A flat per-transaction fee, a pooled account, and a platform that holds the money. Here is the published picture, and what an ownership-first alternative changes.
Sports Connect, still widely known by its Blue Sombrero name, is everywhere in rec baseball and softball. It is entrenched for a reason: it is free-feeling to a league that never looks closely at the per-transaction line, and it has been the default in a lot of towns for a decade.
This page is for the board that has started looking closely. The numbers below are the published ones, with sources. We are not making a cost argument, because a cost argument would depend on your volume and your fee bearer. We are making an ownership argument.
Per its published pricing, Sports Connect charges a monthly software fee plus a flat $3 per transaction, on top of the card processing cost your league bears separately.
A flat per-transaction fee behaves very differently from a percentage depending on your registration price, and it behaves worse the more transactions a family generates. Split a registration into installments and each installment is a transaction. Charge a uniform fee separately and that is another transaction. Add a tournament fee and that is another.
That is the model worth running before you renew: not "what is the rate", but "how many separate charges will a family with two players generate this season, and what does the flat fee do across all of them".
Clubside charges $3.50 per registration, paid by the family as its own labeled line at checkout, capped at $7 per family per season. The third sibling on is free. Installments do not repeat it. That cap exists specifically because multi-player families are the ones a per-transaction model punishes.
Sports Connect, like most platforms in this category, collects registration payments and disburses to the league. The platform is the merchant of record. Your league receives a payout on the platform’s schedule.
It works. Plenty of leagues run on it happily for years. But it means the payment relationship, the payout timing, the chargeback handling, and the historical record all belong to the platform rather than to the league. When a board wants to change vendors, it discovers how much of its financial history is not portable.
On Clubside, your organization connects its own Stripe account and is the merchant of record. Money lands in your bank on Stripe’s schedule. If you leave, the Stripe account, the payment history inside it, and your exported club data are all still yours.
Rec leagues can usually live with one pooled account. Travel programs cannot, and a lot of organizations are both at once.
Across the ten platforms benchmarked in July 2026, none offered per-team payout routing. Clubside routes each payment to the paying player’s team account at the moment of the charge, so a 12U team’s registration money is in the 12U team’s account without anyone moving it.
Head coaches see their own team’s money and can invoice against it. Assistants and trainers cannot. The board sees everything. That role split exists because it is how clubs actually run, not because it was easy to build.
A 2026 study of 337 youth sports clubs found dues collected online came in at 98.2%, while dues collected offline, meaning checks, cash, and payment apps, came in at 83.6%.
Run that against a real budget. The gap between those two numbers is almost always larger than the entire difference between any two platforms’ fee schedules. If your league is still taking a meaningful share of dues by check or by payment app, the fee comparison is the smaller conversation.
This cuts against us as often as for us. If your current platform is collecting everything online and your board is happy, the case for switching is weak, and I would rather tell you that than sell you.
In May 2026, Stack Sports, which owns Sports Connect and Blue Sombrero, came under the same private-equity ownership as PlayMetrics and SportsEngine. That is public and reported.
It is not a reason to switch on its own. It is a reason to know who you are actually buying from, and to ask what happens to your fee schedule when three former competitors share a pricing committee.
Their column reflects their own published figures. Ours reflects what is on our pricing page. We are not the cheapest option in this category, and we do not claim to be.
| Sports Connect | Clubside | |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | A monthly fee, per its published pricing | Free Starter, $49 per month for Club, $99 per month for Pro, all listed publicly |
| Take on payments | A flat $3 per transaction, plus the club’s own card processing cost | $3.50 per registration paid by the family, capped at $7 per family per season, plus a platform percentage by plan |
| Multi-player families | The flat fee applies per transaction | Capped at $7 per family per season. The third sibling on is free |
| Payment plans | Each installment is its own transaction | Same cost as paying in full. Fees are never repeated per installment |
| Merchant of record | The platform, which disburses to the league | Your organization, on its own Stripe account |
| Per-team payout routing | No, one pooled organization account | Yes, per payment, to each team’s own connected account |
| Leaving | Payment history lives in the platform’s account | Your Stripe account and your exported data go with you |
| Ownership | Part of a single private-equity-owned group since May 2026 | Independent, founder-run, and answering its own email |
Sources: Sports Connect figures come from Sports Connect and Stack Sports published pricing pages, verified July 2026. Collection-rate figures are from a 2026 study of 337 youth sports clubs. Clubside’s figures are the ones published on clubside.io/pricing. Consolidation reporting refers to the May 2026 combination of PlayMetrics, Stack Sports, and SportsEngine under one private-equity owner.
Your organization connects its own Stripe account and stays the merchant of record. Registration money lands in your bank, and the account stays yours if you leave.
Each payment lands in the paying player’s team account at the moment of the charge. Head coaches see their team’s balance. Nobody reconciles a pooled account by hand.
$3.50 per registration paid by the family and capped at $7 per family per season, a platform percentage by plan, and Stripe’s published rate paid straight to Stripe.
What we are not: a scorekeeping or streaming app, a website builder, or a governing-body compliance suite. If that is what you need, buy that instead. Clubside is registration, documents, invoicing, and payment plans on an account your club owns.
Per its published pricing, Sports Connect charges a monthly software fee plus a flat $3 per transaction, with card processing borne separately by the club. Because the fee is per transaction rather than per registration, installments and separate fees each carry it again.
Yes. Blue Sombrero was rebranded to Sports Connect under Stack Sports. Many leagues still refer to it by the original name, and a lot of league websites still run on it.
It does, though the per-team routing that makes Clubside distinctive matters most to multi-team travel programs. A single-account rec league gets registration, documents, invoicing, and payment plans on its own Stripe account. The free Starter plan covers 3 teams and 75 players with no credit card.
Rosters come over as a file, and registration setup takes about a week of calendar time. Historical payment records stay in the old platform, which is one more reason to switch between seasons rather than during one. Send me your team list and last season’s form and I will build the registration for you.
The demo is a real club with real data and no login. Or start free and I will help you set up your registration myself.