COPPA and Youth Sports Apps: What Club Administrators Need to Know

If you manage a youth sports club, you’re handling personal information about children every day — names, ages, photos, emergency contacts, and more. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) sets the rules for how that data must be handled online, and the FTC just updated those rules for the first time in over a decade.

Here’s what matters for your club.

What Is COPPA?

COPPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of children under 13 online. It requires websites, apps, and online services that collect personal information from children to:

Provide clear notice about what data is collected and how it’s used
Obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting data from children under 13
Give parents control over their child’s data, including the ability to review and delete it
Limit data collection to what’s reasonably necessary
Protect the data with reasonable security measures
Retain data only as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected

The 2025 COPPA Rule Updates

The FTC finalized significant updates to COPPA in early 2025, with a compliance deadline of April 22, 2026. Key changes include:

Expanded definition of personal information

Biometric data (fingerprints, facial recognition templates) and government-issued identifiers (birth certificates, passport numbers) are now explicitly covered. If your sports app collects athlete photos that could be used for facial recognition, that’s COPPA-relevant.

Stricter data retention rules

You can’t keep children’s personal information longer than reasonably necessary. This means youth sports apps need clear data retention policies — you shouldn’t be sitting on five-year-old roster data “just in case.”

Third-party service accountability

If your app shares child data with third-party services (analytics, error tracking, email delivery), those services are also subject to COPPA requirements. This has big implications for the analytics and monitoring tools that modern apps rely on.

The FTC has added text messaging as an approved method for obtaining parental consent, recognizing that SMS is often the most practical way to reach parents.

How This Applies to Youth Sports Apps

Youth sports management platforms sit in a unique position. Most use a guardian-mediated model — parents or guardians manage their children’s profiles, enter their information, and make decisions on their behalf. This is actually COPPA-friendly by design.

But there are areas that need attention:

Athlete photos

Many platforms let clubs upload athlete photos for roster management. Under the updated rule, if those photos could be used for identification purposes, they’re personal information subject to COPPA protections.

Third-party data flows

Your club management app likely sends data to multiple services: email providers for notifications, error tracking tools for debugging, analytics for usage insights, and cloud storage for files. Each of these services may receive children’s personal information and needs to handle it appropriately.

Direct athlete accounts

Some platforms allow athletes to have their own login credentials. If any of those athletes are under 13, the platform needs verifiable parental consent before the account is created — and must provide parents with controls over the account.

Data retention

When a family leaves your club, what happens to their data? COPPA requires that personal information be deleted when it’s no longer necessary. Youth sports apps need clear policies and automated processes for data cleanup.

What to Look for in Your Club’s Software

When evaluating sports management software, ask these questions:

Does the platform have a published privacy policy that specifically addresses children’s data?
How long is data retained after a family leaves the club?
Can parents review and delete their children’s information?
What third-party services receive children’s data, and are they COPPA-compliant?
If athletes can have their own accounts, is there an age verification and parental consent process?

Rostered’s Approach

At Rostered, we designed our platform around the guardian-mediated model from day one. Parents and guardians manage athlete profiles, and we minimize the data we collect to what’s actually needed to run a youth sports club.

We’re actively working toward full compliance with the updated COPPA rule ahead of the April 2026 deadline, including:

Auditing every third-party service that receives athlete data
Implementing data retention policies with automated cleanup
Adding PII scrubbing to our error tracking and monitoring tools
Ensuring parental consent flows are in place where needed

Your club’s data is your club’s data. We take that responsibility seriously.

Have questions about how Rostered handles children’s data? Contact us.