By: Sophia Mudanza
Three-quarters of adults played team sports during childhood. Only one-quarter continue playing after college. Most lose touch with the sports they loved because organizing games becomes prohibitively difficult while juggling careers, commutes, and competing obligations. Three individuals who loved team sports experienced exactly that frustration and built a solution during the pandemic.
The backpacks marked the goals. On an October evening in 2020, amid pandemic shutdowns that had emptied playgrounds and silenced stadiums, a group of strangers gathered on a Brooklyn field for a makeshift soccer game. The GoodRec app had connected them. Co-founders Lewis Black, Midori Koide, and Jeffrey Estes had launched their mobile platform just weeks earlier with a simple premise: make joining pickup sports games as easy as booking a gym class. Users tap the app, select a nearby game, and show up to play. GoodRec handles everything else, including reserving facilities, organizing equipment, ensuring sufficient players, and providing trained hosts who balance teams and manage gameplay.
No officials monitored that first Brooklyn match. No formal structure existed beyond what the founders had hastily assembled. Just people who missed the sport they loved, testing whether technology could solve a problem that had defeated countless WhatsApp groups and text chains. Traditional pickup games collapse under their own coordination burdens. Someone must continually recruit players, book facilities, collect payments, and manage last-minute cancellations through unpaid labor, which becomes unsustainable. When that organizer inevitably burns out, the entire group dissolves.
Three years later, that improvised gathering has evolved into a large movement reshaping how American adults engage with recreational sports. While the global sports technology market has experienced significant growth, a quieter crisis has unfolded. Adult sports participation in the United States has sharply declined, with fewer adults continuing to play compared to those who were active in childhood.
Lewis Black, the founder and CEO, alongside Midori Koide and Jeffrey Estes, the co-founders behind GoodRec, understand this disconnection intimately. After graduating from universities in the United Kingdom, Black and Koide moved abroad and confronted the same frustrating reality faced by millions of working adults. Finding consistent pickup games required navigating fragmented Facebook groups, unreliable text chains, and unpredictable experiences. Estes discovered the app as a user in New York City one year after launch. The University of Connecticut graduate had built a stable career in corporate finance. Yet the mission resonated so powerfully that he quit his job and joined the startup full-time.
“We bootstrapped the company in year one,” Black recalls. “Since people sign up for games in advance on the app, we were able to collect payments before the game and use the funds to reserve the field and buy the equipment for every game.” While venture-backed competitors pursued aggressive expansion, GoodRec grew methodically, entering new markets only after securing facility partnerships and identifying community leaders who could serve as game hosts.
The Technology Gap in Urban Recreation
Sports technology investment reached new heights recently, with North American markets accounting for a significant share of global spending. Wearable devices held a substantial market share. Virtual reality systems began transforming training methods for elite athletes, while analytics platforms provided deeper insights into game footage.
Yet this technological revolution has largely bypassed recreational sports. The typical adult seeking casual basketball games receives little technological assistance, often relying on basic social media event pages. Participation rates in sports are notably lower among adults from lower-income households compared to those from higher-income backgrounds.
GoodRec’s platform addresses coordination friction that has intensified in modern urban environments. Users browse upcoming games via a mobile interface that displays available time slots, locations, and skill levels. Registration is processed with an advance payment to ensure predictable player counts. Hosts manage equipment distribution and team balancing.
“Many games fill up two weeks in advance because people want to guarantee they can play in a game with their favorite host,” Black notes. Users cultivate relationships with specific hosts whose organizational styles become integral to the experience. Some hosts achieve local celebrity status, with their scheduled games filling up quickly because participants trust the quality they deliver.
Demographic Headwinds and Market Realities
The sports technology sector faces concerning demographic trends. Regular participation among younger boys has declined over the past decade, while girls’ participation has increased, often through costly travel teams rather than local community leagues. Participation rates are notably lower among children from lower-income households compared to those from higher-income families.
These patterns of childhood participation predict future adult behavior. Adults who never developed sports habits in their youth rarely adopt them later. Without intervention, recreational participation could continue its secular decline even as technology platforms proliferate.
GoodRec partners with over 500 facility operators nationwide, providing field access during underutilized periods. This creates mutually beneficial arrangements that ensure baseline revenue while absorbing marketing coordination costs. Property operators need consistent revenue streams to justify maintenance investments.
“We want to create games that people crave,” Estes explains. “Have you ever been a part of a pickup group or league that you look forward to all week? Groups where you overengineer your tactics, formation, or line changes. Games that get replayed in your head all of next week.”
The articulation captures an essential aspect of recreational sports psychology. Participants pursue specific emotional experiences tied to competitive intensity, tactical sophistication, and community belonging. Technology platforms succeed when they facilitate deeper psychological satisfactions rather than merely processing transactions.
Market Forces and Competitive Dynamics
The sports technology market is projected to grow significantly in the coming years, with much of the investment focused on professional sports rather than recreational infrastructure. Smart stadium technology accounts for a large share of the market, while analytics platforms continue to grow rapidly.
Recreational technology platforms occupy distinctly different market positions. GoodRec competes less with professional sports technology vendors than with fitness studios, traditional leagues, and informal social coordination mechanisms. The target customer prioritizes convenient access to organized athletic activities over elite performance enhancement.
Geographic expansion reveals operational complexities. Soccer dominated GoodRec’s early growth, reflecting Black’s background and the sport’s minimal equipment requirements. Koide launched volleyball after recognizing her own post-college experience mirrored that of countless former collegiate athletes. Estes brought basketball to the platform after joining the team in New York City. Each founder represented the exact user demographic they served: working adults who missed competitive team sports yet lacked time to organize games independently.
Weather variability poses persistent challenges for outdoor sports in northern climates. In the winter months, participation declines in cities lacking affordable indoor alternatives. GoodRec responded by developing partnerships with indoor sports complexes that offered discounted rates during slow periods. The strategy creates year-round revenue streams while maintaining user engagement.
The Broader Context of Urban Recreation
Outdoor recreation participation increased significantly recently, with millions of Americans engaging in activities such as hiking, biking, and camping. However, the patterns reveal concerning trends: the frequency of outings per participant has declined over the past year.
Technology platforms theoretically address this conversion problem by reducing friction around repeat participation. Whether lowering coordination costs actually produces deeper athletic engagement remains empirically uncertain.
GoodRec’s expansion tests whether platform-mediated coordination can overcome barriers that traditional recreational infrastructure failed to address. The company emphasizes community formation over transactional efficiency. Users who attend the same weekly game develop familiarity and social bonds extending beyond the field. Marriages and business partnerships have emerged from GoodRec connections, according to testimonials.
Whether technology platforms genuinely foster authentic community formation remains contested. Critics argue that commercialized recreational sports privilege convenience over depth of social connection. Supporters counter that lowering coordination costs enables more frequent interaction, which generates deeper relationships.
Looking ahead to 2030, demographic trends will reshape recreational landscapes. Remote work arrangements disperse professionals geographically while increasing schedule flexibility. Virtual reality fitness experiences compete directly with in-person recreational sports. Climate change disrupts outdoor sports seasons unpredictably.
Black reflects on the journey from Brooklyn backpacks to nationwide expansion. “Our hope is that GoodRec brings people together,” he observes. “We love hearing that best friends have met, relationships have started, and group chats have been born through our soccer games. When we both moved abroad after graduating in the UK, we struggled to join new soccer and volleyball teams. We started GoodRec so that we could meet new people whilst playing our favorite sports.”
The statement captures both the ambition and limitations inherent in technology-mediated recreation. Platforms reduce friction around coordination while creating new dependencies on commercial intermediaries. Yet for many working adults in major cities, these trade-offs prove acceptable compared to alternatives that often involve not playing sports at all.
