Will Bartholomew's NFL career ended with a knee injury. What he built next now serves more kids than most school districts.
D1 Training, the Nashville-based athletic training franchise he founded, has hired investment bank Harris Williams to explore a sale. The asking price hasn't been disclosed. But the profile of what's on the table tells you everything about where youth sports is headed.
What D1 Training Actually Looks Like
D1 operates 170+ strength and conditioning locations across the U.S., with another 200+ sites in various stages of franchise development. The company plans to open its 200th location in 2026.
The model targets three audiences: youth athletes, adults, and professionals. But the financial engine is youth. Over 100,000 scholastic athletes ages 7 to 18 train at D1 every year. These are kids in organized school sports whose parents are paying for specialized training. That's recurring, season-driven demand that looks very different from a typical gym membership. Kids train in seasons. Seasons repeat. Parents keep paying.
And the brand carries serious weight. Tim Tebow, Chris Paul, and Peyton Manning are all brand ambassadors. All three are also reportedly franchisees. These aren't paid spokespeople collecting a check. They're operators with equity at stake. That's a credibility signal most brands can't manufacture.
Who's Selling and Why Now
Princeton Equity Partners invested in D1 in November 2021. The firm specializes in franchisor and multi-location businesses — its portfolio includes Barry's and Stretch Zone, and past exits include Massage Envy and Sola Salons. In 2023, Princeton raised $575 million for its second fund, a 63% jump from the $352 million it raised in 2021.
The timing lines up with a typical PE hold period of four to six years. This is a planned exit, not a distress signal. Harris Williams, the bank running the process, specializes in advising PE firms on exactly these kinds of transactions. Everything about this sale says institutional and intentional.
Three Youth Sports Companies on the Block at Once
Here's where it gets bigger than D1.
In January, 3Step Sports (the largest operator of youth sports clubs in the U.S.) hired Goldman Sachs to explore a sale. Around the same time, GTCR moved to acquire LiveBarn, the youth sports streaming service, in a deal valued at roughly $400 million. D1 makes three.
Three companies. Three different parts of the youth sports ecosystem. All heading to market at the same time. That's not coincidence. That's a sector reaching a tipping point. Early investors are looking to monetize, larger buyers are looking for platforms, and the capital markets are signaling that youth sports is a real, investable category. When PE firms start selling their youth sports portfolio companies through Goldman Sachs and Harris Williams, the sector has officially arrived.
The numbers back it up. The global youth sports market is projected to grow from $62 billion in 2026 to $154.5 billion by 2032. That kind of trajectory attracts institutional money, and institutional money demands exit opportunities.
What a Buyer Is Really Paying For
For potential buyers, the most interesting thing about D1 isn't the current footprint. It's the franchise development pipeline.
200+ locations in development means there's a visible growth runway that doesn't require the buyer to build from scratch. The franchisor model delivers recurring royalty revenue, lower capital intensity compared to owning every location, and a playbook that's been tested across 170+ sites. Princeton's own materials suggest they helped D1 improve its franchise sales process during their ownership. That's the kind of operational improvement story a new buyer can underwrite.
The real diligence question: how much of that 200+ pipeline is real? Signed leases and paid deposits are very different from letters of intent and territory reservations. The gap between "in development" and "open and operating" is where franchise growth stories either deliver or disappoint.
But the bigger opportunity might be what D1 represents inside the broader ecosystem. D1 is the physical training layer. Pair it with a club operator like 3Step, a streaming platform like LiveBarn, or a tech layer like the AI scouting and development tools we've been covering, and you start to see the outline of a vertically integrated athlete development platform. The buyer who sees D1 as a standalone franchise is thinking small. The buyer who sees it as one piece of a larger stack is thinking big.
The Bottom Line
The youth sports M&A wave isn't slowing down. The question for investors isn't whether youth sports is a real market. That debate is over. The question is which parts of the ecosystem consolidate fastest, and who ends up owning the platforms that connect training, competition, content, and development.
D1 is one piece of that puzzle. Whoever buys it will be making a bet that youth athletic training is durable, scalable, and worth a premium.
