ETS Performance, a Minnesota-based youth athlete training operator, announced on March 30 that it acquired Kula Sports Performance, a Denver-area training company whose founder Brian Kula has coached Christian McCaffrey, Saquon Barkley, and reigning heptathlon world champion Anna Hall. The headline number is that the combined operation now supports more than 50,000 athletes across approximately 80 locations.
What sits under that number is the structural story. This appears to be ETS's first publicly announced acquisition. It landed roughly seven weeks after D1 Training was reported to be running a PE-led sale process, and the financing arrangement around it looks meaningfully different from the auction-driven moves shaping the rest of the market.
What ETS Is and How It Got Here
ETS Performance was founded in 2010 in Woodbury, Minnesota by Ryan and Heidi Englebert and describes itself as "the first nationwide privately owned non-franchise youth sports performance company." That matters, because ETS does not sell franchises the way D1 Training does. The company has instead built around what it calls an athlete-partner model. The acquisition release describes retired Pro Bowl receiver Adam Thielen as an "ETS partner" and lists Team USA and NHL forward Jake Guentzel and Stanley Cup champion Ryan Carter as other professional athletes the organization has worked with.
ETS also has at least one disclosed growth investor outside the athlete-partner group. The company is listed as a current portfolio holding by VMG Partners, under VMG's Wellness & Fitness classification. The deal materials around the Kula acquisition do not disclose a transaction-specific PE sponsor or buyer for this transaction, separate from the VMG growth investment. The relevant context for investors is that ETS's publicly disclosed institutional-capital profile is less transaction-heavy than the PE-backed sale processes around D1 and the broader youth-sports-adjacent businesses changing hands right now.
An August 2025 release announced 11 additional facilities and described ETS as operating more than 50 facilities at the time, while the March 2026 acquisition release described ETS as serving athletes across more than 70 facilities. The August 2025 release also placed ETS on the Inc. 5000 list at #2,088 with 206% three-year growth, following a #2,109 ranking the year before. Back-to-back recognition on a fast-growth list is the kind of thing that gets a sale-side banker's attention, even if it does not substitute for the institutional capitalization that the bigger PE-backed competitors carry.
Why the Kula Deal Is the Interesting One
Kula Sports Performance is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado, and was built by Brian Kula, a speed coach with 29 years of experience in athletic development. Kula coached McCaffrey at Valor Christian High School in Colorado and later retired from the school in 2021; he built KSP into a speed-development business whose client list includes McCaffrey (NFL Offensive Player of the Year, San Francisco 49ers), Saquon Barkley (NFL Offensive Player of the Year, Philadelphia Eagles), Josh Morrissey (NHL All-Star, Winnipeg Jets), and Anna Hall, identified in the announcement as the reigning heptathlon world champion. That client list is the part of this deal that gets attention.
Three things to notice about the structure of this transaction.
Kula keeps the brand and stays on as Founder and Managing Partner of KSP. The Denver headquarters and leadership team remain in place, with KSP operating under its own name inside the ETS organization. That is how operators acquire other operators when the goal is roster expansion rather than rebranding.
The deal deepens ETS's pro and Olympic-tier client base, which broadens what ETS can sell into. Adding clients like McCaffrey, Barkley, Hall, and Morrissey reads as a meaningful step up from ETS's existing professional connections through Thielen, Guentzel, and Carter, at least on the current-relevance axis that matters most to youth-athlete recruiting.
The deal expands ETS into the Denver market, adding to a footprint that previously included locations across the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and parts of the South.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Two Sale Processes and One Outlier
The useful way to read the ETS-Kula deal is to put it next to what else is happening in athlete training and adjacent youth sports right now.
D1 Training is the closest comp by business model and geography. In February, Sportico reported that D1 Training, the franchise model athlete training operator backed by Princeton Equity Partners, had hired Harris Williams to run a sale process, with the business running 170-plus locations and another 200-plus in franchise development. D1 is the closest direct competitor to ETS in the youth athlete training segment.
The recent benchmarks for what PE firms have been willing to commit to large youth-sports-adjacent businesses come from the broader market. KKR completed its acquisition of Varsity Brands from Bain Capital and Charlesbank in August 2024, without disclosing terms in the announcement. In March, Ascent Sports Group, a newly-formed GTCR-backed platform, closed its acquisition of LiveBarn as its first investment, also without disclosing terms. Those transactions are recent indicators of the capital lining up for youth-sports-adjacent businesses.
Inside that environment, ETS just did the smallest and least-covered transaction in athlete training this year: an operator-led acquisition with no disclosed transaction-specific PE sponsor or buyer in the deal announcement. ETS is now positioned to be either an acquirer of the smaller training operators that the bigger PE-backed buyers won't bother with, or a future target itself if D1 gets a strong price in its process. The D1 process may not result in a transaction, but any strong outcome would still influence how buyers value athlete-training platforms.
The Athlete-Equity Question Most Coverage Skips
The piece of this that the press release does not emphasize, and that most coverage of the deal will not pick up, is what the athlete-partner model appears to do for capital costs. ETS has built its national footprint while characterizing professional athletes like Thielen, Guentzel, and Carter as partners rather than as endorsement deals, which reads as a distributed credibility and recruitment arrangement that the company has used to expand. The PE-backed alternative can be faster, but it typically brings dilution at the parent company and outside governance with it.
Whether the model can scale to 200 or 300 locations is a real question. The Kula deal shows it can also be used to fold in established operators rather than only opening greenfield facilities. That is a meaningful expansion of what ETS can do.
The Aspen Institute's Project Play found that family spending on a child's primary sport rose 46% between 2019 and 2024. Private training is one of several cost lines contributing to that rise. ETS is acquiring into that wave with an entirely different capital structure than its competitors.
What Could Stall This
The Athlete-Partner Model Outside the Home Network
The biggest risk is that the athlete-partner model bends when stretched. ETS's documented professional connections skew toward NFL and NHL alumni, and the company's facility footprint has so far concentrated in the Midwest, with the founding facility and the headquarters both in Minnesota. Expansion into the Denver market takes ETS out of that home network. The Kula deal solves part of this by bringing Brian Kula's client base. Turning that into facility partnerships in markets where ETS has no incumbent equity-holding athlete is a different problem than expanding inside its existing footprint.
Timing Against the D1 Sale Process
The second risk is timing. If D1 Training gets a strong price in its reported sale process, capital flowing into athlete training will get more aggressive, and the smaller regional operators ETS would want to acquire next will have other suitors. ETS's operator-led model is slower than a PE bolt-on roll-up. That is a feature when the market is patient and a problem when it is not.
Standardizing the Brand-Retention Structure
The third risk is that the brand-retention structure of the Kula deal (keeping the KSP name, leaving leadership in place) is harder to standardize across multiple acquisitions. A company with one acquired brand inside it is manageable. A company with five or ten acquired brands each operating semi-independently starts to look like a holding company rather than an operator. How ETS handles that question if it does another deal will tell investors more about the long-term structure than this transaction alone.
Takeaways for Investors
The Athlete-Partner Model Now Has an M&A Track Record
ETS has reached approximately 80 locations (combined with KSP) and added an A-list pro client base, with a less transaction-heavy publicly disclosed institutional capital profile than the PE-backed operators running sale processes right now. The Kula deal appears to be the first publicly announced acquisition where ETS folded in an established operator rather than opening greenfield facilities, though the company's release does not describe it that way. Whether other operators copy that structure is the more useful indicator for the small-deal side of the segment than any single D1 transaction multiple.
The Athlete Training Roll-Up Is Now Two-Track
D1 Training is reportedly running a PE-led sale process that will set a marquee valuation benchmark for the segment, while ETS just bought its way into Denver on a different capital structure entirely. Those are two different bets on how athlete training consolidates, and the gap between the outcomes will shape which model the next wave of operators tries to copy.
Watch the D1 Sale Process Closely
D1 is the closest comp to ETS by business model. The buyer, structure, and multiple of any D1 transaction, if it closes, will heavily influence whether ETS eventually becomes a target itself or pushes deeper into roll-up mode.
Kula's Pro Roster Is the Strategic Asset
McCaffrey, Barkley, Morrissey, and Anna Hall are the differentiator in this acquisition. The value of the deal is in the pro-tier credibility this adds to ETS's youth-focused business, which is harder to build than additional facilities.
