Unrivaled Sports has acquired Diamond Nation, a baseball and softball facility in Flemington, N.J., adding to its stable of youth sports properties that includes Ripken Baseball, Cooperstown All Star Village and We Are Camp.
Last month, Josh Harris and David Blitzer launched Unrivaled, which rolled up the youth sports assets the private equity titans and longtime sports team owners had purchased during the previous two years. Baseball has been a core focus, and Diamond Nation hosts 3,000 teams and 45,000 participants annually at tournaments across seven fields and also has an indoor training facility.
Terms of the purchase were not released.
Diamond Nation was founded in 2009 by Jack Cust Sr., whose namesake had a 10-year Major League career, and who along with his two brothers helped run Diamond Nation. The Cust family will continue to be involved in operating the facility.
“Our players and families will benefit tremendously from the additional resources available through a national effort to enhance the youth sports landscape.” Jack Sr. said in a statement.
The formation of Unrivaled included an investment by The Chernin Group (TCG) and the hiring of former Nike COO and long-time Disney executive Andy Campion to run the firm.
Harris and Blitzer’s first investment was in 2022 with the purchase of All Star Village for $116 million, and they doubled down on baseball with a majority interest in Ripken. The partners in Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment hired longtime sports executive Wade Martin to run the baseball side of the business.
Other buys included a deal with Olympian Shaun White for action sports brand We Are Camp, which valued the business at $10 million, and the first youth football purchase was in December via a $10 million majority investment in the ForeverLawn Sports Complex at the Hall of Fame Village in Canton, Ohio.
“There is almost an insatiable demand for youth sports experiences,” Campion said last month in a phone interview. “What exists today is a fraction of what we think the potential is.”
The Diamond Nation buy is the 14th owned and operated facility in the Unrivaled portfolio. The company expects to host more than 600,000 athletes and 1.3 million attendees annually at its sites.