Marketing to families, legally

The good news: marketing a youth club legally is not hard. The rules are few, specific, and mostly about honesty.

Facts checked: 2026-08-30

Email and texts. Email first, because it's federal. The CAN-SPAM Act covers any email whose primary purpose is commercial — promoting registration, a paid clinic, merchandise — regardless of list size. The FTC's own compliance guide reduces it to a handful of duties: header and routing information that truthfully identify you; a subject line that matches the content; identifying the message as an ad; a valid physical postal address in the message; and a clear opt-out that works by simple reply or a single page, stays live for at least 30 days after sending, and is honored within 10 business days. Two details clubs miss: your own members retain the right to opt out of marketing email — a membership doesn't waive it — and hiring an email vendor doesn't move the liability, because both the promoter and the sender can be held responsible. The stakes are real: the FTC's current inflation-adjusted penalty runs up to $53,088 per violating email. Purely operational messages — "practice is cancelled" — are "transactional" and largely exempt, but a message that mixes cancellation news with a promo is judged by what's most prominent, so don't assume.

Photographs of children. Photos and video are California law, and here the statute is unusually specific. Civil Code section 3344 makes it unlawful to knowingly use someone's photograph or likeness for advertising or promotion without prior consent — and for a minor, the consent must come from a parent or legal guardian. "Photograph" explicitly includes video and live transmission. The statute then draws a line clubs should memorize: people shown only as members of a definable group — and the statute's own list of examples includes "a baseball team" — are treated differently from a person singled out as an individual. In practice: a wide team photo where no child is singled out sits on one side of the line; a close-up of one identifiable child on your registration flyer sits on the other, and that one needs the parent's prior consent. There's also an exception for genuine news and sports accounts, but the statute never says where a club's own promotional social post falls on that line — nobody can promise you an answer there, so when in doubt, have the consent.

Which is why the real answer is a good media consent form, collected at registration: signed by the parent or guardian (the minor's own signature doesn't satisfy the statute), covering photos and video, stating the purpose, saying explicitly whether promotional and marketing use is included — a form covering only "team records" doesn't cover your Instagram — and stating its duration and how a family can revoke it. Then honor the no's visibly: a roster note the photographer actually checks.

One adjacent flag, because it's the natural next question: if your website collects information online directly from children under 13, a separate federal law — COPPA — applies to that collection. It's beyond this guide; if your registration flow talks to kids rather than parents, get advice before launching it.

Everything else about getting families is the part you already know how to do: be findable (see the web-presence guide), be listed in our program directory, show up where families are, and let the free classes and the festival do what honest marketing does.