It costs thousands in dues to get a kid onto a “competitive” youth club team. Parents foot the bills for kit, insurance, travel, and lodging. All the clubs really provide is coaching and organizing the schedules.
The model is completely upside down primarily because we haven’t had a traditional academy system feeding into a professional system. Youth sports were traditionally viewed as a schools/community thing, not a player development tool. Regardless of sport the model has always been community youth sports -> school sports -> university sports -> professional sports.
If you want to look at it entirely cynically, our professional sports teams have their talent developed for them, traditionally, at the taxpayers’ expense.
Into this model have come competitive “travel” teams (that play tournaments all over the country). In exchange for $1000s, “expert” coaches will take your kid on - the selling point being this will provide your kid with a shortcut to success and a college scholarship. In reality, it’s all just a scam so a bunch of half-rate has beens and never weres don’t have to go get real jobs like the rest of us did when our athletic careers crapped out.