FranDev Players: Frank Fiume, Founder of i9® Sports

When baseball fanatic and native of Queens, New York, Frank Fiume, graduated from St. John’s University and began a career as a medical equipment sales rep, he knew that his true life’s purpose was to pursue a career in sports. So, in 1995, he created his own adult men’s softball league, ABA Sports. The start-up company quickly grew to over 900 teams in just six years, making it the largest adult sports organization on Long Island.

In 2003, Fiume sold ABA to create i9 Sports, a franchise business that catapulted him to national recognition and one that Entrepreneur magazine ranked as the No. 1 children’s fitness franchise. Since then, Fiume has been featured on Fox Business News, HBO Real Sports, and in dozens of publications and national news media outlets, including USA Today, Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal. 

1851 Franchise spoke with Fiume to learn more about his inspiring journey into the franchising industry.

1851 Franchise: Tell me about your firm/company.

Frank Fiume: With over 2.5 million registrations in communities across the country, i9 Sports® is the nation’s largest multi-sport provider focused solely on high-quality, community-based youth sports programs. Operating in over 975 communities across the nation, our franchise owners offer youth sports leagues, camps and clinics for boys and girls ages three to 14. We offer sports such as flag football, soccer, basketball, baseball, ZIP Lacrosse™ and volleyball.

To achieve our mission of helping kids succeed in life through sports, i9 Sports provides a youth sports experience unlike any other, teaching the importance of good sportsmanship on the field and in life. We are committed to providing age-appropriate instruction, making sports fun for kids, and convenient for today’s busy families. It’s The Way Youth Sports Should Be.®

1851: How did you get into franchising? 

Fiume: The i9 Sports® story began back in 1995 when I began wondering how I could earn a living doing what I loved – sports. As a 10-year-old, I created a wiffle ball field in my backyard, complete with homemade dugouts and a bicycle parking lot for the neighborhood kids. I would have had a football field, too, had my mom not made me take down the giant two-by-four wood beams that my friends and I nailed up to the family fence as goal posts.

While researching the adult sports leagues in the area, I made an amazing discovery. All those highly disorganized, terribly run, local leagues were making a lot of money. They were profit centers disguised as sports leagues.

So, I launched my own adult softball league with the idea that I could provide a much better experience for the players by operating my leagues as a business. I built proprietary software to organize team rosters, schedules, stats, and scores; focused on clear and consistent communication and hired dependable umpires. Despite being told it would never work, my start-up league grew to more than 1,000 teams within a couple short years. The best was yet to come.

While continuing to operate my business in New York, my wife Nadine and I moved to Tampa, Florida, in 1996. With a baby on the way, I began wondering if my concept could apply to youth sports. I had learned from my adult leagues that it was the overall player experience that set my programs apart. In researching youth sports among parents, I found the same basic issues I had overcome earlier in my adult leagues: disorganization, lack of communication and inconvenience.

But I discovered a far bigger issue in youth sports — a destructively competitive, highly political culture that was turning sports into a negative experience for kids. How can kids ever learn a sport if they are constantly told they are not good enough to play and are made to sit on the bench? Convinced I could provide a superior experience for both parents and kids, I set out to create a model for a youth sports business opportunity.

Beginning in 1998, my foray into youth sports was wildly successful. In fact, it was so successful that I sold my adult softball business and teamed up with franchise-industry experts to launch a national youth sports franchise company. In 2003, i9 Sports was born and the first i9 Sports franchise was sold. Little did I know at the time that my simple goal to put fun back into youth sports would revolutionize the industry.

1851: Are there any keys to consistent franchise growth? 

Fiume: Putting the customer first is the primary key to building any business. In fact, one of our core values at i9 Sports is “customer obsession”. We are committed to listening to our customers and providing a superior experience to increase our market share within existing franchise units. Not only that, knowing our customer well allows us to identify the best opportunities for new locations throughout the United States and extend our franchise network.

1851: What are the biggest hurdles to successful franchise growth right now? How did the COVID crisis affect franchise growth opportunities? 

Fiume: Because parents typically view youth sports as a necessity rather than a luxury, our model has performed well in both challenging and healthy economic conditions. Since kids tend to come back year after year and play multiple sports, i9 Sports franchise owners have strong opportunities for recurring revenue.  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, limitations on venues, group sizes and the need for additional safety measures presented challenges for all youth sports providers. However, unlike our competition, we leaned into the pandemic, viewing it as an opportunity to lead by creating an array of new “COVID friendly” program formats and a robust “Return to Play Safely” protocol to get kids back to play. This approach not only helped our franchisees manage through the crisis, but it was also a big factor in maintaining franchise sales momentum. We were able to add 14 new franchise units to our network during the worst downturn in franchising history. 

1851: Are there any common mistakes you see franchisors making when trying to grow? 

Fiume: Scaling too quickly without being fully prepared is one of the common mistakes franchisors make when trying to grow. It’s important to have systems and processes in place to ensure that the growth of the franchise network does not cause unintended negative consequences. At i9 Sports, our proprietary software was built to ensure that our increasing number of franchisees could manage their youth sports leagues while continuing to scale to multiple venues and seasons throughout the year. We have continued to add features and expand capabilities to anticipate future needs.

Another mistake franchisors often make when starting out is not thoroughly understanding the customer they are serving. Identifying the customer down to the smallest detail is vital in determining what need the franchise brand will meet. Once that’s clear at the franchisor level, it’s even more critical that the franchisee understands and can articulate it. Otherwise, it’s just words. 

1851: What are your biggest goals/plans for 2021?

Fiume: We are very bullish on 2021 and have plans to not only return to our pre-COVID rate of growth, but to accelerate it. We are pursuing a three-pronged strategy of: 1.) bolstering IT resources to help our franchisees become even more operationally efficient (i.e., grow larger with less effort); 2.) introducing new programs designed to leverage our multi-sport offering and increase our current customers’ frequency of play; and 3.) continuing the expansion of our i9 Sports franchise network extending into more communities throughout the U.S.