THE FACEOFF 🤼: Carlos Rivera & Subler

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THE FACEOFF 🤼 VOL III :

This week’s FACEOFF is a conversation with a founder who used to leave the same voicemails you do on why the door to the school gym is locked, who else is bidding for it, and what makes a school say yes.

Fall practice schedules are locking in this week, and somewhere in your town there is a gym with the lights off, a field with nobody on it, and a front office that hasn’t returned your call. You’ve sent the email. You’ve left the message. You’ve been told to try the athletic director, then the facilities office, then the district, then the athletic director again. Meanwhile the season starts in two weeks and you’re practicing in a church parking lot.

Here’s the strange part: the school probably wants your money. Public school enrollment peaked at 50.8 million in fall 2019 and the federal government projects it falls another 5% by 2031 — about 2.7 million fewer kids in the buildings that were sized for them. In Los Angeles, the district lost roughly 3% more students last year and is now staring at a $231 million shortfall, with a board member saying school consolidation “is likely unavoidable” and those conversations start this fall. Fewer students, same square footage, tighter budgets. Every one of those gyms is a revenue line waiting to happen.

So schools have space they’d rent, clubs are desperate to rent it, and the two sides mostly can’t find each other. That gap is the whole business.

Carlos Rivera is the founder of Subler, a marketplace where schools and nonprofits list underused facilities and clubs and community members book them online; search by location and type, see what’s open, pay and confirm without a phone tree. He spent most of his career in tech, holds a master’s in tech management from Columbia, and sits on the Consultative Board at Sacred Heart High School in Los Angeles, working on fundraising and board strategy. So he’s seen the empty gym from the school’s side of the desk. He’s also seen it from yours: before Subler existed, he was the guy leaving the voicemails. He answered these questions two weeks into life with a newborn, which we mention only so you know what kind of operator you’re reading.

Most of your career was in tech, and you now sit on a school board. How did those two things collide into Subler?

“When I first had the idea, I saw that schools needed help. I took it upon myself to manage rentals at three different schools. I quickly learned that I needed to build software to make it as easy as possible and build something that could scale. Sitting in both worlds at once, I kept seeing the same disconnect: schools have real, underused assets: gyms, fields, theaters and no efficient way to turn them into revenue. Tech has already solved this for other industries. Subler applies that same model to school facilities.”

Was there a specific moment, a board meeting, a budget line, an empty gym on a Saturday where you thought, someone should be fixing this?

“There wasn’t one meeting, it was the grind of trying to rent space for my own basketball meet-ups. I’d call a school and get routed to voicemail after voicemail, or finally get a callback only to learn the slot was double-booked or I’d reached the wrong person. That repeated friction, good facilities sitting there, but no reliable way to get to them convinced me someone needed to fix this.”

A lot of smart people told you not to build the software and the marketplace at the same time: the chicken-and-egg problem. What has doing both actually cost you?

“Schools won’t list their spaces on an empty marketplace, and renters won’t join one with no listings. Someone has to work both sides manually early on, which is a lot of our sales work today.”

Enrollment is down and schools are closing. What does rental income actually do for a school’s budget?

“Rental income helps support a school’s operating budget, paying for ongoing maintenance and staff. But schools sit on a real, underused asset that, for renters, is invisible. A club doesn’t see a budget line or an opportunity; they see a locked gym and no contact person to call. Even when a school genuinely wants the rental revenue, if the process on the renter’s side is a black hole (no response, no visibility into what’s open, no easy way to pay or confirm) that opportunity simply doesn’t convert. The math only works when renters can actually get in the door.”

Subler shared a case study that puts numbers on it. St. Frances Cabrini, a Catholic school just east of LAX, had a state-of-the-art turf soccer field sitting empty after school hours. The school wanted the revenue it just had no way to market the space, no way to set a fair rate, and a manual system for tracking scheduling and payments that kept tripping over itself.

Subler onboarded the school in March 2024, migrated the renters it already had, trained the staff and put everything on one calendar. Within six months, the school’s annual rental income had doubled and it was spending 75% less time administering rentals — and the campus that used to sit dark on weeknights was drawing local families in, some of whom became prospective students.

“We’ve been able to generate 100% more revenue and streamline the entire rental process,” principal Carmen O’Hart says in it. Those are Subler’s figures about its own customer, and there’s no dollar baseline published behind the percentage. But the shape of it is the part worth stealing: the field was always there. The process is what changed.

Break down what’s actually getting booked — which facilities, and where the money is.

“Fields book far more often, but gyms carry meaningfully higher value per session.”

You’ve said theaters and performing-arts spaces can be as lucrative as the gym, if not more. What does that mean for a youth sports club competing for a Tuesday night slot — who are they really bidding against?

“Non-athletic space is often overlooked, but demand can be just as strong: dance, theater, production groups, corporate events and it isn’t seasonal like youth sports. A club chasing a Tuesday night gym slot isn’t just competing with other sports clubs; it’s competing against anyone willing to pay for reliable, locked space, athletic or not.”

What separates the clubs that actually get a booking from the ones that don’t — and what do clubs get wrong when they approach a school on their own?

“Clubs that convert are prepared and persistent. The ones that don’t usually hit the wall I hit as a renter myself: calls routed to voicemail with no callback, or a slot that conflicts with something already on the calendar. Even completed bookings are often handled manually — payment by check or Venmo, paperwork over email — leaving no valid record either side can point back to. That’s the friction Subler removes.”

Practical one for our readers: what does a club or nonprofit need to have in hand before a school will say yes — and where do groups usually get stuck?

“Typically: proof of general liability insurance (often naming the school as additional insured), signed waivers, a use agreement covering hours/space/rules, and background-checked supervisors where minors are involved. Groups most often get stuck on insurance — no coverage, or coverage below the school’s minimum — which stalls everything else.”

Give us Subler in one sentence. Then the honest part — what doesn’t it do yet, and which markets aren’t covered?

“Subler is a facility rental marketplace letting schools and nonprofits list and manage underused space, while giving renters — youth sports teams, leagues, community groups — a simple way to find and book it online. Honest part: we’re early-stage and concentrated in the LA area, so if a reader’s district is elsewhere, we may not be there just yet, but we hope to be soon!”

You’ve said AI let a small team ship a lot faster over the last 18 months. What can you build now that you couldn’t build then — and what does winning look like from here?

“AI has let a small team move at a pace that used to need a much bigger engineering org — rebuilding the booking flow, standing up onboarding tools, reworking the design system in the time we’d have spent on one feature before. We just launched our biggest upgrade yet and we’re excited to push further. With Butler University’s backing, winning looks like becoming the default way schools turn empty space into real revenue — without a manual, relationship-by-relationship grind.”

It’s Monday morning and a club director or nonprofit operator just read this. What’s the one thing they should do this week to get better access to space?

“If you’re a club director or nonprofit operator, the highest-leverage move this week is getting your paperwork ready before you make the ask: insurance certificate, plus a one-page use case (space, days, hours, headcount). Schools say yes faster to a prepared renter than a great pitch with no paperwork behind it.”

The takeaway. This one is a two-way street, and we can put you on it.

If you run a school, a parish, a rec center or any building with a gym, field, theater or studio that sits dark on weeknights, you are sitting on revenue that never shows up in your budget because nobody can get to it. Enrollment is falling and the square footage isn’t. Hit reply, tell us what space you have and roughly where, and we’ll connect you straight to Carlos — no fee, no cut, no pitch from us. Subler is predominantly Los Angeles-based and live in a handful of other states, so it may not be in your market yet — but if you can point them toward a school in your area, that is exactly the introduction they want.

If you’re a club director, coach or admin who has spent the last month leaving voicemails, same offer. Reply with what you’re looking for — space, days, hours, headcount — and we’ll pass it along. And do the one thing Carlos asked before you send it: have the packet ready, exactly as he lists it above. The prepared renter gets the room.

Either way, hit reply. We read every email, and this week we’ll answer every one of these.

LOOKING AHEAD ⏭️

Next up in THE FACEOFF 🤼: the part of running a tournament, the forty people you have to recruit, confirm and pay before a single whistle blows. Run events? Hit reply with your worst staffing weekend the best ones make the issue.

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The Coach's Board by Paul Variano
The weekly executive roundup for youth sports leaders.