Kenny Jacoby

But where they do own rinks, they control so much of the industry that it eliminates choice for customers.

And that's the sort of thing that can be viewed as an anti-competitive business practice.

So just as we were finishing up our reporting days before we actually published the story, the attorney general's office in Michigan launched an investigation into anti-competitive business practices in youth hockey with a focus on Black Bear, which owns, I believe, nine rinks in Michigan and is making inroads in other parts of the industry as well.

So that is ongoing right now.

The AG's office has been contacting parents in Michigan to learn about their experiences.

Some of the parents I've spoken to in Michigan, their experience has been that they've been kicked out of a rink that Black Bear bought because they did not agree to pay higher prices or in some cases, I spoke to some families who Black Bear approached about buying their teams and when they refused to sell,

Black Bear kick them out.

So that's the sort of dynamic that can be happening.

And that is the sort of thing that the Michigan AG's office is probing right now.

Absolutely, yeah.

Hockey is far from the only sport that private equity and private investment firms have been taking an interest in.

You can see their influence in pretty much any youth sport you look at.

I think the difference with hockey, and part of what got me really interested in the dynamics in hockey, are that there's just so few rinks, right?

That it's much easier for a firm like Blackbird to take over.

In baseball and soccer, we have fields in almost every public park and every school.

It's just a lot harder to consolidate that many grass fields.

I think we have fewer than 3,000 rinks in the whole country here.

And I think what Black Bear actually discovered was that there's almost an inefficiency in the market there.

There's all these rinks that nobody has tried to consolidate because it's

been long believed that they're very difficult to run, which is true.