Youth sports businesses often face a basic growth problem. A training center may work well in one community, but repeating the same model across many markets requires more than adding facilities. It requires a defined operating structure, trained staff, suitable locations, and a way to keep the customer experience tied to the original concept. Franchising is one method companies use to address that problem. For sports academies, the challenge also includes maintaining access to training, equipment, coaching, and other services as the number of locations rises. D-BAT followed this path after beginning as a single baseball and softball facility in Addison, Texas, in 1998. Its later development turned the local academy into a large franchise network.
Cade Griffis and Kyle Griffis founded D-BAT in 1998 after Cade had been traveling to different Texas cities to provide private baseball lessons. The brothers identified a need for an indoor facility that could provide year-round training. Their first location opened in Addison with six employees and combined training areas with a pro shop. The company’s stated aim was to provide instruction for players at different skill levels while giving them access to equipment and batting facilities. The early operation was therefore broader than a traditional private lesson business. It brought coaching, batting practice, and equipment sales into one facility, establishing the basic format that later locations would reproduce.
The move toward franchising came after the company had operated its own facility for several years. D-BAT’s history page states that franchising began in 2008, while Entrepreneur’s franchise profile lists 2007 as the starting year. The company’s own account says the first franchised year produced three locations. This marked a change in the way the business could grow. Instead of opening every facility directly, D-BAT could work with franchise owners who operated academies under the company’s name. Entrepreneur later described the business as providing indoor baseball and softball training, batting cages, and merchandise. The franchise model also included training and operational support for franchisees.
Early growth was relatively measured before accelerating later in the decade. In 2015, Entrepreneur listed 19 D-BAT locations, including 19 franchises and no company-owned locations, with estimated startup costs ranging from about $310,000 to $607,000. By 2016, the publication listed 30 franchises and one company-owned location. These figures show that franchising had become the main route for expanding the network. They also provide a useful view of the scale before the more rapid growth reported in the following years. The 2016 listing placed D-BAT at No. 428 in Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500, showing that the company was already being evaluated within the wider franchise market.
By 2016, the company had reached a larger operating scale. The Dallas Business Journal reported in June 2017 that D-BAT generated $18 million in revenue across 32 U.S. locations during 2016. Griffis expected revenue to double during 2017. At the time, D-BAT had 38 locations and 41 territories sold, according to the same report. The distinction between operating locations and sold territories was important because a territory represented planned expansion rather than an already open facility. The figures show that growth involved both existing academies and agreements for future locations. They also indicate how quickly the network was expanding after franchising became central to the company’s strategy.
The expansion was not limited to the United States. On March 31, 2017, D-BAT signed an agreement with Douglas Sports and Culture to develop 10 locations in the Beijing area. D Magazine reported that the agreement represented D-BAT’s first step into the international market. The proposed Chinese academies were expected to use coaches trained through D-BAT’s system, with instructors receiving preparation at the company’s Dallas facilities before working in China. The arrangement also showed that expansion involved more than licensing a name. Training, facility design, and coaching practices were part of the model being transferred to the new market.
The franchise structure also developed around several services rather than a single product. Current D-BAT franchise materials list memberships, private lessons, camps, cage rentals, pitching machines, pro shops, birthday events, weight training, tournaments, uniforms, and vending among the potential revenue sources. The entrepreneur’s franchise profile similarly lists training, marketing, site selection, field operations, proprietary software, and other forms of franchise support. The profile also reports an initial investment range of $536,450 to $1.03 million and an initial franchise fee of $45,000. These figures apply to the franchise information published by Entrepreneur and provide a snapshot of the model rather than a measure of individual franchise performance.
The company’s approach also sought to maintain a common identity among locations. D-BAT’s historical material describes facilities as indoor, climate-controlled training centers with batting cages, instruction, and pro shops. Its franchise materials outline support for site selection, field operations, marketing, technology, and training. In 2017, the Chinese expansion agreement also included a plan for coaches to receive training in Dallas before taking positions abroad. These details provide evidence of systems intended to support replication, although they do not establish that every location delivered identical results. The available sources document the structures used to support expansion, but independent data comparing quality or performance across individual academies remains limited.
The network has continued to expand beyond the figures reported during its early franchise period. Client-provided information places D-BAT at more than 215 locations in the United States, while the company’s current franchise materials describe a broad national and international network. Entrepreneur’s current franchise listing records 189 units in its available data and continues to classify D-BAT as an indoor baseball and softball training franchise. The differing figures reflect different reporting dates and definitions of units, rather than a single universally reported location count. Across the available record, however, the larger trend is clear: D-BAT moved from one Addison facility to a franchise system operating across numerous U.S. markets, with Griffis and Griffis remaining central figures in its development.
The expansion of D-BAT illustrates the company’s transition from a local training business into a franchise network. Its development included the opening of the original Addison facility in 1998, the introduction of franchising in the late 2000s, the growth from 19 franchises in 2015 to more than 30 by 2016, and rapid expansion documented in 2017. International plans followed, with the proposed Chinese locations. The model combined training, equipment, retail services, and franchise support rather than relying on a single activity.
