Sports Connect is shutting down: what your league should do before 2027

Stack Sports is retiring Sports Connect, the platform most people still call Blue Sombrero, in 2027. Little League, AYSO and other national bodies are moving their regions to PlayMetrics. If your league runs on Sports Connect, you'll be moving somewhere in the next year whether you choose to or not. The question is where, and what happens to ten years of family records when you go.

What's actually happening

In June 2025, Stack Sports (the owner of Sports Connect, backed by the private-equity firm Genstar Capital) merged with PlayMetrics, with Genstar as majority owner of the combined company. With two registration platforms under one roof, the older one is being retired: AYSO's notice to its regions says Sports Connect will be sunset in 2027 and customers moved to PlayMetrics.

Sports Connect has been "free" software paid for by a $3 fee on every checkout, charged to the family, cash and check orders included. That model is ending with the platform. AYSO and several state soccer associations have published their migration plans: regions link their Sports Connect site to PlayMetrics now, and registration moves over. Little League has not published a public migration guide as of October 2026.

For a league that's part of one of those bodies, the path is set for you. For an independent league, parish program or school athletic department that chose Blue Sombrero years ago because it was free, you have a choice to make, and a deadline.

Export your data now, not later

Whatever you choose, do this first. Sports Connect's reports can export to CSV or Excel, and the one that matters is Reports → Standard Reports → Enrollment Details. Two things to know:

1. Tick every column. The report only includes the columns you choose. Use "Add Column" and add everything: Players, Users/Account, Orders, Order Details, Additional Player Info, and Custom Questions for each program.
2. Remove the "Division End Date is after Today" condition. By default the report only covers current programs. Remove that condition (and un-archive old programs) and one export covers every season you've run.

Do the same with the Line Item Order report for payment history, and the User Details report for every household. Keep the files somewhere safe. Once the platform is gone, so is the login.

Your options

Option	Cost to the club / yr	Cost to families / yr	What to know
PlayMetrics (the default path)	not published	not published	Built for competitive soccer clubs first. If your national body is moving you there, the migration is organised for you.
Jersey Watch	$348 (under 200 athletes)	~$1,660 if the 3.5% + $1 fee is passed on	Published pricing, flat fee, volunteer-friendly; the per-transaction fee is the catch.
TeamSnap	from ~$599	~$1,800	Parents may already have the app; processing fee passed to parents by default.
Spond / TeamLinkt (free)	$0	$1,600 in fees, or ads	Free to the club means the family pays, or watches ads.
mysports.io	$99.99	$0	Flat fee. Card payments go into your own Stripe account at Stripe's plain rate. No per-child fee, no ads.

Those figures are for a typical 150-family league doing about 400 registrations a year at $90; the full comparison shows the working.

What a league loses in a move, and how not to

The thing leagues fear isn't the software, it's the data: families who've registered for six years, siblings linked to the same parents, who paid what. Most platforms make you start from an empty database and ask every family to re-register from scratch. That's where you lose people.

Our importer reads the Enrollment Details export by its column headers, so it doesn't matter which columns you ticked or in what order. Families become accounts (one per email address), players become children linked to their parents, programs become seasons, and each order becomes a registration with its payment status. Custom question answers come along too. Families get a sign-in link to set a password; nobody re-types a thing.

What you keep by choosing a flat fee

Sports Connect's $3 per checkout, across 300 checkouts a year, was $900 out of your families' pockets. The platforms most leagues move to keep a version of that model. A flat $99.99 a year means the club can tell parents, truthfully, that the registration fee is the registration fee.