Greg Olsen's next play: Youth sports
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Greg Olsen speaks on radio row prior to Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo: Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images
One of Charlotte's favorite dads, Greg Olsen, is starting a new play: helping fellow parents navigate youth sports.
Why it matters: The former Carolina Panthers star officially launched Youth Inc. in August, a media platform for conversations about coaching culture, injury prevention and developing young athletes' life skills.
The big picture: U.S. families spend more than $30 billion annually on youth sports, with an estimated 27.3 million kids participating.
Yes, but: Even as a pro athlete and analyst, Olsen tells Axios he found the world of youth sports unexpectedly overwhelming once he became a parent.
- "There's been countless times where my wife and I — at the end of a long, busy weekend of tournaments and games and running kids all over the place — we get in bed at night and we look at each other and go, 'Are we doing this right?'" he says.
- Olsen launched the Youth Inc. podcast in 2022 as a platform to explore those tough questions. He is now building on the brand, with recent high-profile guests such as Tom Brady, C.J. Stroud and Malcolm Gladwell.
Between the lines: Olsen has teamed up with Tim Murphy, previously of Audacy and The New York Times, to oversee the content on Youth Inc. Former Fanatics director Ryan Baise leads the e-commerce side.
- The online shop sells crewneck, hats, drinkware and more gear for nearly a thousand schools, including Ardrey Kell High, Butler High and Charlotte Catholic.
- "Everyone's favorite team is not the Panthers and the Cowboys," Olsen says. "Everyone's favorite team is whatever their son or daughter's playing on."
Flashback: Olsen, whose father was a high school football coach for 40 years, retired from the NFL in 2021.
- Today, he's a parent to three: an eighth-grade son (football, basketball and baseball), a seventh-grade son (baseball and football) and a seventh-grade daughter (basketball, track and cheer).
What's next: The slate of upcoming podcast guests includes Josh Allen, Barstool's Dan "Big Cat" Katz, Bryce Young and Jenny Levy, North Carolina women's lacrosse head coach.