Updated May 8, 2026, 2:15 p.m. ET
In the last decade, a private investment firm has consolidated much of youth hockey, turning what was once a community-based activity into a profit vehicle for wealthy investors.
USA TODAY spent nine months investigating Black Bear Sports Group, which owns or operates for 47 ice rinks in 11 states, plus hundreds of the youth teams inside them; the leagues, tournaments and showcases they compete in; even the live streaming service parents use to watch their kids play.
The news organization’s reporting – based on interviews with more than 80 parents, players, coaches, rink operators and current and former employees, along with thousands of pages of records – found that Black Bear’s business model is reshaping youth hockey from a network of community-based nonprofits into a vertically integrated, for-profit system with fewer checks on how money flows.
Here are four takeaways from the investigation:
Black Bear kicked out a longstanding community nonprofit
For years, the western Pennsylvania region’s oldest youth hockey team, the Pittsburgh Vipers, had rented ice from Pittsburgh Ice Arena. Then, in 2021, Black Bear bought the rink.
In 2022, Black Bear made an offer to buy the nonprofit’s youth teams for $1. When the association’s parent-run board refused to sell, Black Bear kicked most of its teams out of the rink.
With nowhere else to play, the nonprofit’s board in February 2024 voted to fold the Vipers after 60 years.
Murry Gunty, Black Bear’s founder and former CEO, described the Vipers as a failing organization that “didn’t want to work with us.” Black Bear spokesperson Evan Nierman said the company kicked out the Vipers because the club’s participation numbers were declining and the rink needed a growing team to stay viable.
Black Bear’s founder has a pattern of unethical practices
Long before he started Black Bear, Gunty developed a reputation in the finance world for using unethical practices to get ahead.
As a graduate student at Harvard Business School in 1992, Gunty’s classmates caught him tampering with votes to help elect himself president of a prestigious student-club.
In 2008, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission publicly accused SFCA, Inc., a company owned by Gunty’s private equity firm, of refusing to cooperate with a government recall of dangerous bassinets connected to the deaths of multiple infants.
An unrelated U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation in 2016 found Gunty responsible for misleading his private equity funds’ investors via conflicts of interest, self-dealing and unauthorized expenses. Gunty’s company agreed to pay fines to settle the matter.
Gunty declined to discuss the Harvard and SEC controversies. Nierman said SFCA fully cooperated with the bassinet recall.
‘A glaring conflict of interest’
Gunty used his private investment firm to transform his son’s nonprofit youth hockey club, Team Maryland, into a college recruitment vehicle and revenue stream for his business.
While Gunty’s son was on the team, Black Bear bought the rink from which some of Team Maryland’s teams would rent ice. Later, during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, tax records show Team Maryland paid more than $1.2 million to for-profit companies owned or co-owned by Gunty; the nonprofit’s president, Robert Weiss; and the president’s son, Michael Weiss – which a nonprofit expert described to USA TODAY as a “glaring conflict of interest.”
Gunty said he was “very comfortable with what we’re doing with Team Maryland.” Nierman said the transactions were legal under Maryland law because they were “fair and reasonable” and properly disclosed.
Legal experts raised concerns about Black Bear abusing monopoly power
Black Bear rapidly consolidated ice rinks and hockey teams across the Northeast and Midwest, then leveraged that control to steer families into its own costly ecosystem of leagues, tournaments and fees.
Some parents described spending close to $5,000 a year for each of their 8 and 9-year-old kids’ spots on Black Bear’s teams, plus hundreds more for hotels, travel, equipment, uniforms, tryout fees and Black Bear’s proprietary streaming service, Black Bear TV. Antitrust experts raised concerns that Black Bear used its dominance in the rink industry to gain an unfair advantage in other markets critical to the sport’s infrastructure.
Amid USA TODAY’s reporting, multiple news outlets in Michigan reported that the Michigan Department of Attorney General launched an investigation into anticompetitive business practices in youth hockey, with a focus on Black Bear.
Addressing the state investigation, Nierman pointed to Black Bear’s ownership of less than 10% of Michigan rinks, ice rental contracts with third parties and participation growth as evidence that families have choices and are choosing Black Bear. Gunty told USA TODAY that Black Bear is “not a monopoly.”
Click here to read the full investigation.
Kenny Jacoby is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY who uncovers issues in sports, higher education and law enforcement. Contact him by email at kjacoby@usatoday.com.
