THE i9 SPORTS® STORY
Since 1995, Frank Fiume’s youth sports franchise has ignited sporting passion among families nationwide
Starting a Sports League
Before Frank Fiume started his first sports league, he was a medical sales representative who called on open-heart surgeons. It paid well, but “I had no passion for it.” So Frank, a baseball fanatic from Queens, New York, decided to start his own men’s softball league.
“Adult sports leagues had been run the same way for 30 years,” he says. Other leagues were often disorganized and marred by hypercompetitiveness. While many players wanted to compete, they also wanted to have fun and make friends – but fun often took a backseat. Frank’s league was a huge success. ABA Sports grew to more than 900 teams in just six years.
While still operating his booming business in New York, Frank Fiume and his wife moved to Tampa, Florida, in 1996. With a baby on the way, Frank wondered if his concept could apply to youth sports. At face value, the youth sports business opportunity appeared much larger than adult sports. Since the average U.S. household has two kids, if you get one child to play, you will likely get both. If you provide a great experience when the kids are young, you can count on renewals for years to come. And unlike adult players, kids play sports year-round and typically play multiple sports.
But could recreational youth sports succeed as a business? Frank learned from his adult leagues that it’s the overall player experience that set his programs apart. Disorganization, lack of communication, and inconvenience were cited as big problems. In researching youth sports, he found the same problems.
Fixing the Culture of Youth Sports
Unfortunately, the problems in youth sports ran deeper. Frank discovered a destructively competitive, highly political culture that was turning sports into a negative experience for kids. How can kids learn a sport if they are constantly told they are not good enough to play and are made to sit on the bench? Kids who didn’t have fun or get playing time, often dropped out of sports entirely. Instead of building kids up, sports were often tearing them down.
Frank set out to fix it. He settled on flag football as the first sports league to start because competition was limited, football had broad appeal, and flag football is safe for both boys and girls to play. Beginning in 1998, Frank’s foray into youth sports was wildly successful. In fact, it was so successful that he sold his adult softball business and teamed up with franchise-industry experts to launch a franchise dedicated to helping others start youth sports leagues of their own.
In 2003, i9 Sports was born, and the first i9 Sports franchise was sold. Little did Frank know at the time that his simple goal to put fun back into youth sports would revolutionize the industry.
From One League to a National Franchise
Frank Fiume didn’t set out to build a national franchise. He set out to build a better sports league. After seeing the response to his adult softball business, he recognized an opportunity to bring a similar approach to youth sports, where families were looking for a more positive, well-organized experience.
The success of his first youth league demonstrated that the concept could work. When i9 Sports began franchising, it allowed entrepreneurs to build local businesses around a new approach to organized youth sports. What started with one founder’s idea has grown into a franchise network serving communities across the country.
With over 5 million player registrations, i9 Sports is now the nation’s largest multi-sport provider focused solely on high-quality, community-based youth sports programs. Like Frank, individuals who want to make a living doing what they love while making a positive impact can experience the excitement of owning a sports-related business through i9 Sports.
An Opportunity to Make a Difference Through Business Ownership
For Frank, the opportunity was about more than organizing games. It was about changing what participation in sports could mean for a child. That founding perspective continues to shape the kind of business i9 Sports franchise owners build in their communities.
Owning an i9 Sports franchise offers entrepreneurs a way to combine business ownership with something families value: opportunities for children to learn, participate, and develop through sports. Franchise owners bring the i9 Sports experience to local families while building relationships with parents, players, and the communities they serve.
The Next Chapter of the
i9 Sports Story
Every i9 Sports franchise adds a new chapter to the story Frank started. Across communities nationwide, franchise owners have the opportunity to introduce families to a different kind of youth sports experience while building a business of their own.
If you’re looking for a business opportunity that connects entrepreneurship with a meaningful role in your community, your story could be the next one.
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