The deal is taking place all over the country, in volleyball and softball and hockey and soccer: Travel to our tournament and, unless you stay in one of our partner hotels, your kid doesn’t play. They know parents are already shelling out big bucks for their child’s sport. But if you want to fi nd a cheaper hotel, drive your RV, stay with family or use hotel points, forget it. It’s against the rules. That’s because hidden in the hotel bill are kickbacks to the tournament. The more rooms booked, the more money they make. It’s called stay-to-play.Some tournaments push the policies hard. The tournament organizers are often neighborhood clubs, but they can also be national companies and, in at least one case, a top-tier professional sports franchise. While the policies have become pervasive, antitrust attorneys question whether they violate federal law.One hockey tournament threatened a $500 fee if out-of-town teams didn’t book rooms through their system. Another hockey tournament warned participants away from seeking out hotel deals on their own. “No other booking sites, discounts, points awards, special rates or programs, regardless of how obtained, will be accepted,” the rules said.A soccer tournament directed teams to only stay in approved hotels booked through a specific travel agency. “Failure to do so may result in your team not getting scheduled,” the tournament website read. “You’re really locked into whatever they tell you, and if you want to play, you have to stay where they let you stay,” said Diane Portillo of Goldsby. Portillo has spent hundreds of nights in hotels over the past decade, traveling to softball tournaments with her daughter, who now plays in college, and hockey tournaments with her son, a high school senior. Portillo’s a teacher and single mom who worked three side jobs — as a bus driver, umpire and concessions salesperson — to help pay for her children’s sports. Each travel tournament costs families hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands. Tournament organizers claim their hotels have the best rates, but parents said they always find better deals on their own. “I have not seen a single tournament ever where the hotel prices were comparable, or fair, or lower than the surrounding hotels,” Portillo said.Last Thanksgiving, her son’s hockey team traveled to Dallas and checked into a Hilton hotel for $159 a night. The tournament host was the Dallas Stars, a National Hockey League franchise worth an estimated $2 billion, according to Forbes. “No one wants to be the parent that causes a team to get kicked out.”Diane PortilloThe tournament required every player’s family to book at least three nights from a list of hotels, all Hiltons. Players who didn’t comply, by staying with family or at a different hotel, could be disqualified from competing. Worse, the entire team could be removed from the tournament and lose their $2,000 registration fee. “No one wants to be the parent that causes a team to get kicked out,” Portillo said.A Common PolicyNot every youth sports tournament requires a hotel stay. But according to the Sports Events & Tourism Association, a nonprofit that tracks the business of traveling to watch or play sports, nearly 40% of tournament destinations did in 2023, down from 60% in 2021. Sports travel is a huge market for hotels. According to Sports ETA, 63% of destinations in 2023 said sports are their largest generator of room nights. U.S. sports travelers booked 73.5 million room nights in 2023 and spent $10.9 billion on lodging.Tournament organizers argue that with stay-to-play policies, they can reserve room blocks early and lock in better nightly rates. They also can more easily gather data on the number of rooms booked to prove the event’s economic impact. And it relieves teams of doing the legwork themselves. “You can get a deal with the hotel where it’s a discounted rate … and the coach may get a free room or something,” said John Allgood, whose career includes more than 15 years with the Oklahoma City RedHawks baseball team, Oklahoma City Barons hockey team and the Oklahoma Energy soccer team. “That’s pretty common. I don’t think there’s anything bad with that.”Allgood, now an instructor of sports management at the University of Delaware, said the bigger issue is the overall cost of competitive youth sports — known as pay to play — which is pricing out low-income families. Parents spend thousands of dollars for each child to play on a travel team, with uniforms, equipment, club fees, and other costs. One 2019 study found baseball parents spent $1,500 to $6,000 on their child’s sport the previous year. Some sports cost much more.And when teams register for a tournament and it’s stay-to-play, parents say they feel as though they have no choice. Guthrie resident Michelle Hostetler, whose son plays baseball and hockey, said stay-to-play policies are so common that sports parents have come to expect it. “Bigger tournaments have plenty of teams applying, so if one chooses not to comply, the host would likely just fill slots with teams that are willing to,” Hostetler said. Mad Enough to SueSome families have sued, alleging such deals run afoul of federal antitrust laws. Tying arrangements, in which a seller agrees to sell an item only on the condition the buyer purchases a different item, can be illegal if they restrain trade in the market for the second item. If Apple, for instance, required someone buying an iPhone to also buy a case, that would be a tying arrangement, said Kent Meyers, an attorney at Crowe & Dunlevy and an adjunct law professor at the University of Oklahoma specializing in antitrust law. In the case of a stay-to-play policy, the tournament would be the iPhone and the hotel room would be the case.“The person imposing the tie is in control of an extremely desirable item … and they choose to exercise their power in this extremely desirable product to force you to buy something you wouldn’t necessarily buy otherwise,” he said.Cheerleading juggernaut Varsity Brands recently settled an antitrust lawsuit filed in Tennessee by families who alleged the company created a monopoly to overcharge in several ways, including forced lodging. As part of the settlement, Varsity agreed to limit stay-to-play requirements but did not eliminate the practice entirely. Varsity Brands executives knew the policy was unpopular with cheerleaders, their families and gym owners, so in 2018 they renamed it Stay Smart. The company continued to force athletes to stay at preselected hotels and, according to an internal document referenced in the lawsuit, described the rebrand as putting lipstick on a pig.Tournament hosts sometimes manage hotel policies with a booking agent, who either charges a commission or shares in the rebates. That can make the travel process more convenient but at a cost. Families are unaware of how much extra they are paying.In Varsity’s case, one agreement had the company collecting $20 per room; in another instance, Varsity received 30% of the booking agent’s commission plus a rebate. Court records show that Varsity collected $4 million per year just from the room rebates. Varsity’s former director of strategy and special projects, Jamie Parrish, described how the practice exacerbated the costs for families participating in an already expensive sport. “You know, if you are going to make them pay for it, at least tell them how much it’s going to be.”Jamie Parrish“They have to stay at a preferred hotel as dictated by Varsity, and pay not only the hotel, but pay Varsity a kick on top of that and they don’t even know what the kick is,” Parrish said, according to court records. “You know, if you are going to make them pay for it, at least tell them how much it’s going to be. Don’t just slide it under the guise of the hotel’s charging you this and then pocket the money .…”Sometimes, the kickback amount is evident, such as when it’s charged separately. In February, families attending a hockey tournament in Tulsa were quoted $127 per night for rooms at a Fairfield Inn. However, $28 went to the booking agent as a non-refundable deposit, 22% of the total lodging cost. The hotel charged $99 per room night. Growing Reliance on FeesDon Schumacher founded the National Association of Sports Commissions (now renamed the Sports Events & Tourism Association) and, for 25 years, was its president and chief executive officer. He’s now an independent sports travel consultant in Ohio, and he’s been warning organizations for more than a decade about the overreliance on room rebates. “The fees were increasingly used to properly fund events rather than watching the budget or charging more in the team registration fee, and it’s even worse now,” he said.A big driver is tournament hosts’ desire — or, sometimes, requirement — to prove their economic impact on the city where the event is held. That’s because cities often use public money to build and maintain the fields, courts and rinks used for tournaments.Overland Park, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb, built a $36 million soccer complex in 2009 to host tournaments as a significant piece of its economic development strategy. The city hosted 16 soccer tournaments at the complex last year and Oklahoma teams played in 12 of them. City councilors planned to pay for the fields with hotel tax revenue and to maximize it, they wanted all tournaments to be stay-to-play. “You can get a deal with the hotel where it’s a discounted rate … and the coach may get a free room or something. That’s pretty common. I don’t think there’s anything bad with that.”John AllgoodThe priority for the complex, which boasts 12 quality turf fields, was to attract “other people’s money,” while secondarily accommodating local teams, longtime city councilman Fred Spears recalled in a 2023 committee meeting, public records show. Spears also said the deal to build the complex was based on “stay to play and no leakage,” meaning all participants booked their rooms in Overland Park, not surrounding cities. Pushing back, City Manager Kate Gunja told Spears they couldn’t legally require tournament families to stay in the city limits but tried to provide incentives for them to do so. By 2016, out-of-town soccer families were booking 23,000 hotel rooms per year and paying $7 to $10 per room in rebates, adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, according to a study of the complex’s economic impact by Schumacher’s association. Those families also paid one of the highest hotel taxes in the country, with a combined lodging and sales tax rate of 18.1%, according to a 2023 analysis by hospitality consulting firm HVS.The study found it wasn’t nearly enough. The city needed visitors to book an additional 1.5 million room nights per year to recover their investment. In 2023, the city raised its fee to rent the complex for a tournament but implemented incentives for events that draw more hotel business. If participants book at least 2,000 rooms, the tournament pays half as much to use the fields as they would without the hotel bookings. All upcoming spring soccer tournaments at the complex are stay-to-play. In One Pocket, and the Other Pocket TooAnother destination for Oklahoma teams is Dallas, especially in hockey, where nearly all youth hockey tournaments are run by the Dallas Stars.Until recently, the Stars had one of the strictest stay-to-play policies, according to several parents. Public records reveal a potential conflict: Stars’ staff owned the travel company that the teams were required to book through.An LLC based in Frisco, Texas, Stay2Play’s officers include Damon Boettcher, senior vice president of StarCenter Facilities, according to a Sept. 10 article in D Magazine, which highlighted Boettcher as one of the most powerful figures in the Stars franchise; his wife, Cassandra Boettcher; Lucas Reid, the vice president of amateur sports and business development for the Stars since 2014, according to LinkedIn; and Brad Buckland, the Stars’ tournament series director.Last fall, the Stars temporarily halted its stay-to-play policy and appear to have cut ties with Buckland, Boettcher and Reid. Dan Stuchal, the Stars’ chief operating officer, said the team no longer works with Stay2Play but refused to explain why. He said they plan to hire a new company that better meets the team’s values. Stuchal would not confirm Buckland, Boettcher or Reid’s departure, but they’ve all been removed from the Stars’ website. Reid and Buckland list new jobs with other sports organizations on their LinkedIn profiles. Boettcher does not, but shows his employment with the Stars ended in December. Attempts to reach Buckland, Boettcher and Reid were unsuccessful. Stuchal defended the Stars’ stay-to-play policy and said they plan to bring it back this fall. He said the practice is very common, only generates a small amount of revenue, and is necessary to show economic impact to cities that build the facilities. The Stars now operate two city-financed indoor basketball and volleyball facilities in Texas, with a third opening next year, according to the Dallas Stars. Without the stay-to-play rules, the organization could not track the rooms tied to its tournaments, he said.The afternoon of Oklahoma Watch’s inquiries, details of past tournaments were scrubbed from the Stars’ website. Joe Calvillo, director of communications for the Stars, said past references to stay-to-play were removed to eliminate confusion for the remainder of the season. Stuchal said when they paused stay-to-play, team managers were disappointed. He said stay-to-play is a service to the teams to have the rooms blocked at the best rates.Best Rate?Some tournaments may offer the best rate for a specific hotel, but families who shop around said they always find cheaper alternatives.“If they were trying to help you, and you said, ‘I’m going to stay with family,’ they’d say, ‘Great, glad you found a cheaper option.’ They don’t say that.”Molly TolbertFor the Winter Magic soccer tournament played in the Kansas City area in January, one hotel option through the tournament website was the Holiday Inn and Suites Convention Center for $170 per night. Guests could have reserved that very hotel on their own for $85 to $109 per night, according to published rates.The policies draw more revenue from traveling teams to fund their events using what amounts to a surcharge that local teams don’t have to pay.“If your team is from outside (75+ miles) the local area and does not show up on our booking report when you check-in to the event, you will be required to pay an additional stay-to-play fee of $500. ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS!” one set of hockey tournament rules read.That $500 of revenue to the tournament can be a fraction of the additional cost to participants. For example, a 20-player team forced to spend a minimum of three nights in a $159-per-night hotel spends $9,540 for lodging. That same team, depending on the game schedule, might have been able to spend just $119 per room for one night if allowed to book their own, collectively saving $7,160. That’s a difference of $358 per family.Families want out, and some tournaments offer an out — for a fee. At the Premier Girls Fastpitch Nationals softball tournament, teams could pay $2,400 to opt out of the lodging policy, which required at least eight rooms per team.Molly Tolbert, an Oklahoma City attorney, reviewed some of the examples of stay-to-play policies for this story. The buyouts, she said, seem to indicate the tournaments aren’t trying to help families get the best deal on hotel rates; they are simply replacing revenue. “If they were trying to help you, and you said, ‘I’m going to stay with family,’ they’d say, ‘Great, glad you found a cheaper option,’” Tolbert said. “They don’t say that. They say, ‘If we’re going to lose the revenue from you staying in a hotel, you have to pay a buyout.’”Portillo’s daughter’s team paid a buyout fee a couple of times for longer tournaments. It typically amounted to $100 per player. Parents were so committed to their daughters’ success that complying with tournament rules came with the territory.“It was never questioned,” she said. “Every tournament was (stay-to-play), and it’s what you did, and no one questioned it. It’s just the industry to get your kid to play college-level sports. It’s the rough side of it.”Jennifer Palmer has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2016 and covers education. Contact her at (405) 761-0093 or jpalmer@oklahomawatch.org. Follow her on Twitter @jpalmerOKC. 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