As public backlash builds against corporate interests buying up youth sports and price gouging families, the nation’s largest youth hockey operator has insisted it “is not owned by a private equity firm and has nothing to do with Wall Street.” Black Bear Sports Group repeated those claims even after The Lever exposed its ties to Wall Street and predatory business practices .
But since the media firestorm and legislative reprisals sparked by The Lever ’s investigation into the company, Black Bear has in fact deepened its Wall Street ties by quietly installing a private equity veteran as its new interim CEO.
Only after The Lever reached out to Black Bear about the new hire did the company apparently relent, scrubbing prior disavowals of its private equity connections from its website. At the same time, the firm appears to have hired a politically connected consulting firm for its messaging — suggesting the Hockey giant may be preparing to counter lawmakers’ scrutiny of its financial ownership and business practices.
In March, four months after The Lever first reported on Black Bear’s private equity ties and rapacious policies, the company introduced Kevin Kuby as a “seasoned operating executive and sports enthusiast.” Left unmentioned: Kuby was also managing director of Blackstreet Capital Management, the private equity firm started by Black Bear’s founder and outgoing CEO. The firm’s affiliated holding company, Blackstreet Capital Holdings, also run by the company founder, is a partial owner of Black Bear Sports.
Screenshot of Kevin Kuby's LinkedIn, Sept. 2026. (Kevin Kuby/LinkedIn)
The Lever ’s investigation into the company detailed its use of a classic private equity strategy: buying up distressed assets, then jacking up fees and instituting controversial business practices . In Black Bear’s case, the hockey operator enraged families by instituting a ban on recording kids’’ games, pressuring people to instead pay for the company's expensive streaming service.
“When I learned that the only way my parents could watch [my son’s] games was by paying a fee to a monopoly-seeking private company, I nearly gagged,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), whose son plays in a Black Bear-owned hockey league, in an essay in The Atlantic . Murphy has since unveiled legislation called the Let Kids Play Act , which would restrict private equity firms’ ability to acquire youth sports facilities and organizations.
As The Lever reported, Black Bear threatened to punish any families, including Murphy’s, who violated its no-recording policy by penalizing their kids. Players could be “immediately suspended or dismissed from the team,” according to league rulebooks set by the company.
When The Lever first exposed Black Bear’s draconian policy, the hockey mogul denied it, but then ultimately agreed to revoke the rule.
We need your help. Become a paid subscriber to fund The Lever’ s mission to hold the powerful accountable through reader-supported investigative journalism.
Hold The Powerful Accountable
Black Bear’s D.C. Power Play
Black Bear eliminated the penalty earlier this year and will continue to allow people to record kids’ games under the company's new leadership, a company spokesperson told The Lever in an email. But that spokesperson's pedigree suggests Black Bear is bracing for a broader public-relations battle.
The Lever ’s latest request for comment from Black Bear was, for the first time, fielded by a senior vice president at Precision Strategies, a politically connected DC consulting firm founded by longtime Democratic operatives Jen O'Malley Dillon and Stephanie Cutter . O'Malley Dillon served as campaign manager for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and then as his deputy chief of staff in the White House. Cutter worked as an aide to former President Barack Obama, as well as senior adviser for the 2024 Kamala Harris campaign.
Those Beltway connections could prove useful for the company’s near-term prospects in Washington, where Black Bear appears to be facing mounting scrutiny for its role in the Wall Street-fueled takeover of the $40 billion youth sports industry and the toll it’s taken on families’ finances.
According to a 2025 study , households now spend more than $1,000 a year on their child’s primary sport, a nearly 50 percent increase since 2019. Some metrics peg hockey as the most expensive of all youth sports, with an average annual cost topping $2,500.
Last December, the House Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing on the rising cost of youth sports, which featured The Lever ’s reporting on Black Bear Sports in several exchanges between lawmakers and witnesses. In June of this year, the Committee followed up with another hearing , specifically on the role of private equity in the rising costs of youth sports.
By then, the Michigan Attorney General’s Office had also opened a probe into whether Black Bear’s potential anticompetitive practices were driving up costs for families.
SPONSORED
Unknown number calling? It’s not random… Scammers don’t pick phone numbers at random. They buy your data from brokers, leading to phishing, impersonation, and identity theft. Use Incogni to take control of your personal information. Get 55% off for annual plans with coupon code LEVER.
Protect Your Data
A Private Equity Fake-Out
Black Bear has repeatedly contested its links to private equity, which is known for buying up companies, loading them up with debt, laying off workers, and driving up costs.
The company told The Lever last year that the company’s owner, Bethesda, Maryland-based Blackstreet Capital, “is not a private equity fund.” Instead, the owner is a separate holding company conjoined to Blackstreet Capital, although the exact legal relationship between the two has been legally contested. Court filings , for instance, in an ongoing lawsuit over Black Bear’s recording and streaming service, describe the hockey company as a “wholly owned subsidiary of BlackStreet Capital Holdings, LLC,” which the records describe as a “private equity fund.”
Court filings describe Blackstreet Holdings LLC as a private equity fund. (Justia U.S. Law)
For years, Blackstreet — which was founded by former Black Bear CEO Murry Gunty after he’d worked for Blackstone, among the world’s largest private equity firms — called itself “ a private equity firm ” on its website.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission characterized the corporation as a private equity firm in the charges it brought against Gunty in 2016 for charging fees to investors without being registered as a broker. Then, around the time of that case, Gunty began relying more on a separate holding company for business dealings.
On his LinkedIn page, Kuby, Black Bear’s new CEO, describes Blackstreet Management as “a private equity firm focused on control buyouts of distressed and underperforming companies across a wide spectrum of industries,” including pet supplies stores and other retail chains. Kuby separately lists his title as “Executive Vice President and Chief Restructuring Officer” of Gunty’s holding company.
Screenshot of Kevin Kuby's LinkedIn, Sept. 2026. (Kevin Kuby/LinkedIn)
Online archives reveal that as recently as May of this year, Black Bear’s FAQ page noted it “is not owned by a private equity firm and has nothing to do with Wall Street.”
Screenshot from Black Bear Sports Group's FAQ page. ( Wayback Machine )
Now, that line has been eliminated. According to the site’s metadata, that section of the web page was modified on Sept. 4 — days after The Lever reached out to Black Bear for comment on Kuby’s hire.
But deleting the denial likely won’t help the company escape blowback. In a recent comment to Semafor , Murphy said he would marshal bipartisan support in the coming year for his bill restricting private equity in youth sports, comparing the data center revolts sweeping the country to the widespread backlash over rising youth sports costs.
“It’s parents that are really coming to the conclusion that the professionalization of 8-year-old sports is not good for them, their family, or their kids, and I think that’s coming from parents on the right and parents on the left,” he said.
The Youth Hockey Giant That Can’t Quit Private Equity
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at LeverNews.