NCSI Joins LeagueApps With a Shared Commitment to Safety in Youth Sports

Today, LeagueApps announced the acquisition of the National Center for Safety Initiatives (NCSI), the leading provider of in-depth background checks and comprehensive safety services for youth sports organizations in the United States. NCSI is the only screening provider named in USOPC policy and serves more than 90% of National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and thousands of organizations nationwide that form the backbone of youth sports in this country. You can read our press release here.

The reality is that youth sports are not safe enough.

The problem is not motivation. Every operator we talk to cares about safety. They want background checks done right, they want their coaches cleared, they want families to trust them. What they need is for safety and compliance to be accessible, convenient, and built into the way they already work. The problem is that it hasn’t been.

A coach can be cleared in one system and missed by another. Compliance requirements vary by state and by context. Background check vendors, badging systems, and SafeSport requirements live in separate places, managed separately, with no common thread connecting them. Youth sports organizations navigating all of this face both administrative burdens and uncertainty.

Our customers and partners care deeply about safety, and the LeagueApps and NCSI teams will work collaboratively to develop updated safety and compliance solutions, leveraging software innovations and data to make it more convenient for everyone to keep their sports community safe.

NCSI has built the most trusted name in background screening and safety compliance for the governing bodies that set the standards for youth sports in this country. Together, we see an opportunity to deepen that work and extend it to the operators delivering sports experiences on the ground.

Safety is not a feature. It is not an optional add-on. The physical development, the life lessons, the competition; none of it matters if young people are not safe.

We Share a Mission. We Share a Commitment

Our mission is to deliver amazing sports experiences for all, and we believe that safety is a prerequisite to realizing any of the benefits of sports. With the acquisition of NCSI we can make it easier to make youth sports safer, for everyone.

We can only realize our mission in partnership with the organizations that actually make sports happen every day. It is why we’ve oriented everything we do around serving our customers and the organizations they lead. NCSI shared this commitment.

NCSI are the only background screening provider written into official USOPC policy, and they serve over 90% of national governing bodies, the institutions that set the safety standards for organized sport in this country. The level of trust they have earned is the product of doing the work carefully, at scale, over many years, in a domain where there is no margin for error.

But credentials alone are not what gave us conviction.

It is the people and the mission behind them, and a culture that is centered on the belief that youth sports should be safe, and background screenings and safety services have a critical role to play. It is their commitment to serve those who make youth sports happen, in particular the governing bodies that carry the responsibility of bringing standards and order to a fragmented ecosystem. And finally, it is their belief that there is more to do – through innovation, partnership, and advocacy – and their determination to do it.

Safety in youth sports will require not only making things easier for every operator, but also working with governing bodies and other stakeholders to strengthen the standards and systems that define what protection actually means across the whole ecosystem. This acquisition is a step towards achieving that.

What’s Ahead

NCSI will continue to operate with its own leadership, customer relationships, and operational continuity fully intact. Everything organizations currently rely on continues as it is. What changes is the partnership behind it, as we bring new resources and expertise to accelerate what NCSI has already built.
The structural gaps in youth sports safety are real and deep, and they will require sustained effort from operators, governing bodies, technology partners, and policymakers working together. With this acquisition, we are investing in the future of athlete safety.

NCSI is the piece of the infrastructure that begins to connect the places where kids play to the systems designed to protect them. That is a responsibility we do not take lightly.

We appreciate what the NCSI team has built. We are energized about what  we can build together: for the operators who make youth sports possible, for the families who trust them, and for the kids who deserve, above all else, to be safe.

Play forever,

Brian, Jeremy and Team LeagueApps