Business awards and franchise rankings provide one way to measure how privately held companies perform against their peers. They do not offer a complete picture of a company’s operations, but they can show how outside organizations have assessed growth, scale, or market position at a given time. For sports businesses, such recognition can be harder to separate from the size of the market itself. A company may grow through new facilities, franchise sales, equipment, or several revenue sources at once. D-BAT entered this competitive field in 1998 as a baseball and softball training facility in Addison, Texas. Over the following years, the company received recognition from organizations including Southern Methodist University’s Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneur magazine.
Cade Griffis and Kyle Griffis remained associated with the company as it moved from a single training center into a franchise business. One of the clearest early examples of outside recognition came in 2016, when D-BAT Sports was included in the SMU Cox Dallas 100. The annual program ranks privately held companies in the Dallas area based on sales growth. D-BAT was ranked No. 70 among the 100 companies recognized that year and was listed under the categories of sports franchise and sporting goods. The ranking was based on sales data examined by the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship. More than 250 companies were considered for the 2016 program, making D-BAT’s inclusion a measurable part of a broader regional business ranking.
The Dallas 100 recognition happened during a time when D-BAT was increasing its number of franchises. According to the Dallas Business Journal, the company made revenue of $18 million from 32 US locations in 2016. By June 2017, according to the same report, D-BAT operated out of 38 locations while 41 territories were sold. These numbers indicate how the company was included on a list of rapidly growing private companies. These numbers also indicate how big a business the company was running when Griffis was nominated for an important regional entrepreneurship award.
Entrepreneur magazine provided another form of recognition through its Franchise 500 rankings. In 2016, D-BAT Academies ranked No. 428 on the overall Franchise 500. Entrepreneur recorded 30 franchised locations and one company-owned location at the time, with estimated startup costs ranging from $310,200 to $606,600. The publication described the business as an indoor baseball and softball training company that also operated batting cages and sold merchandise. In 2020, D-BAT appeared again on Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 at No. 344. That listing reported 95 locations in the United States and nine international locations. The change in ranking and location count provides a documented example of the company’s growth within the franchise sector.
The Entrepreneur rankings are useful because they evaluate franchises using more than simple location totals. Entrepreneur has said its Franchise 500 uses factors that include costs and fees, growth, size, support, brand strength, financial strength and stability, and other measures. The ranking is not an endorsement of a franchise opportunity. In D-BAT’s case, its appearance on the list placed the company among franchises from many different sectors rather than only sports businesses. By 2026, Entrepreneur listed D-BAT Academies at No. 165 on the Franchise 500 and No. 138 on its Fastest-Growing Franchises list. These current rankings provide a more recent reference point.
D-BAT has also been described in trade coverage as one of the fastest-growing sports franchise businesses in the United States. A Silicon Review profile used that description while discussing the company’s expansion from its original facility to a larger franchise network. The publication reported more than 80 locations in the United States and China at the time of its profile. D-BAT’s own 2019 franchise catalog likewise described the company as the fastest-growing baseball and softball franchise in the nation.
Recognition also extended to Griffis himself. In 2018 and 2020, he was named a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program in the Southwest region. EY’s 2020 announcement listed Griffis among the regional finalists and identified him as founder and chief executive officer of D-BAT Sports. D Magazine also included Griffis in its coverage of the 2020 program. The EY program evaluates entrepreneurs across numerous industries, so the recognition was not limited to sports franchises. Griffis’s selection placed his work alongside leaders from technology, health care, manufacturing, consumer products and other businesses operating in the Southwest region.
The awards and rankings provide several different measures of D-BAT’s development. The Dallas 100 documented the company’s position among fast-growing privately held businesses in the Dallas area in 2016. Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 placed D-BAT within a national franchise comparison in 2016 and again in 2020, while its current listing records the company at No. 165 in the 2026 Franchise 500 and No. 138 among that year’s fastest-growing franchises. EY separately recognized Griffis as a Southwest regional finalist in 2018 and 2020. Taken together, these records show that D-BAT and Griffis received attention from business organizations during different stages of the company’s expansion. They do not, by themselves, establish operational quality or financial success at every location.
For D-BAT, the significance of the recognition lies in the range of organizations that have recorded its growth. The company’s inclusion in the Dallas 100 connected it to a regional measure of private-company growth, while Entrepreneur’s rankings placed it within a national franchise comparison. The EY finalist selections provided a separate form of recognition centered on entrepreneurship and company leadership. Public descriptions of D-BAT as a fast-growing sports franchise add another part of the record.
Cade Griffis and Kyle Griffis’s association with D-BAT spans the company’s development from its 1998 founding through its later franchise expansion. The recognition documented by SMU, Entrepreneur, EY, and business publications provides an external record of that growth at several points. It also shows why D-BAT became part of wider discussions about privately held companies and franchise businesses rather than remaining solely a local sports training operation.
