories. So that one person working with the existing local infrastructure is able to ultimately run all of our operations down there.
Lance (23:25.004)
I know I've had a variety of experiences myself and I know other people have as well. So have you had some really good ones and some really bad ones and have you had any lessons learned over the last eight years or however long you've been doing it?
Shawn Smith (23:25.98)
Certainly there's always going to be a spectrum there, know, knock on wood, we've never had like a disaster scenario. But usually when, you know, when you find that person based on the culture fit first,
that really helps make sure that you're going to find success. You know, for us, it's not like we're going out and doing a job posting and taking a bunch of applicants and reviewing them. Most of these people are people that showed up at our tournaments and they say, hey, I absolutely love what you guys are doing. I wish I had this here. And then we say, build it. And that's how the conversation starts. you know, the people that we pick up.
aren't necessarily both looking for a full-time job. There are people passionate about it. There are people that love it and they want to do it on the side. And, you know, that helps drive a lot of good success for us.
Lance (24:37.216)
Interesting, yeah. So how do you do the, you said you're doing a profit share with them, so is that something where you say they get a certain sort of percent of revenue or how does that work and is it, I've seen a lot of rates for a lot of things go pretty far up recently, inflation and everything else, so what does the hourly rate end up sort of being for these?
Shawn Smith (24:54.062)
So, that's the end of the video.
Lance (25:04.576)
these commissioners or is it just a little bit unknown because they're doing a little bit of work here, a little bit work there kind of throughout the week or what does that look like?
Shawn Smith (25:14.573)
So we set them up with basically weekly stipend and that's kind of the, this is what you get for being out there on the fields. And then they end up getting a profit share after expenses are taken into account. And so we'd have an entire commissioner debt board system. And so they see all the revenue that's flowed in. We put all of our expenses on there. Here's, know, thousand dollars from buyers, thousand dollars to field rentals.
And then once all that put in, then they see the profit number and then they get their percentage based on that. So, you know, the hourly rates really fluctuates highly based on the number of teams in Myrtle Beach and Pensacola, where we've got, you know, I think getting close to 30 teams in each, you know, those commissioners are going to be taking home a few thousand dollars for each season.
in our smaller markets where we're just getting started with only four teams, well, they might only get that initial weekly commissioner check until we grow it. So there's a wide range of outcomes, particularly because each market is so different. I think you kind of alluded to it. Sometimes we pay thousands of dollars for fields and sometimes we pay pennies on the dollar. Every market is wildly different.
Lance (26:30.806)
Yeah, well that, because back then, was not my earlier, but now I'm really curious. You said 30 teams and you're not doing divisions. So these are 30 teams in one league. How does that work in terms of who plays who? And at the end, like how many teams make playoffs and how that works?
Shawn Smith (26:51.184)
But actually in that case, that would actually be not divisions, but different nights. So they don't play each other on the same. Yeah, they've got huge fields in Myrtle. those are two 12 team leagues and a tickball league that we just started up. That's where us working with the local and regional directors come in is that, you know, we.
Lance (26:56.546)
well, it seems across different lines.
Lance (27:06.517)
OK, OK. Got it. And then what about officials? How do you find them in these different locations?
Shawn Smith (27:20.9)
to ask who are the local umpires and they're always willing to pick up extra game. So we've never really had too many challenges with finding umpires, but as part of our model, because we put such a big emphasis on the fun, know, occasionally we'll get a situation where an umpire family emergency isn't there, has to take a couple of weeks off, can't find a replacement. We'll just have our commissioner go in and umpire and you know,
You get an occasional grumble about, you know, the quality of umpiring and things like that. But at the end of the day, everybody recognizes, again, this is the fun league. Is it really worth fighting about this particular issue? It actually happened the other night where an umpire didn't call an infield fly. Our pitcher said, hey, shouldn't that have been an infield fly? And the umpire said, you're right. That was my bad. Play on. Not a single grumble or complaint from the field. Everybody was just like,
Hey, look, at least he owned up to it.
Lance (28:22.112)
Yeah, So then technology. So you're developer, you've got this cool draft system. But I see across a lot of these different organizers, people are often cobbling together a bunch of different tools. So have you built everything? Or is it a lot of the drafting type system? Like what do you use for staffing, for instance, across all these? Are you just using an assigner so it's completely external? Or for registration, have you
Shawn Smith (28:23.408)
I'm to be the problem of ESP. It's a problem that I've for But I'm going be talking the problem ESP. It's going ESP. It's a problem But I'm going problem ESP. It's problem But going to talking about problem ESP. ESP. It's a for problem ESP. about years. But I'm going ESP.
Lance (28:51.786)
like integrated with another tool? Like what is your sort of suite of technology look like?
Shawn Smith (28:57.671)
Yeah, it's all made basically a pretty much one system with hands full of external third party integrations. You know, we use Stripe and PayPal for payment processing, but it handles all the registration that we require. And then we focused really the meat and potato around the draft piece itself, the stat rankings, the
the, backend analytics, being, you know, the data models associated with that. So, we, as far as, you know, staffing, hiring, scheduling, we don't have any of those tools yet. I think eventually we're going to grow to where we do need them. But with it being this approach of we only do one or two leagues per market, we never get to a situation where there's a very complex scheduling issue. You know, it's
When are we playing in Myrtle Beach? Well, we've only got two or three nights. It's pretty easy to handle two or three nights where you start getting complexed when you're handling an entire complex and all the collisions that happen on those schedules.
Lance (30:03.52)
Yeah. What about like, sorry, so our referees then just like very manual in terms of you have a list and you've released a schedule. Okay, got it. And then what about stat tracking? That seems like it would fit super well with what you're doing is if you could do advanced stats, then you've got a lot more sort of meat on the bone for the draft system, not just the peer review.
Shawn Smith (30:20.746)
So we've actually gone back and forth. I eventually we'll introduce some level of stats, but we want to be careful about that because I think stat tracking actually introduces the type of player that we don't really want heavily in our player pool. Because at the point that you're just
Lance (30:40.897)
Mmm.
Shawn Smith (30:45.552)
chasing your own stats, you're not really there for the socialization. So if we integrate stats, we'll do it in a way where it's so that you can see yourself getting better, not so that you can go out and try to hit extra home runs while your team's already up by 20 so that you can add your season stats.
Lance (31:06.87)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so, I'm not sure I have any more questions I have, but definitely one I'm curious about is what in your mind is like the greatest challenge to growing, I guess, twice as fast as you're growing right now? Like what's sort of the bottleneck or what are you thinking about at a high level for your company of like unlocking some serious growth?
Shawn Smith (31:08.424)
I bottleneck is really always just yield availability.
Shawn Smith (31:38.944)
finding that field that isn't already fully booked or you know in the flow pitch world we find more and more of our fields are really being taken over by the youth game. So sometimes there's a perfectly awesome complex but they're fully booked with kids soccer and baseball and t-ball and so we've actually got a situation where we have to find a new home in one of our territories because next year they gave the contract to a local little league.
Lance (31:48.546)
Mmm.
Shawn Smith (32:06.83)
So, you know, they loved our program, but particularly whenever you're working with, you know, public park, that's the kind of thing that can happen. It really doesn't matter if you've got an existing relationship, if the politics of giving a little lead to fields looks a lot better.
Lance (32:22.784)
Yeah, yeah. Well, what about private facilities? Are you having good luck with them? Is that something you feel like you can lean more into in the future? Because like you said, what you said about how it dovetails nicely with existing programming makes a lot of sense.
Shawn Smith (32:34.549)
Okay, we do love working with private facilities. That is generally our preferred model. But we do like working with private facilities that need us, you know, because the rents can get jacked up pretty quick on those private facilities. And we want to make sure that, you know, we're in a situation where we can be profitable with our model. And so we won't
pay an exorbitant fee just to be in a market. It's really got to feel like a fit and it's got to feel like they want us there because we're also going to lean on them to help us with things like finding the umpires and figuring out who the locals are that would be good coaches and figuring out who the locals are that have been banned from other facilities that we don't want to sneak into our lease. So building a relationship with facility director, whether public or private, is a big part of our process.
Lance (33:30.132)
Yeah, actually this brings up another, let's say once you find a facility, what is the launch plan or the playbook to get the leak filled out? Is it just a bunch of sort of online ads or it sounds like there's some local component, like you're working with the facility and people they know, like what does that look like and have you had some things work well and some things not work well, then like any kind of lessons learned there?
Shawn Smith (33:54.832)
Yeah, we, we deploy, you know, what we kind of say is like a 50-50 model where
We know that first of all, we need to feel sure that we're going to get at least four teams. We will enter a market knowing that four teams is not really profitable, but it's a good loss leader just to get your foot in the door. And so we go in, we know we need four teams. 50 % of our players are going to come through Facebook advertising. We have really strong Facebook advertising metrics.
It gives us a lot of brand new players who have not played in a long time. And so we'll get about 50 % registrations and nearly all of them will be the type of player that does not play regularly. The other 50%, we need to convince the locals that are already in their systems to give up a shot. And so that starts with identifying coaches first and saying, hey guys, we want you to be the coaches. You're going to draft these teams. It's going to be a ton of fun.
I need you to help us twist the arms of these guys, give them the signups, guys and gals. Everything we do is coed. And once you have those two things combined, people see a successful season, they then believe it works. And then the registration balloon from there. It's pretty rare that we don't grow season to season. But it's pretty common for us to start with a pretty weak launch with maybe only four teams.
Lance (35:16.289)
Hmm.
Shawn Smith (35:26.832)
because people look at us kind of side-eyed. Like, this sounds weird. We don't know who these late Joe guys are. Is this actually going to work? And so we've got to kind of prove it to the locals and then it's become self-sustaining. Yeah, it's saying.
Lance (35:34.764)
Yeah.
Lance (35:42.794)
Yeah. So is it pretty word of mouth once those four teams are in, you're really not having to do any other things, it just starts to grow pretty naturally?
Shawn Smith (35:54.5)
You know, we usually average probably $500 for a new league, new market launch and Facebook ads. And then each season that just kind of ticks down and down and down. I think we, I don't think we even run ads in Myrtle Beach or Pensacola anymore.
Lance (36:06.018)
you taper it.
Lance (36:12.748)
Got it, yeah. And so the plan is just keep kind of doing this state by state approach, find good markets, run the playbook and like you anticipate some pretty good growth, I guess in the next year. What are you sort of hoping for?
Shawn Smith (36:14.545)
Yeah, we're about to enter into, you know, very much the slow season. A lot of markets won't have any ball from November through probably February. And so we're lining up interview, lining up hearts. And by the time spring starts,
We're currently in eight states, probably 12 markets total. I'd like to double that for the spring and then see if we can double that again in the summer.
Lance (36:53.57)
Wow, awesome. So you're in a period of intense growth then where it feels like things have kind of locked into place and you've got something that works. Awesome. Okay, sweet. I think that's all my questions. Do you have anything else you wanna chat about or bring up?
Shawn Smith (36:54.698)
All six of them are on the list of the players that would recommend to become the first to play in the league.
Shawn Smith (37:23.248)
tournament organizer. I think it's common to think that they do make, especially after they grow to certain points. Usually you're pretty good in the first few days, but once you grow to a certain point, the free agents become the redheaded stepchildren and people don't know what to do with them. They just kind of match them onto a team and hope it works out. And they kind of go onto autopilot mode where they're just kind of running with teams that they know. And
To me, that is a lost opportunity, not just to grow your own brand, but to actually grow the sports themselves. Because the number of people that I've talked to where it's like, I never thought I'd play this again because I had such a bad experience is, I mean, that's at the half of my player base. the people that are the operations that they're coming from are good organizations.
Here locally in Indianapolis is a tremendous organization. You may know about CCA. They do a phenomenal job. They do great leagues, great teams. They have some of the best kickball and fly football competition, but they struggle with the free agent problem. So, you know, we hope to present ourselves as a way for kind of to create a way for that free agent problem to ultimately resolve itself and grow the sport.
because we're getting people off the couch for the first time in years. And I think that's what it should be about is trying to make sure that our sports ultimately survive. But right now, the nutrition is much higher than it should be. And we've got to go the other direction.
Lance (39:01.494)
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. That makes a lot of sense. Sounds like you're doing some really cool stuff. yeah, I appreciate you taking some time out to share a bit of your insights. And I mean, stick around for a quick sec after the podcast, but I think we can wrap it up. Thanks, Sean. Yeah, appreciate it.
Shawn Smith (39:15.717)
Really appreciate it, Lance.
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