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WHAT RECRUITING ACTUALLY COSTS.
Almost every company in this business quotes its price on a phone call. Camps publish a registration fee and not the travel. Club programs bury the real number in a season packet. This page puts all of it in one place, including ours, because a family cannot make a good decision on numbers nobody will say out loud.
What recruiting actually costs, in your sport.
Every sport runs on different money. The typical annual figure assumes a competitive travel or club schedule; the top line under each sport shows where the elite version lands. Where a line says the recruiting is cheap, believe it before believing a salesperson.
The showcase circuit is the money pit: verified velo and exit numbers from one good event beat five mediocre ones. A 12U Cooperstown week (~$1,900 + travel) is a memory, not a recruiting event.
Recruiting runs through the big summer showcase orgs, and coaches watch specific fields at specific hours — an emailed schedule with your athlete’s position and jersey number is worth more than another tournament entry.
Football recruiting runs through the high school, not clubs — the money goes to camps at schools that are actually recruiting your athlete. Paying for a generic exposure combine is the classic football waste.
The NCAA live periods in April and July are when college coaches can watch AAU — a team that plays those events at your athlete’s level matters more than a famous program name. Shoe-circuit teams are largely sponsored; if you’re paying big dues, you’re probably not on one.
League placement is the recruiting variable — coaches scout the national-league showcases. A cheaper club in the right league beats an expensive club outside it, and girls’ recruiting in this sport starts on the June 15 clock.
Average club fees are the highest of any major youth sport, and stay-to-play hotel blocks at qualifiers are mandatory. The regional-vs-national team decision is a $3,000 swing — make it on honest level, not club pressure.
No club team to split costs with — every tournament is your travel bill. The scoring average does the recruiting: a documented tournament record on the junior tours is the film. Rankings points decide which events matter; plan the season backward from them.
The mark is the recruiting: a verified time or distance on MileSplit/Athletic.net does what $5,000 of showcases does in other sports. Anyone selling a track athlete an exposure package is selling something the results database already does free.
Travel baseball averages well over $2,000 a year for all participants — national-schedule programs multiply it several times over. Lacrosse, gymnastics, field hockey, and volleyball follow close behind, driven by equipment, facility time, and travel.
Track and cross country average a few hundred dollars a year, basketball under $500 at the school-and-rec level. The recruiting fundamentals — film, outreach, verified times — cost nearly nothing in these sports, which is worth remembering when someone sells you a package.
Youth sports costs are up 46% since 2019 — roughly double general inflation — driven by the shift from school and rec leagues to year-round private clubs. A quarter of travel-sport parents report pulling from savings or emergency funds to keep up.
Ranges compiled from published 2025–26 club fee schedules, tournament pricing, and national surveys (Aspen Institute Project Play, Utah State Families in Sports Lab). Verify against your own sport and region — and if a program will not give you a written all-in total before you commit, that is information too.
Why the industry will not publish a price.
A published price can be compared. A price quoted at your kitchen table can be matched to how badly you want it, and to what the salesperson thinks you will pay. That is the entire reason for the phone call.
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Here is exactly what we charge and what it buys.
We are not the cheapest thing on this page and we are not trying to be. We are the only one publishing the number.
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A year of the full SYSTEM costs less than one club season, less than three college camps, and less than a quarter of what a one-time recruiting package runs. That is not a sales argument — it is arithmetic you can check against the table above. Whether it is worth it depends entirely on whether it changes a decision, which is why the scorecard and both calculators are free to run before you pay anything.
Nine questions that settle it in one conversation.
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A credible answer names specifics: film, verified measurables, academics, and the benchmarks for each division. The right level is the one where your athlete competes, develops, and graduates — and a service worth paying for can explain exactly how it finds that level.
The True Cost Calculator is free — no login, no card. The Camp & Showcase ROI tool comes with membership, and either one can save you more in a single decision than a year of membership costs.