Compliance and the Trust Argument. Here's What That Sounded Like in Philadelphia.
[Seth Lieberman, CEO, Ankored recapping "Preparedness and Protection" panel from Buying Sandlot Summit April, 2026]
On stage at the Buying Sandlot Summit in Philadelphia, five of us argued that compliance in youth sports is no longer optional. We run different companies. We sell different things. We agreed on a lot.
Here's what I took away.
Parents have already decided. The market is catching up.
This came up in nearly every answer. Parents are not asking whether their kid will be safe at your program. They assume it. When an organization can't show them how, they pick the program down the street that can.
Tye Burks (Players Health) put numbers on it. Claims are up. Carriers are leaving the youth sports market — from around 30 down to a handful in the last decade. Premiums are climbing 20–30% even for organizations that haven't had a claim. The risk is now shared across the whole population. So is the cost.
Kate Quattlebaum (SportsEngine + NCSI) framed the same shift from the families' side. Five years ago, you could ask an organization, "Would you like to background screen your coaches? Would you like to do training?" — and it was a yes-or-no add-on. That conversation is over. Parents won't accept "we know everybody in our community" as an answer anymore.
I made the same point from the parent's chair. I have four teenagers. We are not putting them anywhere we don't think they're safe — no matter how good the coach is, no matter what college opportunity gets dangled in front of us. Every parent in this country is making that calculus. Most of them aren't saying it out loud.
"We knew Joey" doesn't cover you.
There was a line I keep coming back to. When something goes wrong and you tell your insurance company, "We were supposed to background check everyone, but we didn't do Joey because we knew Joey" — you're not covered.
That's the gap between informal trust and operational trust. Informal trust is what families used to give organizations because the league was small, the parents knew each other, and the coaches were neighbors. Operational trust is what families need now: every coach screened, every staff member trained, the emergency action plan rehearsed instead of filed.
Tyler Kreitz (Focus On The Field) brought up an example I won't forget. A youth event. The brother of a referee — uncredentialed, no reason to be on the sideline — sitting there during a heated game. A bad call. A coach rushed the field. The coach was shot and killed in front of his team. Every kid on that team has had their life changed.
Credentialing the people on the sideline isn't bureaucracy. It's the bare minimum.
Continuous improvement, not a checklist.
The thing I most wanted the room to hear: compliance is not one and done.
The organizations getting this right are not the ones who hit a milestone last year and called it done. They're the ones doing one more thing this quarter than they did last quarter. Better screens. More training. A tighter EAP. A walk-through of where the ambulance comes onto the property. A new physical security check. Something.
Ellis Mair (Go4) pointed to Spooky Nook Sports as an example — a venue with a GM who'd been there for years, knew the local police, and had actually rehearsed the plan with his staff. The plan on paper was fine. The plan in practice was the thing that mattered.
You don't have to be the most sophisticated program on day one. You have to be moving.
The flip side of the fear case is the carrot case.
Most of the conversation about compliance lives in the language of risk: lawsuits, premiums, regulation, headlines you don't want to be in. That language is real. It isn't going away.
But it's only half the picture.
The organizations investing seriously in safety are growing faster. They command premium market share. They charge more. They keep families longer. Their insurance premiums go down, not up. Families don't choose them despite the cost of the safety infrastructure — they choose them because of it.
That is the trust argument. Compliance isn't an expense line. It's the thing your program is selling.
Where the regulation is going.
Tye and I both spent time on this. California's AB 506 is already the model — mandated abuse awareness training, mandated reporters, background checks tied directly to whether an insurance carrier can bind a general liability policy. As California goes, the rest of the country tends to follow.
We are going to see more laws, not fewer. We are going to see more incidents until the laws catch up. The organizations that lean into safety early — really lean in, not just check a box — are going to win bigger and faster than they expect. The ones that don't will not be in business in five or ten years. I don't think that's hyperbole. I think it's where the math leads.
The North Star.
Brian Litvack (LeagueApps) at GAPS once said, when asked who the winners and losers in youth sports would be: "I hope the kids are gonna be the winners."
That stuck with me. It's the right question to ask before any decision about how you operate. Is this in the best interest of the kids and the athletes?
The good news — and this is the part the panel agreed on most — when you actually run an organization that way, the kids and the organization win together. They are not on opposite sides of the equation. Safe programs grow faster. Trusted programs charge more. Compliant programs pay less for insurance.
Compliance is the infrastructure of trust. Trust is what families are buying. That's the product.
Thanks to Buying Sandlot for the platform, and to Tyler Kreitz, Ellis Mair, Tye Burks, and Kate Quattlebaum for the conversation.